I purchased a Philips 47" 1080p LCD TV and currently have two DVD players

Panasonic DVD-S35 (2 years old) which is a progressive scan and works great (unfortunately it does not play DVD+R DL)

I purchased Magnavox BDP170MW8 (less than a week) which is a 1080p upconverting DVD player (unfortunately it also does not play DVD+R DL)

I tried watching same movies (like regular Planet Earth series) on both the DVD players (Magnavox via HDMI and Panasonic via Component and TOSLINK) and did not find any real difference in PQ.

I am contemplating of returning the Magnavox. Am I missing any settings on either the Magnavox DVD player or Philips TV?

I have read several pages of messages on this forum about upscaling, etc. but still cannot decide if I should return the Magnavox 1080p Upconverting DVD player or keeping it.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks.

Upconverting players do not necessarily yield better picture quality with any given display. What you hope happens is that, at either 720 or 1080, the upconverting player will do a better job than your HD display's electronics. All SD DVDs are 480i, so you have to try 480i and 480p from the player and up conversion to both 720p and 1080 to see if there is any gain in PQ. On my system for example, the DVD player's output at 1080i yields an improved quality compared to the others, but upconversion to 720p produced no improvement. However the difference is not huge.

trekguy,

Thanks for your input. I will try the different outputs from the Magnavox player and compare it with my Panasonic player.