You cannot beat the PS3 for what it can do and value. My first player was Sony's first flagship that was little under 1K, it is now out performed by cheaper models that can do more. Good brands of players are Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and LG; if you are looking into higher-end ones there's Marantz, Denon, Oppo and Pioneer Elite players. Consider a unit that is network ready and can stream media files from a media server. Blu-Ray discs can be ripped into files now and streamed from a Network-Attached Storage. PS3 can do all these and you can switch movies, go back where you left off without fondling discs, connect to Netflix, rent/buy from Vudu, browse the internet, and so much more.