New home theater equipment on the way

A week or so ago, I decided that our current home theater setup had reached its End of Life. Actually, that means that it had reached the Tom's No Longer in Love With It stage. It's been a good setup for the past eight years, and it all still works great, but technology marches on.

The old stuff, which will be moving on to new homes:

• Denon AVR-3300 receiver:
  I'll probably sell this on eBay.
• Sony KP-53HS10 53" rear projection television:
  Big rear projectors can be hard to dispose of. I'm going to try to donate this to a local non-profit that has a residential program, or trade it to my handyman in exchange for some work we need to have done around the house.
• Sony DVP-NS700P DVD player:
  Might go to the handyman as part of the deal, or I'll donate it to the local cable access station.

I'll be moving the current Zenith upconverting DVD player into the bedroom.

The new stuff, which is winging its way to me as we speak:

• Samsung HL61A750 61" rear projection DLP television
• Denon AVR-1909 receiver
• Oppo DV-981HD upconverting DVD player

I mainly wanted to get this stuff because I'd rather go with HDMI instead of component video from the Dish Network DVR. The old equipment wasn't HDMI capable. The new television is bigger (which is good in itself, though it won't feel that much bigger because the Samsung is 16:9 format and the Sony is 4:3) and more importantly, much brighter, so I won't feel like I have to wait until it's dark out before I can turn on the TV. The Sony is based on three CRT guns, and the Samsung uses DLP technology. Better yet, the light source is LED, which means no expensive bulb replacements, like with older DLP sets. We all trooped over to Circuit City last weekend to look at the TV, and even Dori, who has been very skeptical about the idea of a new TV, liked the Samsung's picture, even in the brightly-lit store.

I decided to go with the Oppo upconverter, rather than a Blu-Ray player, because they're still fairly expensive. Upconverted DVDs aren't as good as HD, but they'll be fine until the Blu-Ray market matures and prices for both players and discs come down. Plus, the Oppo plays DivX discs, which means that I won't have to convert and burn regular MPEG-2 DVDs in Toast for downloaded videos.