Ultimate DVD player...

Muse is very very good. However, you will need to get 4th generation to play all the formats you require.

FWIW I spoke with TEAC, the DV-50s will be available as an upgrade for the DV-50 when it comes out. It just hit the market in Japan and and they are trying to figure out how to impliment it into the American unit now.

Yeah the Ayre is meant to be very good for music. It's all modular though so it'll cost you quite a lot.

The ultimate DVD player regarding picture quality WITHOUT A DOUBT is a personal computer with an excellent video and audio card (M-Audio).

There isn't a player on the market that can scale your DVD's to ANY resolution that your monitor,tv,or projector can take. I use mine to scale DVD's to 720P. These high end units that are mentioned here can only do 480P what's with that? I have an Ayre unit in my possession and although it has RGBVH via component which is really nice, it still looks horrible when compared to a computer hooked up to a rear or front projection.
It really ticks me off that they call these high end units and sell them for an astronomical price and my home pc pounds the living daylights out of them.
The kicker is that they also work wonderfully on audio as well provided you spend some coin on a decent audio card. They also upsample your cds and work as a music bank and preamp!!!
This has been PROVEN on other web forums and I have done it myself.
That's just my $1200bucks though!!!

Alun,
I've tried the home theater pc, perhaps I'm doing something wrong, I am running a ATI 9500 and my 150$ progressive scan pioneer dvd player destroys the picture quality when fed into my projector.
How do you adjust the dvd scale up to 720p?