My cheap wonder is on it's way out after five years or so (sounds like a Chinook, and the audio occasionally drops out requiring a reboot). I'm posting here since I've seen some dodgy players in my time and was hoping to get more views (literally ) than I might in the AV thread

The smaller and cheaper the better, but neither is essential.

Is it worth getting one that you can hack/region-unlock?

Ideally I'd want the function out of the box; I'm old enough to remember certain brands don't like it and opening the drawer while pressing numbers

I don't have a DVD player any more but my TV has a USB socket. It only takes a couple of minutes to copy a DVD to a stick so I play them that way. My laptop is unlocked. I don't bother re-encoding or anything; just copy the disk to the stick. Not tried with a BD yet.

I'll never buy another DVD player again. I don't like unnecessary boxes under the TV.

Mine does too but it's only a service port

http://www.richersounds.com/product/dvd ... vpsr150-mr

Cheap enough & works

Cheers but I really need it to do both multi-region and USB, more's the pity.

Well you can get a media player for about £15... but then you may as well get a DVD player that plays off sticks too. I find it useful; I have a load of music videos ripped of Youtube on a stick that's always plugged in. I have an entire box set I'm watching on there too at the moment, which means I don't have to get up to change the disk!

I can't really suggest anything you wouldn't already do; namely read the reviews. You might want to consider something that does more, such as BD, USB, Netflix iPlayer. I was just looking at a Samsung that does all that for £89, but it was locked region 2...

Yip, I've found loads of suitable cheap ones, but the 'brand' jobs always have one part of the puzzle missing. Ideally I'd like something with a 'name', but we'll see how it goes...

It's a continuing occurence for me - the cheap sh1t has more functionality for less

I was considering a do it all BD player as an alternative to switching on the PS3, but then I remembered I more often than not use my Sony wireless headphones to drown out the resident spastics, so...

That's very true. Unfortunately, the cheap sh1t is often, well, a bit sh1t. Typically the remote is rubbish and the menus are really slow and confusing. And of course, if you actually use it then it might not last 2 years.

My cheap DVD player looked good, but now every disk starts skipping after 5 minutes. It's maybe just dusty inside, but I don't care. It's worthless to sell and I don't use it anyway.