I will soon need to buy a new DVD Player (current one is on its last legs), and want to do some research. Can anyone suggest some good websites/forums I should visit?

Thanks.

This is one of the rare cases where i would rely on magazine (or internet) reviews. In the audio sector, there aren't many reliable magazines anymore (maybe there are zero reliable ones now) because it's gotten too subjective and unscientific. But for video, there are still some objective reviews out there. You can't rely so much on what a single user says about his unit, cause he would need several other players to compare it to (it's also a market with constant development, e.g. progressive scan/HDMI/etc.).

What i can personally recommend right now (after reading multiple reviews) is the Yamaha DVD-S557 or maybe the Toshiba SD-350E. I would avoid all no-name units and also JVC and Pioneer players (drives tend to be too loud on those).

OK, thanks for the tip.

As it happens, I'm looking for a very specific set of features, which I suspect might not necessarily be mentioned in a review. These are:

1. Ability to skip past the locked sections on a disc (ie. the bits which prevent use of the menu or ffwd buttons). Copyright notices are all very well, but discs are appearing with advertising (eg. trailers) that can't be skipped. I find this quite irritating.

2. Must be able to play DVD+R discs (with the DVDROM booktype set).

3. Region free (either out of the box of via a well-known hack).

It's requirement #1 that seems to be the tricky one.

If anyone can suggest a player that has these, I'd be very grateful.

I would say that well over 90% of the players can play DVD+R with DVD-ROM booktype, i wouldn't worry about that. About region free, there are specialized internet shops that sell modified versions of most known players (remember, don't go no-name).

But 1. is tricky indeed. What you want is a player that disregards the so-called PUOs (Prohibited User Operations, or sometimes called user prohibitions). But to my knowledge, these are specified in the DVD specs, so i think no major manufacturer will just disregard these specs and sell it as a "DVD player", for risk of getting in trouble.

I know that this "forced trailers" or "can't change audio track from within the movie" BS is irritating, but there seems to be no easy way around it. The honest client seems to be the idiot here, while the filesharer gets the unlocked content, it's a travesty. The industry has much to learn.

Luckily, some DVD review sites already deduct points from the DVD rating if they find such user prohibitions. I applaud that and hope many other sites follow that example, maybe some studios get the idea then.

Thanks for the info. I was kind of hoping that some enterprising manufacturer (perhaps out of SE Asia) would have the guts to allow this garbage to be skipped.