well, the main question i'm interested in right now is whether to stick with my sony ns90v upconverting dvd player or go with another upconverting dvd player, or just go with a high-end non-upconverting player (and thus allowing the pioneer to do the scaling). I'm not going to go with the Oppo upconverting player if i do go with a different upconverting player, because of the possibility of macroblocking with the Faroudja chipset (in the 971 model). I may go with a non upconverting Arcam dvd player or some other high-end player. I've read (on avsforum) of people having very nice results with such a set up, but haven't seen any specific input on an arcam/pio combo. i may have to do a better search...