I have the same unit and use hdmi and the sony 350 blu ray player to play dvds. I believe in voodoo like power conditioners, prior to hooking mine up I was unhappy with normal dvd and normal hd directv (I kept thinking "Where's my blu ray?")

Currently I enjoy all hd content on directv as well as dvds without feeling I am missing anything (e.g., LOTR dvds etc). Of course I can notice the difference and when I plug in a blu ray such as Dark Knight I go "Wow!" perhaps even more so due to the sonic difference, the visuals of course are amazing as well, but I'm definitely not jonesing with standard dvds.

So from what you are saying something to me sounds wrong although from what I have read/experienced I couldn't begin to imagine that it would be the component video connection, perhaps it is the dvd player, haven't played dvds to hdtv except through sony 350.

I still have questions, for example, when the external RAID hard drive unit to my HR21 I purchased from Weaknees failed (?, interference), how come all of the Directv HD content looked fuzzy, not just the intermittent breaking up of the picture? I thought the virtue of digital was that it was either on or off, never fuzzy?

"If you try to turn toward it, you go against it."