Ask Engadget: What's the best standalone DVD player?

We didn't forget Ask Engadget for this week, we just got a little pre-occupied this afternoon so it's not going up until now. This week reader Jeff S. wants to know, "What's the single best standalone DVD player to buy? Which one reads the most file-formats, (avi, mpg, etc) and also handles recorded DVDs (+/-) with no problem?"

We'll confess that we've got a hidden agenda in posting Jeff's question, since after almost a year of watching DVDs with our Media Center PC we've been thinking about unbundling, so to speak, and going with a separate standalone DVD
player instead. Of course, it'd have to be a really nice, high-end progressive scan DVD player, probably one with DVI
output, so we'd dig hearing everyone's suggestions for a quality machine.

P.S. – The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that we've added Ask Engadget
as its own separate category. Should make browsing through all of the past questions and answers considerably easier.
Check it out!