I have a Sony XBR4 46" display and the thing is that even tough my Panasonic S97 and PS3 can do upscaling, I don't know why I like it better at the 480p. The 720p and 1080p modes seem a little to artificial or polished to me and when I am watching movies in 480p its pure glory. Anyone with similar toughts?

If I just wanted a good progressive scanning DVD would buying a OPPO 981HD be overkill? Should I rather stick with a Sony DVP-75 or 77H? (My S97 has a out of sync problem...)

I have wondered this MANY times, since DVD's native resolution is 480p shouldn't it produce the most pure image?

That's a good point. I swear my DVDs all came alive with the combination of the Panasonic S97 in 480p and my Sony XBR4 display. My friends were constantly asking if that was a Blu Ray or HD movie. Somehow, when I play those movies in upscale the magic is gone. Tough you tend to believe the image is clearer it does not have the clear naturality of the 480p mode...

That's a good point. I swear my DVDs all came alive with the combination of the Panasonic S97 in 480p and my Sony XBR4 display. My friends were constantly asking if that was a Blu Ray or HD movie. Somehow, when I play those movies in upscale the magic is gone. Tough you tend to believe the image is clearer it does not have the clear naturality of the 480p mode...

From your discription your answer is: The XBR4 has a better scaler chipset (and firmware for it) than your DVD player.

Either way you are seeing similar scaling steps, just chaning if the player or the TV does the work. (XBR4s convert everything to 1080p, it's onlly native resolution)

So keep using the TV to scale unless you get a player that's better at scaling to 1080p then the TV just takes and displays.

For the record the Panny S97 is an excellent dvd player, I have one and have compared to the Oppo and there is little improvement.

Little improvement meaning either way, they both had very similar images, although I did have the last firmware installed as I bought it refurb'd

From your discription your answer is: The XBR4 has a better scaler chipset (and firmware for it) than your DVD player.

Either way you are seeing similar scaling steps, just chaning if the player or the TV does the work. (XBR4s convert everything to 1080p, it's onlly native resolution)

So keep using the TV to scale unless you get a player that's better at scaling to 1080p then the TV just takes and displays.

Very interesting and helpful. This means that because the XBR4 does a better job upconverting to its native resolution (which is 1080p) I am better off keeping my DVD players at 480p? So I should just look for a very decent progressive scanning DVD player (like my S97 without the out of sync problem) and just keep it a 480p. I think I will get a Sony DVP-77H (that should be better than the PS3 at DVDs) and by that way avoid the out of sync problems I could get if I bought the OPPO model. This is what the people from OPPO wrote me about my "out of sync" problem I am having with the S97:

"We have not had major synchronization errors with our players. However, the error itself may be a byproduct of the Faroudja processing, which is buffering video more than audio for advanced de-interlacing and scaling. Cheaper solutions will not have this error due to less visual processing.

Is your video occurring before, or after, the audio?"

So for me, it seems I'll better stick with a good 480p progressive scanning DVD player that does not uses a Faroudja chip, like the Sony...

What do you think about it?