Pioneer DV-626D DVD Player
A superb DVD Player
This is my first DVD player, and I've now had my unit since December of 2000-just before Christmas.  I'm using it in conjunction with a Denon 775RD receiver and a Yamaha DSP-E492 Surround unit.  The Yamaha delivers only Dolby Prologic decoding, so, in order to get true Dolby Digital, or AC-3 sound, I had to get a player with built-in Dolby decoding.  I've run into only 1 problem with playback of any of the 30 or so DVDs and 3 or 4 CDs I've tried.  That happened on the X-Men when I first attempted to play back the deleted scenes after having watched the movie all the way through.  For some reason when I chose an item it would just return to the menu.  However, after I ejected and reinserted the DVD the scenes played without a problem. I've read about some mechanical problems and poor quality remotes, but the mechanical problems seemed to be centered on a production month of October, 1999 (Mine was built in January,2000), and the remotes must have been redone.  Mine does have a joystick, but the remote is no lighter in weight that most of my others, and the joystick is anything but flimsy.  Once I got used to it I like it.  Overall, despite the fact that it doesn't have zoom or NUON capability, the picture and the sound, depending on the DVD itself, are superb.  I'd say awsome, but that word's been way overused.  This player can't be beat for quality.  I'll definitely keep Pioneer in mind when I graduate up to my next player, but that'll probably be several years into the future.