DVD Player is top quality overall. However, it works best in a specific application. It really shines if you have a dedicated theater with a separate scaler and deinterlacer(Lumagen, etc)since it does not have the best deinterlacer and scaler inside. This player will output 480i over HDMI (hardly any will do that). Thus you can output the native DVD content over HDMI to another scaler and do the deinterlacing and scaling there. This is as good as an SDI input costing hundreds more. Other features that lend itself to a dedicated home theater:
1) you can blank out the front panel lights for a dark environment.
2) you can design your own home screen when the player starts up. neat!
3) it has an audio-only mode to turn off video for CDs.
4) it has a higher quality jpeg encoder so 1080 jpegs don't have to be scaled down to 480 and then back up to 1080. The jpegs look MUCH improved on the big screen.
5) it has a USB port. Plugging in a thumb drive with photos means instant slide show with high quality 1080 imaging.
I would not buy this DVD player as an upconverting player though (Oppo sells better ones at this price point). There are others that use better deinterlacing chipsets (Faroudja, eg) than this one. But for a theater with a dedicated deinterlacer it's FANTASTIC!