Ok, a buddy of mine is finally getting around to finishing a HT area in his basement. He does not have a lot of money to spend, but managed to save up for a Sanyo Z5 recently he got for around 1K. I'm jealous as hell since I only have the Z2.

Anyway, for the rest of his audio gear he has a Yamaha 5.1 receiver (about 3 years old), a Yammy DVD player that came with the receiver package, and some smaller yammy speakers that came with the package that are a little bigger than Bose crap.

I will work on him at some point on Axioms, but that will take some time. He wants to get a better DVD player since he now has this nice projector.

I'm trying to figure out if he should get one of the new Toshiba HD DVD players. Since the Z5 is native 720p I'm guessing it would have to scale down the signal if receiving a 1080i or 1080p signal via HDMI.

Or would it make for sense for him to look at one of the Oppo or other upscaling players?

I did just find this review

http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=2501

which states the Z5 does in fact accept a 1080p signal and the internal scaler takes over from there to work with the native 720p panels.

In the review it sounds like mated with the toshiba HDAX2 the picture was pretty mind blowing.

Imo with that setup he's got to go with a HD player, what model from Toshiba would be up to his budget, but I've got the HDAX2 with my 720p plasma and could not be happier.

Keep an eye on Amazon--the price on the XA2 fluctuates a bit. I managed to pick one up a couple of weeks ago when it was at 499. Awesome deal.

What is the budget, man! I think that it would be great to get a XA2 myself for with my Z3, but convincing him to spend another 50% of the cost of his projector "just to play movies" may be a hard sell. I see the value of it, but I just can't afford it right now. He may be able to afford it, but might not see the value of it.

There are, obviously, lower cost models.

What ever happened to your Panny S97? You could let him borrow it and try out the upconversion of regular DVDs with a decent player. I still use my S97 and like it (don't love it any more, but that is just because I finally have seen HD OTA things like football, and some TV shows, so I know that my "old" Z3 is capable of)...

While it's been mentioned, I'm in a tossup between a new HDTV or HD projector.

TV-Samsung 61 in. DLP (HLT6189S)-$3000
Projector-Sanyo PLV-Z5-$2000 with screen(106 in.)

Uncertainties that I have about the projector is that it couldn't be mounted any further back from the screen than 9-10 ft.(because of a center beam). Is that far enough?

Also, I don't know how well the projector would fare with HD satellite television.

I don't really know anything about projectors, but I have read that the picture quality isn't very good with television and I don't have the financial means to purchase a flatscreen mounted behind a projector screen. It will be used 50-50 between movies and TV. Any help and suggestions would be appreciated.

The Z5 is around 1K now, what the heck type of screen are you looking at? My DIY screen cost less than $100.

Nick and others,

Money is an issue for him, I'm sure he could spend 200-300 maybe, his wife is very much a tight wad when it comes to toys.

I still have the S97 Nick, since I use my HTPC for movies now, we have it on another tv right now in the house.

Sanyo projector and screen

Perhaps I should shop around?