My old Panny RP91 just died and I am in the market for a decent upscaling DVD Player.

I want to limit the purchase to approx $100 and am considering the following: Tosh XDE500, Phillips DVP5990, Pioneer DV410 and the Sony NS700. All of which are between $70 and $100 with the exception of the Phillips, which is cheaper and gets good reviews, but build quality is suspect..

Here's the thing, I am able to get a Denon 1740 for just a bit more than I want to spend and I want to know if it is worth the extra $30.

Does anyone want to offer their insight into the above players?

I am hooking it up to my Yamaha RX-V757 7:1 Receiver and Hitachi 57X500 CRT RP TV.

Nobody has an opinion on a $100 DVD player...thought this would be the sweet spot of the market?

Hi rta1023,

From my research recently, the top performers in the sub $100 class, interms of picture sharpness, are the mediatek based machines (pio and phillips). You'll also get lightning fast layer changes with these machines and good sharpness. Also up for consideration (not on your list) in the mediatek machines is the LG DN898. (I have had good luck with the LG511/DVB418 machines previously). With the oppo 970 (mediatek based) there was a "vertial squeeze" issue, that I don't know if the current mediatek machines have or not (searching the threads has revealed the answer).

Using the Matsushita all-in-one solution is the panny s54k. I like this mpeg decoder from back from the rp-82 days. Secrets gave the s52 very high marks on the hdmi side, but I've been unable to figure out how similar the s54k is to the s52, in terms of performance.

I'm not sure about what the sony and the toshiba use. The xde500 thread here seems split between lovers and haters. Personally I don't like EE, so I'm not considering that player

You don't say what other features you want (USB, divx, SACD/DVD-A), so I'll give you what other criterion I use:
- passes BTB
- pass 480i via HDMI.

The pioneer with the stock firmware clips BTB. The panny S54k and the LG DN898 apparently pass BTB. These two also pass 480i via HDMI.

If you want high res music, i.e. that's important to you, then I'd say that's leading towards the pioneer. I'd include considering the DV-48av elite player instead of the 410 which can be had via the internet (vanns.com) for $100.

Best,
jeff