Well it really depends, you want keepsake that may work perfectly in 6 years w/o a scratch, but will be outdated in three months and gives you no flexibilty to play differnet regions, etc and which costs 4-5 times as much as something similar? Or do you want the most bang for your buck, with total flexibility that costs close to nothing and you won;t mind trashing for something better next year or the year after. That is the question, as these things are now just commodites and some of the Chinese ones are surprisingly robust. I should add that almost NONE of these machines are made in Japan any longer as they are seen as too low margin by most Japanese electronic makers.