My DVD player died yesterday. It suffered Panasonic’s infamous H02 error. So now I’m in the market for a new DVD player. I’d like something fairly nice, that I can use with my home theater set-up, but not too expensive. Say $100-$150. What do you recommend? Oh yeah, I’m not getting another Panasonic.
What kind of home theater setup have you got? Most DVD players will handle Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS audio, if you’ve got a decoder. My Sony player is still going strong after about 3 years. I put it in the bedroom after buying a real nice Panasonic, which broke about 6 months out of warranty. I got a Pioneer to replace it, mine was about $140, here is the current version. It’ll play just about anything. It’s got built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS decoding and also plays DVD-A and SACD audio discs. I don’t know about the current model, but mine plays PAL (european) discs on my NTSC (American) TV, (this feature was not advertised at all, IIRC).
I’ll echo wheelie’s sentiments and suggest you look into a universal disc player that will play and decode all of the formats he mentioned. You might not think you need all the bells and whistles, but the premium is so slight nowadays to be almost negligible. For the record, I’ve alwasy had great luck with Toshiba players.
High-definition audio sounds fantastic. 
Get the cheapest POS you can buy. Usually the APEX sold at WalMart will do. I’ve found that the more expensive the unit, the more trouble you will have playing home-burned discs. And the drives themselves are made by a select few companies anyway. In many cases, you are paying for the name on the fancy shell they throw it in.
Your search ends here… Philips DVP642K. It’ll play anything you throw at it (dvd, vcd, svcd, divx, xvid, mpeg, mp3, jpeg), for less than $100.
Oh yeah, you can make the player region free, via a combination of keys on the remote control. I got mine done at the store itself.
Cool, thanks for the advice.