Have you looked at the possibilty of an outboard scaler/processor? I was looking at getting the DVDO VP30, but happened across a great deal on a Key Digital iSync Pro advertised on one of the AVS forum's "power buys". I just got it the other day and am awaiting a cable and a chunk of free time to hook it up and test it out. I'm hoping that it will improve the quality of my SD TV and DVD image. The processor made sense for me because I have a lower end plasma (Vizio P50), which has limited color tweaking and it improperly streches higher resolutions vertically.
For pure 480i video, you can get an SDI modded DVD player, but I'm pretty sure that you can't get any TV with an SDI input and that you'd need an outboard scaler
http://www.jvbdigital.com/jvb.asp?cur=2&level=dvdplayers&page=title&title=327
Later,
pjdavep
not going to do an outboard scaler, though I'm sure that would be superior. spent too much on this TV, can't add the scaler right now. I assume the Vizio does 1:1 pixel mapping?
Anyway, the Oppo 970 does 480i over HDMI and is "supposed" to be one of the best. A lot of folks are having good luck with the new Denon's running 480P. I would try a few players in your budget and try them all. I couldn't stand the macroblocking on the 3910 so ended up with the Onkyo. I'm thinking about trying the new 3930ci or 2930 with an outboard DAC for CD's. I do know this, I will have too much time on my hands in the next few weeks to think about all this.
SC
i haven't used the Oppo myself, but I think i'm going to stay away from it, mainly because of build quality. i'm probably going to post this question on avsforum and see what happens.
480i via SDI would be the way to go, but then you need an SDI Iscan. Right there you are pushing $1500+. I've often thought of getting the SDI mod for my SP1000, but then I wonder if I end up getting the Anthem D2 or AVM-50 when they offer HDMI 1.3 if I would prefer the scaler in the Anthem.
my arcam does HDMI switching, but does not extract audio from HDMI and does not upconvert. It's basically a convenience. I think when the Pio arrives, I'm going to abandon using it as an hdmi switching box because I feel that the optimal picture settings for SD DVD playback are different from those of HDTV as the colorspaces are different. I infer from your comment that the Anthem upconverts SD and scales to your tv's native resolution...if you were to go with the Anthem, would you have similar colorspace issues, or does the fact that the anthem is upconverting solve those colorspace issues?