[MurDiddlyUrdler]

Originally posted by tomdkat
Thanks for the screen shots. One thing I find that's VERY interesting is in the 16:9 "cropped" picture. I DO see where the subtitles are chopped, but the right and left sides of the image look EXACTLY like the 4:3 image above it. This looks to me like only the top and bottom was cropped which is different than the entire image being zoomed in. When I watch 4:3 2.35:1 material on my Toshiba 57HX81 in "Full" mode, the image is stretched horizontally and the letterbox bars are "huge". If I switch to the "TheaterWide 2" video mode, the letterbox bars look the same as if I was watching an anamorphic DVD, but the sides are also cropped. I'm not sure how PowerDVD did the cropping you illustrated and how that differs from how your TVs video modes work.

I did the capture in PowerDVD and then did the cropping myself in Photo Editor. This is the way that my TV works in EXPAND mode. The mode is intended for letterboxed 4:3 video. It simply crops off the top and bottom and expands what's left to fill the whole 16:9 screen. It is indeed different from zooming in on the entire image. Perhaps this is where we were confusing each other.

I do like the EXPAND mode on my TV because you don't lose any of the picture on either the sides or the bottom (outside of 5% overscanned) on letterboxed 4:3 material. This is great for my letterboxed laserdiscs except for City of Lost Children because that chops off the English subtitles (I don't speak French so I need them).

It DOES sound like the video features of the Toshiba far outweigh the usability feature of the Sony so it sounds like the Toshiba is a better player for you. If you can't really tell which video output you like the best yet, that implies they are VERY close (I think you might have even stated that earlier) in video performance, thus making the Toshiba the "winner"....

I'm definitely leaning towards keeping the Toshiba. I'll probably hold onto the Sony for awhile, but if I determine that the Toshiba's video performance is up to snuff, I'll eventually try to find someone who wants the Sony.

Of course, I'm NOT making your decision for you but simply based on what you've described about the SD-4800 so far, it sounds like an obvious choice for you. Now I'm wondering why other SD-4800 owners haven't discussed these video features of this player earlier.

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised that I hadn't heard more about this player before yesterday. It's comparably priced to the Sony and has some great features for widescreen TVs. I'm impressed with it so far.

I've not mentioned yet that the SD-4800 also supports DVD-Audio, which is not important to me at all, but nice to have nevertheless. And the SD-4800 is also black and matches my other components, something the Sony does not (again not a big deal, but nice nevertheless).

Thanks for the great status reports!

Thanks for reading them. Good discussion we've got going on here. This is what these forums should be for.