I have both, a Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray and a Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player. I didn't buy a SD DVD player with up conversion because I just assumed that since the HD players would play SD DVD's they would also upconvert to 1080. Well here is what I have learned so far. The Samsung Blu-ray won't up convert at all it checks the disk and if it's a SD formated disk it switches to 480p on both the component and the HDMI outputs. The Toshiba on the other hand is a bit better. If it is an original copy protected disk it displays a message that 1080 res. is not supported with this disk and switches to 480p, however if I insert a backup that I have removed the copy protect from it does the upconversion and playes just great. My only probelm now is that I will have to buy a couple hundred blank DVD+R DL disks and copy everything that I already have in my library so I can watch them in the best quality possible. I guess the movie indrustry feels that if you can afford a High Def. player you can also afford to replace all your old DVD's with HD or Blu-ray disks! So if you haven't bought a HD player yet and you have a large collection of movies already, I suggest that you get an HD-DVD player and not a Blu-ray! By the way I really can't see any diffrence in quality between the two when I play a new HD disk.
Even over HDMI with a HDCP capable display???? That's lame. Time to hook a PC to you TV, maybe less troublesome than copying all your original discs (and you can use AnyDVD to watch them / skip over trailers / ... ).
I thought about that to but my home theater room {rebuilt bedroom} has 7.1 surround sound and I built the speakers into the walls. Is a long way from the living room where my computer is located. I can hear a great diffrence between my 5.1 system on my computer with its 2.5" speakers and the 7.1 system in the home theater room. For that mater I really like the sound of the new Dolby Digital Plus that they are putting on the new HD Disks. Unfortunatly my old bedroom is quite small so I only have a 32" HD TV and on that I can see some improvement between an upconverted SD disk and a HD disk but not that much. I am sure that if I had a 40" or 50" screen it would be a diffrent story. But untill I can build another room or expand that one I will have to put up with the 32" screen.
