Considering that most of these consumer DVD players are at
below $150 for a good one, or below $90 for a cheap one, paying out $80 just
for parts is not worth it. A new player will come with a full 1 year
warranty.

And that you have greater functionality and, in the case of something like the
Sony DVP-NS575, better reliability.

I was a Wallmarts and was seeing some players at below $60. The pictures on
them were very impressive.

Any DVD player will look good upon first evaluation. If you take the time to
compare and evaluate critically and even take measurements, differences can be
found.

Generally, players that sell for less than $60 under brands like Symphonic,
Norcent, Apex, Mintek, and the like have a picture quality that is technically
inferior. They usually exhibit extreme roll-off in the video signal's upper
frequencies, which manifests itself as a softer picture. This is usually due
to the fact that the analogue stages that passes the video output from the MPEG
decoder to the video outputs (component, s-video, composite) are usually
designed cheaply and built with cheap parts. Other problems could include
macroblocking artifacts with some cheap players. Quite a few use cheap MPEG
decoders which do not perform up to snuff, although some do use decent
decoders, but the cheaply designed analogue stage counteracts that particular
performance advantage if it's present.

Almost all cheap players have horrible progressive scan performance with bad
3:2 reverse pulldown if at all so film-based titles may not deinterlace
properly, and no cadence detection so it's dependent on detecting flags to know
how to deinterlace the video while a lot of DVDs aren't flagged correctly.

Plus, a lot of cheap players use cheap parts throughout. It's also not unusual
to have cheap players that have worn optical pickups within months to 2 years
of use. Although there are people that have had good luck with these things,
most usually have to replace them sooner than they expected.

My recommendations: Sony, Pioneer, or JVC.

I remember about 7 years ago when DVD players first came out, the cheapest
ones were up at about $650.00 US !!! The good ones were up at about $1500.00
and plus! You can now get a better specification one for under $200 than
the top models of that time.

I remember that, too.

Although, there is one 1st gen player that still stands out as a reference by
which many others are measured in overall video performance (sans progressive
scan): Sony DVP-S7000.

The best overall player as far as I know:
Denon DVD-5900 (also very expensive at over $5000 MSRP, unfortunately.) -
Reinhart