It's that time of week again, and considering that AVRs have remained strangely absent from our Ask Engadget HD series, Vinesy's question couldn't have arrived at a more opportune time:

"I'm considering the Sony STR-DA5300ES, Denon AVR-3808CI, and the Onkyo TX-NR905, and while I'd bet the Onkyo wins in sound quality, I do favor Sony's user interface. I'm open to suggestions outside of those three, but I'm particularly interested in the quality of the upconverting chip. Is the Reon-HQV or the Faroudja DCDi better? Will they both take the 1080i HDMI signal from my FiOS set-top-box and give me 1080p? Help me legion of nerds. Fanboys: attack me with knowledge and then make fun of me like you do best."

Well, you heard the man! For you receiver freaks out there, here's your shot at bestowing knowledge upon the newbies in the field. But be gentle, will ya?

Got a burning question that you'd love to toss out for Engadget HD (or its readers) to take a look at? Tired of Google's blank stares when you ask for real-world experiences? Hit us up at ask at engadgethd dawt com and keep an eye on this space -- your inquiry could be next.

[Thanks, Mark]

If you've been scouting a leading-edge AV receiver with just about every amenity out there (including HDMI 1.3a), Integra's latest offering is likely to fit the bill. The DTR-5.8 sports a standard black enclosure, twin HDMI 1.3a inputs (and one output), built-in decoding for DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby Digital Plus lossless, and a Faroudja DCDi chip for de-interlacing 480i signals. Home automaters will adore the range of control options, including a bi-directional RS-232 port, RIHD (Remote Interactive over HDMI) system, three programmable 12-volt triggers, dual IR inputs, and three unique assignable IR code sets. This two-zone, 7.1-channel unit even boasts a 90-watt-per-channel amplifier and XM / Sirius compatibility, but you're looking at a stiff $800 if these luxuries just can't be done without. Click on for a shot of the rear.

If you've got a 1080p HDTV, haven't already jumped on the HD DVD or Blu-ray bandwagon -- or maybe you only own the as yet non-upconverting PlayStation 3 -- and need a good DVD player look no further. Techdigs took a look at Oppo's just released $229 DV-981HD DVD player and decided it's hit the price/performance sweet spot perfectly. We feel the need to mention that Oppo includes the HDMI cable with its high def player (seriously Sony, we're not going to let you off the hook for that), and analog 5.1 audio outputs (don't think we forgot about you Toshiba). Overall the reviewer found the speedy menus, good performance on Silicon Optix's HQV tests courtesy of the included Faroudja scaler and easy-to-use remote. Of course, this player isn't for everyone, most HDTV owners are probably just fine with the older OPDV971H or OPDV970HD depending on setup, but if you want to watch DVDs at 1080p, this is probably the player for you.

Oppo Digital is back with yet another in its line of DVD upscalers, the DV-981HD. New in this edition is upscaling all the way to 1080p, courtesy of the included Faroudja DCDi video processor. Successor to the highly regarded DV971H, the new unit includes such features as DVD-Audio and SACD support and DivX compatibility, among other digital media. One thing this player doesn't bring to the table however, is component video outputs. If your display doesn't support HDMI or DVI with HDCP, you'll be falling back to the dark ages of S-Video or even composite connections. Besides the HDMI 1.1 port ((HDMI cable included, hear that Sony?), there are also analog 5.1, optical and coaxial audio outputs powered by a 24-bit/192kHz d/a converter. MSRP is $229 and it's available now, if digital video is a part of your setup and DVD upscaling is more appealing than current HD DVD or Blu-ray offerings, this should be an excellent buy. Continue on for larger images and a shot of the back.

It's hard to walk 10 steps without hitting a 1080p device at this years CEDIA EXPO. Seriously, it is hard. Meridian Faroudja added to mix with a sweet looking D-ILA projector. The D-ILA1080MF1 is a three-chip 1080p (1080p60 & p50) D-ILA-powered beast. If color is a concern of yours, look no farther, as this monster sports D65 reference color temperature that is higher then the standard SMPTE240. The CEDIA handout advertises flexible installation but we just don't see that with only RGB, S-Vid and DVI inputs. There is an optional processor that will solves this problem by adding multiple progressive analog video outputs/inputs including RGBHV, component, RGBS and RGsB - but it will cost ya an extra $5,000 for a total of $25,995. That's right, the D-ILA1080PMF1 without the additional processor is going to MSRP at $20,995.

Keep goin' for more live shots..

That was quicker than we thought. Let It Wave's upconversion technology that claims to be better than current motion-adaptive techniques (like Faroudja's DCDi) has a hardware partner in Altera.

Altera has already put their FPGA chips in some devices you may have heard of, like LG's 71" gold plated PDP, RCA's Scenium line of DLP HDTVs and Texas Instruments' DLP chipset. With that track record we should hopefully be seeing this technology in shipping products very soon, especially since the FPGA is designed to be able to change and add new technology quickly.

Yeah sure thats a mouthful, but if it is nearly as good at converting SD sources to HDTV resolutions as they claim, you'll memorize it pretty soon. They claim their bandlet (or bandelet depending which page of the site you read) technology allows them to upconvert SD sources to HDTV resolutions with no flickering or artifacting whatsoever. We won't try to decipher the mathematic reasons they give as to why this is possible, but you can check out their tech page for yourself.

Their press release includes an endorsement by the namesake of the Faroudja DCDi upconverter, now all we need to do is see some products and maybe watching standard definition won't hurt so bad anymore.