New DVD Player
When we got our new TV almost a year ago, Sears threw in a JVC progressive-scan DVD player for free. At first, it seemed fine, but then on some movies I noticed stuttering during side-to-side panning scenes that bugged me occasionally. I wasn't the only one who noticed.
Well, I was living with it, only occasionally seeing the problem. But that was before I watched LXG Friday night. I enjoyed the movie, but it showed off the bug in almost every chapter. That got me wanting a quick fix, so on Saturday I checked out the usual suspects and narrowed down my next DVD player to either a Sony or a Pioneer DV-563A. This thread on the AVS Forums provided many good testimonials for the Pioneer.
At Circuit City, they had the Sony disconnected on a shelf, but the Pioneer was connected to a Sony 34" HDTV and had Finding Nemo loaded up. Being able to demo the Pioneer gave it an edge up, but the kicker was for that about $20 more it had DVD-Audio and SACD compatibility, neither of which the Sony can handle.
I bought it and confirmed that it played the problem scenes of LXG flawlessly, and it even cleaned up Monsters, Inc., where I noticed in a few scenes the JVC was susceptible to a chroma upsampling error.
Now, the JVC will be switched from "480p" to "480i" mode and do bedroom duty. And our venerable Sony from '99 will move to GeekCentral (my basement paradise).
Moral of the story: if you're getting a DVD player for free, that probably means someone else didn't want to buy it. ;)
Update: Compatibility entry at DVDRHelp.com.