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Oppo also makes kick ass blue ray players.

http://www.oppodigital.com/?partner=101

My understanding was that all modern TVs have programming specifically to detect pulldown patterns and undo them.

Oppo stuff undoes 3:2 pulldown from DVD material and will play back a 24fps signal. It does make a noticeable difference (I tested on some LotR landscape pans; but even some of my sitcoms seem to be 24fps source, mangled to 60fps for DVD release). However, it really highlights bad edits, because if the 3:2 pulldown isn't perfect in a scene change there will be a single frame which is "torn" into a top half and a bottom half from the surrounding frames. I doubt that any modern TVs are actually undoing 3:2 pulldown without mucking around with interpolation (i.e. 1080i vs. 1080p), which causes its own similar artifacts.

As to references, just search for "120Hz 24fps 5:5 pulldown" and you'll find plenty of investigation on gearhead forums like avsforum. In fact, that link specifically discusses the 3:2 pulldown reversal into a 60fps interlaced stream, and those guys are better informed than I.

the stupid menus and FBI warnings you can't bypass

There are DVD players such as this one that allow you to bypass it. It's odd that it doesn't have that in its features list. You can even make it region-free quite easily.

I'm very happy with my Oppo DVD player.
http://www.oppodigital.com/

For what I paid, $150, it has a lot of features that I was very happy to have. My favorite is it's ability to accept a USB thumbdrive. My complaint is that it doesn't go into detail about the file formats it supports. It supports MP3, but not Flac (not that I expected it to)

But it has the basics I was looking for: Optical audio output, component video. There is a lot of machine packed into what they are selling. Nice small form factor too. They even published their remote codes so I can program an IR emitter to control it. Fairly regular firmware updates. (Some optional ones too for beta features)

I think my only complaint is that their GUI could use some work.

Oppo has two upscaling DVD players under $200. And their current flagship, while over the $200 price point, is barely over at $230. The Oppo decks are very well known for being some of the best, if not the best, upconverting players available.

Check out the Benchmark tests from Secrets of Home Theatre and HiFi

These decks are also universal for everything but HD disks (DVD, DVD-Audio, SACD, HDCD, CD, etc), plus can play Divx and do upscaling for the Divx. Two models also have a handy USB jack for flash drives or hard drives.

Personally I'll wait for Oppo to come out with an HD deck as it is very likely they will have one that will play absolutely everything, and do it very well, when it arrives.

I'm sorry I didn't skip my mortgage payment to buy a DVD player, but I think I did alright.

I recently picked up an HDTV set finally. (Got a sweet deal on a nice Mitsubishi 62" DLP setup)

I still don't have a reason to want to bump up to and HD format. Most of the content I like and watch regularly is still only coming out on DVD's, combine that with a DVR to grab over the air stuff (including HD), and HD content through a Windows Media Center setup and I just don't see the reason to buy one or the other until there's no longer a worry about who will win.

If you really want to see the stop gap du jour I'm picking up, it's a nice upscaling 1080p DVD player. http://www.oppodigital.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DV9 81HD If you poke around a little you can even find an easily accessible code to make that puppy region free.

We would be silly to think Apple TV would prevent download and streaming of illegally acquired video anymore than the iPod could illegally acquired MP3s, so once again you're on your honor. I have to agree, go with a high quality upscaling DVD player with Faroudja chip and component and HDMI outputs such as those made by OPPO. I own a 970HD and I love it. It'll be the last standard definition DVD player I'll own and it does DivX/XviD as well as a few other formats. No WMV, MOV, or MS-MPEG4v1/2 as of my firmware. It has USB input that supports reading from a USB drive, but that's really slow for streaming an DivX/XviD recording.

The answer then would be as you said, a quality DVD player with additional video support, but which also takes FireWire. People just need to be willing to burn their porn site sample vids to disc first.

The article essentially says "our $2000 PC can play DVD video as good as some $2000 DVD players"...

Please.

Here is a $200 DVD player that will perform better than most $2000 PCs:
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html

I'm not saying you cant do great things with video using the right PC setup, but that article failed to point out the respective costs of the hardware they used for making this comparison. I won't even get into usability comparisons...

Might as well post this Oppo 970HD Advanced Setup Guide then. It contains all sorts of setup techniques that Oppo 971h owners have had to glean from places like avsforum-- the original 971h manual was pretty light on details.

Just head over to their site http://oppodigital.com/ and you can get all the info. Amazon carries it as well last I checked. BTW, the model is Oppo OPDV971H, place that in any search and you will find nothing but RAVE reviews for this player. Also, check out the Home Theater Hifi DVD player benchmark (also on Oppo's site). I have one and totally dig it. Awesome player!

Except DVDs aren't HD - you could get identical quality out of your DVDs with a standard definition 16:9 screen

Not true. Standard definition sets show an interlaced image. Since DVDs are recorded with a full frame, it will look "better" on an non-interlaced monitor (provided you have a "progressive scan" DVD player).

I believe that you would need an 'EDTV' set in order to say you would get "identical quality" with HDTV for DVDs.

http://www.oppodigital.com/Getting-Most-out-of-DVD -on-HDTV-Display.html

You're right but I picked up this DVD Player:
http://www.oppodigital.com/

and it upsamples quite nicely! DivX/Xvid compliant, Pal->NTSC or NTSC->PAL, DVI output (plus comes with the cables)
Best $250 Cdn I spent in a long time after I bought my Sammy DLP.

http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html

I read endless reviews of DVI/HDMI output DVD players and the only one that rated higher than the Oppo was the high end (aka the ridiculously expensive aka costs more than most cars) Denon player.

Best of all, Oppo provides great customer support. I've emailed them several times and have always received a response the same day. Before I bought it, I also emailed a question to Samsung and received a response 4 days later (which didn't even answer my question but rather instructed me to call them).