Recommendations for a cheap-ish DVD player

[judas]

Our Sony DVD player is about to give up the ghost. It's having trouble reading discs - we've tried cleaning the laser lens and all that but I think it's just at the end of its life. We've had it for ten years and although it cost £500 at the time it was the top of the range model and I suppose we've had our money's worth out of it. Not looking to spend anywhere near that amount this time, nor am I bothered about going over to blue-ray at the moment as that would then precipitate a rather expensive upgrade of everything and remodelling the living room

One thing I absolutely must have is a player that can, either out of the box or via non-invasive hacks, allow me to skip all those bloody patronising anti-piracy messages and trailers I'm forced to sit through now - the kind that trigger those rage-inducing 'this operation is prohibited by the disk' messages Multi-region would be nice too.

The current DVD player is connected to the amp by co-ax digital cable and to the telly by SCART, so something with a similar arrangement would be best.

Any suggestions would be most welcome

[.Mark]

Never had any problems with our Panasonic BD-80 (they are probably up to BD-9x now)

Smashing player fully featured at about £150.

OK so it is Blu-Ray, but at that price, silly not to.