what's the bestest (but affordable) multi-region dvd player

I've been thinking about getting one too. My old Phillips multi-region player has served me well but it doesn't handle some DVDs very well in the picture quality. Thinking I'll probably need a bluray player eventually but I'm very reluctant to get anything single region. I've heard some people saying physical discs are in real trouble so maybe it won't be as good an investment as I'd hope.

Someone on another thread says OPPO makes multi-region bluray players.

Maybe they can start making all players multi-region because most piracy is on file sharing now.

I just looked up bluray players and it seems some play multi-region DVDs but not blurays or maybe they haven't been described properly.

The OREI BDP-M2 seems well regarded. I own an Oppo DVD player, and as they've grown in prominence they've backed away from the legal issues with out-of-the-box multi-region players.

Oppo's line of blu-ray players can be modified to play all blu-ray regions, but sell new at about $500 or higher (unmodded). You might be able to find a used modified BDP-80 or BDP-83 for less (though they don't play 3D discs, if you care about those).

I think manufacturers can't make a blu-ray region-free player without violating copyrights or something (it's much stricter this way than it was for DVD), so you have to "fix" them yourself or buy from someone who's already done so (at extra cost).

Criterionforum.org's long-running multi-region thread has a lot of recommendations for 220 Electronics, and there are some cheaper ($150ish) Toshibas that look like they'd do the trick- all regions for both DVD and blu-ray, and PAL/NTSC conversion. The biggest problems people seem to have is accidentally updating their player's firmware, but is there something worse I should watch out for- low quality, I reliability, cheap manufacture, stuff like that?