What's the best HD DVD player under $1,500

Good Question,

To answer your inquiry, from both an audio and video perspective, you cannot touch the OPPO product line for the money. I thought about a mid-line Denon for a while and then quickly came to my senses.

Even Stereophile had to admit it blew away the competition. It upconverts to a true 1080P and none of the HDTVs can improve upon that. Read the reviews, look at the price and buy their newest product or two of them, and keep the rest of your money in the bank for other toys.

I've got two OPPOs and they beat everything else hands down. Their audio perfection blows away the highest priced SACD players. Their new product (HM-31) also provides you with a very inexpensive answer in providing the latest HDMI Verison 1.3 update for your HDTV. At a cost of $99 it gives you three outputs instead of one and you are using the latest verion of HDMI, i.e., 1.3 instead of the outdated version 1.0. They think of everything for you.

OPPO keeps it real and they are for real.

FYI, I think the most expensive HD-DVD player made is still the Toshiba XA2, which lists for $599 but can be had for less. It's an excellent upconverter of SD discs as well.

Integra's DHS8.8 HD-DVD player retails for C$1200, but it's not exactly a big seller...

The Toshiba XA2 is the best upscaling available in a DVD player for your budget and is better than OPPO offerings for upscaling. This is due to the use of the REON video scaling chipsets made by Silicon Optix.

After that I'd pick an OPPO. Blu Ray players arent known for excellence in upscaling.

I paid less than $1200 for my Integra DHS 8.8 HD-DVD player. Leedistad, how do you know this player is not a big seller? Do you work for Integra?