Upgrade Advice

[BOFH_UK]

Hey everyone, I was hoping someone could steer me in the right direction with a DVD upgrade.

I'm currently in the process of changing my 3 year old JVC HV32 set for a brand spanking new Toshiba 32WLT68 and thought it'd be a good opportunity to upgrade my Pioneer DVD 575A while I'm about it. Unfortunatley things seem to have changed quite a bit since I last looked at the DVD market so, after many many nights of reading reviews and opinions on the more popular models... I'm thouroughly confused

To keep it simple, I've got a budget up to £150 but would prefer something around £100. It must have HDMI, must play DivX decently and SACD would be a benefit but not crucial. Also something that has a quick layer change would be a real plus as I've had a couple of VERY slow players in the past and it'd drive me nuts to go back to that. The most important thing though is a step up in picture quality for the 575a which I've been quite impressed with.

To make it a bit more complicated, I've also got a Xbox 360 sitting in the rack (well, next to it actually, air flow and all that) and I'd seriously consider using that as a DVD player and upscaler over VGA if that'd be a better option. Or, and this is actually within budget, I could get the HD-DVD drive add-on for the 360 whenever it's finally released in decent quantities and use that as the DVD drive.

Eventually, in the next year or so, I'm planning on sticking a MacMini in as a media centre machine so this really is more of a stop gap than anything else, hence the low budget. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Steve.

[Boozyuzi]

Pioneer 696 - there's loads of threads about it.

[BOFH_UK]

Yeah, it's on the short list along with the Denon 1730 and the Samsung 860 but I was hoping someone could shed some light into how much of a step it would be going from the 575 to, for example, the 696. I'm also tempted to go for a Pannasonic EZ25 recorder but I think three freeview tuners on one set is taking the mickey ever so slightly...