This is my first post here at hydrogen audio. It's been great reading. I posted this at head-fi but with nary a response.....

I'm looking for an inexpensive (less than $200) component DVD player that works great with MP3s. The last ounce of sound quality is not that important, as I have other equipment for that purpose.

I would particularly like one that lets you see the file and folder names on the component itself (rather than the TV on-screen display), that can show me time remaining for a CD or MP3, that will play variable bit rate files, and that will remember my place in a CD or an MP3-CD (that is, a resume feature that works with MP3s and CDs), hopefully even after I turn the DVD player off. An extra bonus would be if it showed variable bit rate MP3 times accurately.

The last two items on my wish list above (resume works with CDs and MP3s even after power off, and accurate time on VBRs) are the lowest priority, but they sure would be nice.

Does anyone know of such a miracle player, or of other features I should look out for, or of a DVD player or other componenet that is really good for MP3s even if it doesn't have the above features?

You might be interested in the Gateway connected DVD player, as it features DD/dts decoding, progressive scan output, S-video/composite/component video out, optical and coaxial digital audio out, and most interestingly, built-in wireless 802.11b media streaming capabilities (WMA, mp3).
At $199 it seems to me the best deal in wireless media streaming, and of course supports media decoding off of disc as well. Unfortunately, I believe it does most of it's displaying on the TV it's connected to...
Almost any DVD player should be able to decode mp3's properly if it claims it supports the function.

Thank you so much! I am definitely going to check into that. I'm interested in shuffle play for CD-based MP3s too, if anyone else has any ideas....

I have a Sony DVP-NC685V 5-disc DVD/SACD player. It will display the track names on the unit itself, and will also display the album name on the screen when the time/text button is pressed. The resume feature does not work for MP3 CDs, and the track and folder name do not appear on the screen, (although they do on Sony DVD Dream Systems). I paid less than $200 for it new on eBay.
Panasonic has always had great MP3 support with full track listings. Check out one of the owners manuals on their website.

I thought so too... And I got really interested in Philips DVD737 when I saw it could play DivX/MPEG4 as well. But when I looked into the specs it turned out it doesn't support MP3@320 kbps. I looked at other Philips models and none of them support 320 kbps, some didn't even support 160 kbps according to the manual. I was really surprised that these problems still exist in such new hardware. Especially from a brand like Philips that committed so early to support MP3 and DivX etc...