I just bought tw Philips DVP-642 DVD players at Target for about $75 each. It's a great deck for capturing DVDs with the Canopus box. It can be made region free with a simple hack (with no disk in the player, press 7, 8, 9. OK , then 0), plays back PAL and NTSC disks outputting to NTSC, and comes Macrovision free out of the box! It also plays back MPEG4 and DiVX files burned on CDs or DVDs. Strangely, it plays back the video (but not the audio)from WMV files.
Be carefull though, if you download and install the firmware update off of the Philips web site, it will turn the missing Macrovision back on. I bought two: one for the living room that I updated the software on for maximum DiVX and MPEG4 compatability, and one for my studio with the original Macrovision free firmware for capturing video from any format DVD! I just converted a couple of childrens Portuguese DVDs (PAL, region 2, Macrovision protected) for my wifes cousin to NTSC DVD (they want their infant son to learn Portuguese). It worked great and I wasted a fraction of the time I normally would! The best thing though is that I can leave the Canopus capture box inline and don't have to repatch to capture video!
Be carefull though, if you download and install the firmware update off of the Philips web site, it will turn the missing Macrovision back on. I bought two: one for the living room that I updated the software on for maximum DiVX and MPEG4 compatability, and one for my studio with the original Macrovision free firmware for capturing video from any format DVD! I just converted a couple of childrens Portuguese DVDs (PAL, region 2, Macrovision protected) for my wifes cousin to NTSC DVD (they want their infant son to learn Portuguese). It worked great and I wasted a fraction of the time I normally would! The best thing though is that I can leave the Canopus capture box inline and don't have to repatch to capture video!