Tried to look it up in my manual but no details to be found.

Just for the hell of it, I set my onkyo's hdmi output to 'passthrough' and was blown away by how well the kuro upscales SD material like normal DVD's and non-HD channels on D*TV on its own. I swear it looks just as good, if not better (could be placebo effect) than what my Toshiba XA2 and Onkyo 905 with the reon chip can do. I've had this problem of component sources (like the Wii)ending up slightly blurry when upscaled to 1080p via HDMI by the Onkyo (only problem I've had with this receiver) and now I'm convinced because my plasma pulls it off much better. I almost don't want to believe that my TV has better video processing than my fancy feature-laden receiver, but that seems to be the case. I almost feel like I have no use for the onkyo's upscaling abilities even though that was what drew my attention to it to begin with.

inside. Seems too high end for an embedded upscaling device for a television. I realize it's an expensive set but still.

Well I could always check with my customer, Pioneer :)

Did you know Pioneer makes their plasmas here in California? Most of them are made in Asia or Mexico. I know because most of them are my customers including Sony. Interesting to see my Bravia being manufactured in front of me.

This sentence makes no sense.

I'm sure pioneer could tell you.

Interesting observation, since I am looking at the virtually the same onkyo and trying to decide on a 50" TV - Kuro vs. XBR vs. something $1,000 cheaper

While the reon chip seems to be pretty good, its not their high end - the one that goes in dedicated scalers is the Realta<ul><li><a href="http://www.siliconoptix.com/products/ReonVX.cfm">the reon chip is made to go in TV's anyway</a></li></ul>

I can definitely notice some extra sharpness and clarity when comparing a regular dvd being upscaled by the reon in the onkyo versus passthrough being processed by the pioneer tv alone. The Pioneer looks better and motion seems smoother too. Only SD content and I'm splitting hairs here in some cases.

It would be ironic if the Silicon Optix Reon chip inside the Onkyo will fail some of Silicon Optix's own HQV benchmark tests? I'm bored so I just ordered <a href="http://www.hqv.com/benchmark/purchaseForm.cfm?productID=6b417002-102d-1076-5500-c31041318153">Silicon Optix's benchmark Blu-ray test disc</a> to find out. I'll post here with my findings for the curious.

I've heard that according to Silicon Optix, the de-interlacing and basic scaling yielded from the Reon vs Realta chip is the same, except the Realta chip offers more user-customization and tinkering.

You really have too much time on your hands LV.

I should learn how to knit or something productive instead of worrying about stupid sh1t.

knit? wtfbbq!

you decide on a tv yet?

god knows I ain't buying one....yet :D

the tv is the easy part...sourcing the projector and the integra stuff is proving more complicated.