Hm. A few days ago I saw a new Phillips progressive player tested, but I think it was the 765k. It uses an ESS chip. The progressive was absolutely horrible. It seemed to be a purely "flag-reading" progressive solution or something to that effect. We popped in Cutthroat Island and it just went crazy, switching between bob and weave (this makes the picture flicker in a really weird way). Also on Cutthroat Island, there were horrible subpicture bugs. Sometimes the text would stay on screen way too long, sometimes it would be garbage.
Also, the player seemed to be applying the deinterlacing algorithm to its own on-screen display. This means the menus flicker up and down for video material.
Maybe the 724 is a completely different model and is actually decent... but at that price I would hold back if I were you.