Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the PV-D4763S stands ready to deliver the full potential of DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, providing higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts. Six-channel DVD-Audio recreates the delicate nuances and subtle overtones of music far more realistically than CD recordings can. The format also provides enhancements, depending on disc content, such as song lyrics, liner notes, "photo albums" of band members, and other menu items which can be displayed onscreen.

As an anti-piracy measure, the PV-VD4763S performs its own decoding of DVD-Audio signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital, audio to your surround receiver. This means you'll need an audio/video receiver with multichannel analog-audio inputs to appreciate this feature. The player also decodes Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround signals. The VCR's four-head design ensures smooth slow-motion tape play (forward and reverse) and clear still-frame images, and with hi-fi sound the unit records and plays back stereo audio tracks. The unit even lets you record a TV show while watching a DVD at the same time.