[/QUOTE]Sorry, but even something as humble as my family snapshots have (more often than not) gone through lossy JPEG compression at some point. [/B][/QUOTE]

I like that analogy. Thanks, it makes me feel a little better about the situation. I may still be a bit confused, but if I can buy a universal player with digital outputs, and a new preamp/processor with inputs and HDMI, then I think I'll be covered for a while.

Cheers,