I currently own an XBox 360, Pioneer SC-07 AVR, and Pioneer 600m plasma.

I'm researching BD players, and may get a Mac Mini for use as an HTPC. I would prefer to skip the HTPC due to cost and the inconvenience of operating an extra component, if the XBox and BD player can meet my media needs.

How good is the XBox scaler in the following cases:

- Streaming media (Hulu/Netflix) vs BD/HTPC?
- NAS/USB media vs BD/HTPC. Same winner for both HD and SD content?

The 360 is decent enough.
But if scaling quality is your *primary* interest, your best bet may be the new Oppo BD player...
http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/
...combined with a USB-attached HDD.

Hard to argue with *their* scaler. And its got a good UI and good format support, including VOBs.

Combine it with 360 for the gaming and you should have pretty much all aspects covered.
That's what I intend to do, myself.
(Just going to wait for the Oppo to drop a bit from the full list price.)

Netflix streaming quality through the 360 is actually pretty darn good, if your network connection is up to it. But you need a Live Gold membership to use it.

The 360 doesn't work with Hulu, though, unless you use one of the many stream-transcoding DLNA servers that are out there. I think that PlayOn Media Server works with Hulu. I've never used it, though.

Yeah, I use PlayOn for Hulu, and it looks decent enough...the 480p encodes are acceptable (no replacement for HD feeds of course) but they work.

Still hoping they'll announce some kindof native Hulu streaming.