I recently faced the same decision, compounded by my desire to have SACD playback as well. While I was willing to pay quite a bit more, I ultimately chose the absurdly inexpensive (less than US$180) Pioneer DV-563A, a universal player with modest on-board bass management and (according to others with better TVs) excellent video playback (no chroma bug, for example). Why this choice? I simply decided that technological developments were moving so fast that I would almost certainly want to upgrade within the next few years (say, to a hypothetical player with digital DVD-A/SACD outs), so why spend a lot of money now? Anyway, if you're interested in the Pioneer, there is a long, long thread on the HTF forum dissecting all of its strengths and weaknesses.
