Awaiting delivery on a new 1080p tv (sony kds60a2020) and by several accounts this tv has excellent upconversion. I currently have an ancient DVD player (not even progressive scan) and wonder if I should spend the $ on an upconvert player or just let the TV do the upconversion?

Any input is appreciated.

I have an upconvert player and I still let the tV do the upconvert...No issues here...

This is asked on a daily basis. Please do a search. The answer is that it depends on the deinterlacing/scaling done by the player versus the display. Usually, the player does a better job, but it depends on the specific player. A better answer is that to trully optimize movie PQ, go with high def (HD-DVD or BD) -- the Tosh A2 or XA2 or the PS3 upscale at least as well as most upscaling SD DVD players.

I think progressive scan is pretty important but scaling is less important. A progressive scan DVD player will be able to read the flags set on the recording to determine the best deinterlacing posible, if you leave that to your TV, only the media contains the flags and your TV is left to guess how to deinterlace the content. The best TVs don't get too bothered by this but the KDS models are their lower end models and won't be great at this. Your best bet would be to try out your current player, and if you see jaggies in the image then you should try a progressive scan player. Oppo has fantastic players that are not too expensive, but I would just get a HD-DVD or BluRay player and let it do your scaling if you are in the market for a DVD player.