I'd like some help choosing a new DVD player to replace my 4 year old Pioneer DV-525. I need DVI-D and would like HDMI as well, and I haven't found a lot of players with one or both of these outputs. Denon, Marantz, Arcam and the V,Inc. Bravo D2 player are on my list. Any other suggestions?

What kind of price range are we talking about?

I just got the Denon 2910, and I believe that it has all of the features, plus it's a universal player (SACD, DVD-A). I know I did some complaining about it being different from my Pioneer in another forum, but it's growing on me now. It seems to be warming up, and not as bright as it was out of the box. I got it for $630 at Ultimate Electronics (after I got them to match the price at Crutchfield.com = $650). I can't attest to the video quality becuase I don't own a big screen TV. It looks a little better on my tube TV through S-Video...but the reviews that I have seen about it have mostly praised the video, and forgot to comment on the audio.

I'm probably going to replace my separate DVD-A & SACD players with a Yamaha DVD-S1500. Gonk's written up a nice review of it on his site:

Yamaha DVD-S1500 User Review

I've been pretty pleased with the S1500. It does not offer DVI or HDMI, however - the selection is still a bit thin in that regard. Denon does have three players to choose from with DVI (the 1910, 2910, and 3910) - the 2910 and 3910 also include HDMI. Aside from those three and the Bravo D2, there's one or two Samsung players with DVI and the Zenith DVB318 (which Pat has in his bedroom system, as a matter of fact). Panasonic's got some HDMI offerings, as well (the S97 has it, although I don't know if any others do).

I love my Zenith '318. The "problem" with the newer ones is that they caved in to the MPAA and no longer upconvert to 1080i or 720p over the components. I'm lucky in that I bought mine early enough in the production run to still have that benefit. The upconversion is really pretty on an HD display.

id go with a denon.

Can someone explain to me what DVI is? Sorry I am bad with TLA's (three letter acronyms)

Also does anyone have a feel on who is winning the format game- DVD-A or SACD?

DVI is Digital Video Interface. It and HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface, if my memory is working today) are the two digital video signal formats available today. DVI (paired with the encryption scheme HDCP, or High Definition Copy Protection) was the first digital video format to show up in HDTV's, and it is also available on a few DVD players (many of which offer the ability to upconvert a progressive scan signal to HD resolution, although that upconversion is generally restricted to the DVI output only) and on some HDTV receivers, HD cable boxes, and HD satellite receivers. HDMI is similar (in fact, the two are to a great degree pin-to-pin compatible as far as video signal goes), but also allows for digital audio to pass through the same cable. EDIT: There's an article at Secrets that looks at both DVI and HDMI - you can find it here .

As for DVD-A and SACD, I'm not sure. Considering how slow their acceptance has been, it might be most accurate to say that they are both losing the way. Each catalog of titles has certain strengths - there's a lot more classical on SACD as well as a good number of older album re-issues, whereas DVD-A could be said to have an edge in newer material. I had been leaning toward DVD-A (the catalog tends to have more albums that interest me, and my current collection of DVD-A's is about twice as large as my SACD collection), but I'm unsure what impact DualDisc may have on the future growth of DVD-A's catalog.

sacd is a sony technology...
dvda is universal...
speaking of, has anyone seen a dvd/cd burner (or software, since i have a burner of both) that can record in dvda or sacd.