[MurDiddlyUrdler]

Originally posted by tomdkat
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.

Using my TV's expand mode does zoom an already zoomed picture, but that's not the problem. What I'm saying is that if the subtitles are near the bottom of a 4:3 image, when you crop that image (even with no overscan), you're going to lose some of the subtitles. To demonstrate I've captured a frame from Rounders using PowerDVD (with zero overscan on my computer) and cropped it to a 16:9 ratio.

Here is the initial image in the native 4:3 ratio as present on the DVD:

You can see that the subtitles are located below the image (not on the image as you see on many DVDs). Now see what happens when I crop this capture to a 16:9 ratio:

You see that you lose a portion of the subtitle track even with an image that has ZERO overscan.

This is what's nice about the SD-4800. It readjusts the subtitles after it zooms the picture. The subtitles show up just fine.

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.

The Toshiba SD-4800 automatically recognizes whether it's 16:9 or 4:3 material. 16:9 material automatically fills my 16:9 screen. You have the option on 4:3 material of having it fill a 16:9 screen by stretching or having it display it correctly by adding black bars on the side. I like this because black bars on the sides are less distracting than the gray bars my TV uses to display 4:3. This also lets me leave the TV set on STANDARD mode at all times. No need to change the display settings on the TV.

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?

That's one feature the SD-4800 does not have. It's a nice feature, but it's something I can live without considering the other features it does have. The SD-4800 does do auto-resume if you turn the player off, but will not do it after you've removed the disc like the Sony does.