Shon

Looking for player with awsome progressive image and also has dolby digital decoder.

PhYbEr

The Panasonic RP-82, tough to find anything better out right now, unless you're ready to spend some real $..

nekobus

Panasonic RP-82 or CP-72 changer. They have the same mpeg decoder and Faroudja deinterlacing chip. The CP-72 is a lot easier to find right now than the 82 due to a shortage of 82s. The 72 is also available at places like Circuit City.

cowanrg

my choice is denon dvd-900. will blow away anything in the sub $500 range. it sells for around $299 retail.

Josh Z

The DVD-900's picture is rather soft and it has that annoying design flaw that requires you to reset the black level every time you insert a new disc. I had one; I didn't think it was a terrible machine, but I was not satisfied enough with it to keep it.

For $100 more, the DVD-1600 is a significantly better player and is what I use now.

At $300, the DVD-900 is not a good value when the Panasonic RP-82 and CP-72 will give you a better picture for closer to $200.

Icculus

Isn't the 1600 basically the same thing as the rp82? I thought I remembered reading that somewhere...

Shon

Thanks for your input

Josh Z

The video section is the same, but the Denon has better audio DACs.

They are both good players. The Panasonic is cheaper and has more user convenience features (time-remaining display, bit rate meter, etc). If the quality of the audio DACs is not a huge concern, the RP-82 is the best bang-for-your-buck. From a pure-performance perspective, I prefer the DVD-1600.

PoorBoy

Faroudja or Meridian, hands down...Or course paying $20,000 isn't the most attractive.

I'd vote Pioneer Elite on the tad more expensive side and Sony on the cheap crap side (Sony is good, I just don't trust them, always had bad experience with Sony).