I am looking for a good Blu-ray player that will also handle my non-anamorphic DVD's well by cropping the black sidebars off and zooming in on the picture. I know the Oppo players do this well, but are there alternatives that are less expensive? I'm not talking about budget players, but $500 is a bit much for me.
Let me explain why this is an important issue to me, because I'm sure not many Blu-ray fans will run into this: I love movies from Hong Kong, and most of those are only available on DVD's from Hong Kong, where most titles were released for 4:3 TV's, hence they were not anamorphic. Things have gotten better over time, as now pretty much all new titles are anamorphic, but I like stuff from the 90's so I'm stuck with crappy DVD releases. Hence the importance of good upscaling and cropping so these titles will look 'acceptable' on my HD TV (which itself does not do zooming).
Let me explain why this is an important issue to me, because I'm sure not many Blu-ray fans will run into this: I love movies from Hong Kong, and most of those are only available on DVD's from Hong Kong, where most titles were released for 4:3 TV's, hence they were not anamorphic. Things have gotten better over time, as now pretty much all new titles are anamorphic, but I like stuff from the 90's so I'm stuck with crappy DVD releases. Hence the importance of good upscaling and cropping so these titles will look 'acceptable' on my HD TV (which itself does not do zooming).
