Anyways yesterday I nearly went out and got one as an impulse buy.

I currently have a JVC XV-523. My gripes with it are, it doesn't play SVCDs, unless I mux it as mpeg1. It is also somewhat picky about playing SVCDs, most of mine don't run very well on it, but the ones I have downloaded do. The ones I make look fluid on a software dvd player but in my player the motion is often jerky. The output quality isn't the best, it tends not to look that well on the tv I have in my room and every once in a while there are lines in parts of the screen and sort of a flicker, happens with any DVD/VCD, any tv, and cables on this player, but not on the other player we have. It does play (x)VCDs great.

The player we have on the bigscreen is a JVC XV-1000. It plays nothing at all except commercial DVDs and VCDs.

Ideally I would like to get two players that will play my home made (x)VCDs, (x)SVCDs and DVDs in the future, but I don't think I will have a DVD burner for a while.

I've been looking at the Apex AD-1100W. It's $70 at Walmart and reportedly plays VCDs, SVCDs etc... And is patchable to region free and no macrovision with the right version of the player. It's price, and the region free ability is compelling. I would really like to import some DVDs from the UK, but cost would probably be prohibitive to doing so. It doesn't play DVD+R? and IIRC is that the "best" in the DVD burner standards? I've read that the Pioneer drives will burn stuff that reads on basicly ANY DVD player, ones that will not read discs burnt with anything else. I am kinda confused about it. My budget is small, infact I should not be spending anything on players now. However I would like to get a new player, and when possible two that play everything I throw at it. Is this a good choice and what else is in the same price range. The DVD players I have now were $200 and $300 respectively but a new one should be well under $100.