If you're talking about the Secrets review, DaveR, the shootout's testing procedures focus solely on the video section but use a mix of reference video material and directly-measured data - it's about as non-subjective a metric as they could develop, and has been refined since the late 1990's to be as consistent and accurate as possible. Considering how widely-regarded the shootout results are, I doubt that McCormack would have kept silent if they believed there was a problem with the review sample. The main point made by Secrets (and to a degree confirmed by McCormack) was that the video quality wasn't representative of the price because the cost was mainly due to the focus placed on the audio portion of the player. Having said that, I will also say that a low score does not necessarily equate to an ugly picture - a number of the tests look at severe challenges that many players may never be asked to face (unusual cadences, errors in disc mastering, and the like), and of course it will also depend on the strength of your display to reproduce the issues (or not reproduce them, depending on the display). I have three DVD players connected to my 32" HDTV right now, two of which were tested by Secrets. My Panasonic DMR-E80 DVD recorder wasn't tested, but its predecessor the DMR-HS2 was - and it scored a lowly 48. My Yamaha DVD-S1500 scored a 63, and my Oppo scored a 94 (98 with a firmware update). The E80's progressive output is underwhelming, the S1500's is actually pretty respectable (at least to my eye), and the Oppo's is a clear upgrade from the S1500, but the differences in picture quality aren't directly proportional to the differences in score.