Pretty much the above. I’ve heard Oppo is the best for this, but I wasn’t really looking to spend 500 bucks. I’ve been using a PS3 for up scaling DVDs, but that is getting moved to another room. What other players would do as good a job or better?
I didn’t do a ton of research, but I bought a Sony one last year for somewhere around $100-120 that does just that, plus had the hooks for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and all that other good online stuff.
It does well enough for what I need it for, which is playing DVDs and the occasional Blu-Ray. The interface is a lot like the PS3 interface but not as smooth. Having to update the firmware every month or two is sort of annoying, but that can always be deferred.
EDIT: Mine is a Sony S580 for reference
How about this one? http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDP-S590-Blu-ray-Player-Wi-Fi/dp/B006U1YUZE/ref=sr_1_1?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1352410269&sr=1-1&keywords=dvd+upscaling
Was thinking of that very same one, just didn’t know what others I should consider. We still have way more DVDs than Blu-Ray, including quite a few TV seasons.
Before I moved to Brisbane, Australia (awesome place!) I took my 200+ collection of DVDs and ripped them all to an external hard drive, saved me a lot of storage. I didn’t have any “collectors item” dvds though (a lot of Laserdiscs tho’) which I might have saved.
Just a tips if you are buying a BluRay player, check to see if it can playback content from external sources such as a USB Hard-drive or similar; in case you decide to get rid of some discs. My Bluray player would let me play back DVD (.vob) files if I renamed them to “.MPG”. Sadly didn’t “upscale” anything; except it would be displayed in the output resolution from the player (1080p); if that is what you are thinking about upscaling.
My old Pioneer DVD player did Upscale to 720 progressive, which made horrible looking 480 SD? dvd’s look much nicer.
I just got my old Oppo DV-970HD repaired, and its upscaling is awesome. It’s not a Blu-Ray player, but Oppo’s current (expensive) Blu-Ray models should upscale just as well.
BTW, Oppo will repair this old model for $38 no matter what’s wrong with it, and that includes shipping back to you! And mine came back in less than a week from my mailing it — the repair center is only an hour or so away, but still!
Yeah, like I said, I’ve heard great things about Oppo. I ended up ordering a Sony S790, which is significantly more money than the 590, but I read a number of reviews that mentioned how great the DVD up scaling was on the higher end model.
Missed it, sorry.
My model was $150 new — one could buy a used or broken one and get it fixed for $38! Maybe I’ll look into that when this one eventually goes.