Hi Steve,
The Pioneer 868,and the Denon 2900 have both been rated as very fine DVD-A players,although a bit less useful as CD players,although I haven't heard either of these on DVD-A playback.
In the higher end players,the Meridian G series and 800 series,and the Linn Unidisk are again rated very highly,but none of these are anything less than very expensive players.
As for CD upsampling....this is currently being approached in 2 ways.
1.to simply upsample the CD data stream to 24/96 or 24/192,with no data interpolation(i.e. no attempt being made to fill in the missing data between 16bit 44.1kHz and 24 bit/96(or192)kHz.
This certainly does provide in many cases a useful increase in smoothness,whilst not losing depth in the soundstage.
2.The above,plus data interpolation using a DSP chip and proprietary algorithm...this is the method used by Perpetual Technologies,and has received a lot of good press in terms of sound quality from the high-end HiFi mags(and in my own experience,it does work extremely well)and comes close to DVD-A in terms of sound quality,but obviously in stereo only.
3.dCS in their latest firmware upgrades for the Elgar/Purcell combination(at about £10K plus)have added the capability to convert CD to DSD and process the data as SACD.
In short,CD upsampling,if done properly,and using interpolation can make an amazing difference to CD sound quality,even if it only approaches DVD-A(it could hardly be expected to better it,from a good DVD-A player).
It's also worth noting the current play-off between the various digital formats,and it may well be worth waiting a little to see how that all pans out...I certainly will wait,and be happy with a P/Tech upsampler/interpolator for the present,as it's sound quality(not just my opinion)equals that of some of the Levinson and Wadia DAC's,and goes a long way towards the dCS at a fraction of the cost.