rubbersoul,

The other player I was considering is the upcoming Sony BDP-S550 which, according to this press release, will be approx. $500.

Upcoming Sony Blu-Ray Players

It has on-board decoding and 7.1 outputs as well, no word on SACD support though.

There's a nice chart here detailing the audio abilities of various available and soon-to-be-available blu-ray players:
Blu-ray Player Audio Support

I'm not completely sold on the PS3 either but it's additional ability to act as a networked media server is kind of swaying me a bit as well...

-John