Help Picking a Region-Free DVD Player

[PolloDiablo]

Well I've been saying I was going to do it forever and now that I have a job theres no question about it, I'm buying a Region Free player. Now heres the problem and hopefully where you guys can help me out, I know absolutely nothing about them. I want a high quality player, something that will last me a while and won't need to be upgraded any time real soon, but I also want a player thats somewhat affordable, maybe below $250. Seeing as how I don't usually make big purchases like this I would really appreciate any suggestions or help you guys can offer.

Also: I would love to know of some good english sites where I can purchase non-region 1 dvds. I'm mostly into the japanese/asian cinema so thats probably what I'll mostly be buying to begin with. I know I'm asking alot but its just that I'm completely new to this and its really kinda overwhelming to me. I mean I want to buy Ichi The Killer but I don't know which version is the best, same goes for lots of movies, is there somewhere that I can find information like this? I mean now that I'll have a region free player I want to make sure I'm pretty much getting the definitive versions of the movies I'm buying. I mean seeing as how these are foreign DVDs I know the menus and such won't be in English; does that ever cause a problem or are they usually pretty straight forward and easy to navigate? And what about special features, are they pretty much useless or do they sometimes have english subtitles?

I know, I know, so many questions..... but I'm just really curious and want to make sure that this is going to be a worthwhile purchase for me.

[tomdkat]

Since we've got a new forum dedicated to non-region 1 discussion, I'm moving this thread there.

EDIT: Now, we've got this thread dedicated to region-free DVD player recommendations:

Region-Free/Multi-Region DVD player discussion

So I'll close this, put a link to this in THAT thread and this discussion can continue in THAT thread so we can have ALL of our region-free discussion localized in one place that's easy to find.

Peace...