Hello. I am in the market for a new DVD player as part of a small home theatre system. I have Sharp 32 inch 720 LCD and two Boston Acoustics VR950 floor speakers. To these I'll add an HD DVD player, an a/v receiver, and a center speaker. If budget allows I may add two rear speakers.

You can see this is not going to be the king of all home theatre systems. The goal is simply to enhance my occassional DVD watching and improve the sound on the television.

So, this thread will concentrate on the DVD player. Another thread addresses the a/v receiver.

I hope to keep the DVD player's price below $150.

What features are must haves? If a DVD player has HDMI output, do I really need to worry about optical digital, coaxal, component, and S Video outputs? Do I need to worry about media ports and USB ports? If it can playback the following formats, is something missing?

DVD, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, VCD, SVCD, MP3, JPEG

Thanks!