I agree that I do not really need the scaling. It would not be used for BluRay, HD-DVD, and probably not DVD unless I hooked up my old SVideo DVD player. Does anyone know if Svideo is any worse than component if you are just running 480i? I gave away my old 480i component DVD player and all I am left with is one with Svideo.
I would use the receiver for the excelent 1080i deinterlacing that my TV cannot do properly. My TV's SD scaler is actually quite good so the improvement would be marginal. However, I do watch, and will probably watch a lot more, 1080i HD material that has all sorts of bad jaggies and moire patterns. Especially the PBS programs. In my initial quest for receivers, scaling was not important to me because all the ones I knew about were no better on 1080i than my TV so it made no difference to me. The Reon in the Onkyo looks interesting to me know.
I want a receiver with the latest features. I have a HDMI 1.3 TV, so I would like to get a receiver to match. Having DD-HD is important to me, not because I need it now, but because I might need it later and it does not appear to limit me right now.