Help - DVD Player Recommendations Needed Fast!!! (1 Viewer)

[Dane]

Okay, so here's the situation. I'm a big DVD fan with a nice collection, but I haven't been bought a DVD player (or even looked into buying one) for quite a while and I don't reallly know the "state of the market" right now. I have an old Phillips DVD825 which has served we very well for nearly 3 years -- runs flawlessly, plays everything, really no complaints at all and I feel no pressing need to upgrade.
So now I'm thinking about getting my kids (who live with my ex) a DVD player for Christmas, and I have 2 options:
(a) buy them the best low-priced DVD player currently available, or
(b) spend a bit more to buy a better player for myself and give them the Phillips.
I'm assuming (based solely on ads I've seen) that I can buy a unit roughly equivalent to my Phillips for around $150, and I would welcome recommendations for good players (as well as online dealers) in that sort of price range. I would also welcome opinions on upgrading -- should I upgrade (and why), to what (i.e., recommended models) and at what price, and what benefits would I get for the extra money I'd have to spend to upgrade.
I realized this is a pretty broad set of questions, and I haven't been active on this forum for so long that I don't know if people who ask very broad questions like this (without doing a lot of keyword searches first) get the s**t flamed out of them, but I'm hoping there will be some helpful souls out there who will be patient and give me some useful advice.
Thanks in advance.
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[Brian Mansure]

Welcome to the HTF Dane.
There are a few threads around right now about affordable DVD players that you should probably look at.
Right off the cuff I can mention the Pioneer DV-444 which I just got as an early Christmas present.
You can probably pick it up for about $200.00 or so.
Don't be scared off by the retail price of $449.00, I haven't found one person yet that has payed anything more then $300.00 for it.
Features that I like... MP3 playback (displays folder tree and file names), great audio, solid video performance coupled with a sleek profile and silver color and it plays almost any disk format currently out.
Also, the Pioneer 440 is basically the same player without progressive output, althought the DV-444 doesn't have built-in 2:3 pulldown so it's not considered a "true" progressive player in the first place.
One more DVD player I think you can't go wrong with is the Panasonic DVD RV-31 or even last years Panasonic model RV-30, if MP3 playback isn't a feature you're looking for.
You can read a few posts here but also check out www.audioreview.com for consumer reviews.
No flamming here but with such broad scope I hope I narrowed down a few players for you to consider.
Hope this helps a little.
Brian