My understanding is that the 805 does not scale (change the resolution) but will convert from analog to digital (HDMI) as well as de-interlace (480i to 480p via HDMI). Your Sony most definitely scales to the native resolution of 1080P (all HDTVs must scale to the native resolution, some do a good job, some not so good). I suspect your XBR4 does a very good job of scaling. It is interesting that your DVD player is outputting 480i rather than 480p (must be an older model).