Panasonic DVD-S52K  DVD Player
A really nice DVD player for the money
First, as others have pointed out, this player does NOT come with an HDMI cable, but there are plenty of online stores selling quality HDMI cables for less than ten bucks (buying premium cables for a digital signal is a total waste of money). It is fair to point out that most other players in this price range also omit the HDMI cable, so not a big issue relative to the competition. Now, on to the player. <br />this replaced a Toshiba SD-4980, which was also an up-converting DVD player. I never liked the SD-4980, even though I generally really like Toshiba products. That player frequently paused during playback, and eventually died after about six months, I was glad to have the excuse for a new player. The DVD-S52 met all of my criteria. <br />First, it had both an optical and coax digital output and passed along both Dolby Digital and DTS (some players in this price range actually don't!) <br />Up-scaling and HDMI - Upscaling can help, but it does NOT make a regular DVD into hi-def. Upscaling *can* be better, though. Sometimes, your TV may actually do a better job of scaling the video to its native resolution. In my case, it is too close to call, but I think the DVD-S52 does a slightly better job. <br />This player is pretty quick to load, and handles layer changes really well. I often don't even notice the layer change, it is so fast. <br />It offers a lot of control over picture and sound settings, and even includes a delay feature to compensate for any audio/video synch problems. A lot more options for fine tuning the player to match your TV, if needed. <br />The tray is a little goofy, you can't grab a disk by the sides, like you can in most DVD trays, so you have to use the center hole to pick up a DVD from the tray. <br /> <br />Thanks to the HDMI connection, I'm actually able to keep my DVD player about 15 feet from the TV and A/V receiver, using really long HDMI and digital audio cables (about twenty bucks for the pair, so shop around!). So far, I've watchedabout a dozen disks, ranging from film-based movies to video-based TV shows. All looked as good as I can expect from a standard DVD on my 62\\" 720p DLP. Obviously not over-the-air HD, but still very nice. <br /> <br />I'd give it 5 stars, but the tray design is sort of anoying, and the info button, by default, won't show time remaining, only elapsed time (you can change that, but you have to do so for each disk). Overall, I'm quite happy with this purchase, and I researched a lot of up-converting players in this price range. Certainly a nice option while waiting for the whole HD-DVD vs. BR-DVD mess to sort out, and prices on those units to drop.