I've not actually checked it against my old player directly and having played much on it to test

bad of me I know. I do notice what I think is mosquito noise as opposed to macroblocking, but I think thats just the dvd's I've been watching, and there seems to be a slight colour bleed that u can notice around edges and on the menu's, but I bet thats my TV as I have the Thomson rebadge that was in the bargain forum ages back ;) I'll have to try take it to a friends and test it on his Bravia just to make sure. Also testing finding nemo there's some banding in the nice blue sea backgrounds, but I bet thats my tv too lol
Other than that though it's lovely

things do look very nice. I need to find out which of my dvd's are meant to be great quality though as opposed to one's that'll have noise so I can give it al a proper look over