I was thinking of purchasing one as the dvd player may be on its last legs, but I dont know if its really worth it at this stage-if any blu ray budget players are recommended, or mainly make up the earlier batches that were released, very slow etc. I still wonder if blu ray could be overtaken by yet another physical format in the near future. I say 2 or 3 more yrs should be enough time to find out. I have noticed that the price of select movies on bluray are starting to get close to the dvd price, so I am wondering how those that now own blu ray rate it compared to dvd, ignoring the obvious (image quality). I wonder if slow loading times are common on average priced machines, if forced trailers on new movies are becoming common, the supposed need for constant firmware updates for the latest releases, if anyone has bricked their machine on a bad java update, and if if any machines have a backup option :) can anyone recommend a good budget player-the lowest they would pay for a player for what they would believe as acceptable? thanks