[tomdkat]

Originally posted by MurDiddlyUrdler
It doesn't matter how much overscan my TV has; if the subtitles are authored below the 1.85:1 portion of the 4:3 letterbox, the EXPAND mode on my TV will crop at least a portion of them.

I think this is where we disagree because the EXPAND mode on your TV is "Zooming" an already Zoomed picture. Like a "double Zoom". If you put the Toshiba in interlaced mode and did the double negative Zoom "thing" (to use the technical term, of course) that would negate the TV's Zoom (overscan) and the EXPAND mode would be ONE Zoom, instead of two. Do you know how the Zoom functions differ between the progressive and interlaced outputs of the Toshiba?

It definitely has some features I wish the Sony had such as the zoom function and closed caption decoder. I have many DVDs from both MGM and Artisan that have no English subtitles, but do have closed captions. I like to read along with a movie and the only way to get closed captions to appear with my Sony is to turn the progressive signal off and watch it in interlaced mode.

Not that I would ever need to use it now, but the SD-4800 can switch between interlaced and progressive with the touch of a button on the remote. The Sony has to be changed by stopping the player and going into the setup menu on the player.

The features you mention ARE very cool features and as I also have a Sony DVP-NS715P I know exactly what you mean when you describe what's involved with operating it.

My Pioneer DV-656a has a cool feature in that it _can_l automagically output an interlaced signal when non-anamorphic material is detected and a progressive signal if anamorphic material is detected. This helps me determine if any given DVD is anamorphic or not, regardless of the packaging. Of course, I can force the player into interlaced mode only or progressive mode only. The "auto progressive" alleviates me from having to change video processing modes AT ALL, unless I want to see how much better my player's de-interlacer is than my TVs de-interlacer.

All of these features have me leaning toward making the Toshiba my everyday player. Unless I find that the Toshiba isn't as nice as the Sony for video (haven't determined that yet), I'll probably end up keeping the Toshiba and getting rid of the Sony (which I still think is a darn good player).

One feature I DO like about the Sony is the "last stop" memory across power-offs and DVD changes. Does the Toshiba have this capability?

Thanks for the input, tomdkat. You've been a big help as always.

I'm just glad that you were able to get your problem solved quickly and without spending a TON of money!

Peace.....