If you have an older TV set, the AV receptacles described above may not be present, in which case there's a possible big problem: it might not be easy to hook a DVD player up to your TV. If your older TV doesn't have AV receptacles, I'd recommend postponing the purchase of a DVD player until you get a newer TV—after all, videotape is still a pretty good way to watch a movie. However, if you're bound and determined to hook up a DVD player to your older TV set, you can probably do it. If your TV set provides a cable TV-style (that is, coaxial) connector, you can probably connect the cables that come with the DVD player to your TV through a device called an RF modulator, which you can buy for $20 to $30. And by the way, you might think you could get around this problem by connecting your DVD player to a VCR that is in turn connected to a TV, but this is usually a bad idea: the video and/or audio you get when you play a DVD with this setup is likely to be unsatisfactory.
If the TV set you're planning to connect the DVD player to has at least one set of AV receptacles, hooking up the DVD player should be a piece of cake. In fact, when you buy your DVD player, you should test it as soon as possible, and it seems to me that a good way of doing this is to use the cables that come in the box to hook it up to your TV. Later, you might want to buy better cables or hook up the DVD player a different way to improve performance, but I see little harm in deferring these decisions.
But once you've established that it'll probably be easy to connect a DVD player to your TV, which one should you buy? There's unfortunately no one right answer to this question. It depends on how much you're willing to pay, how much risk you're willing to assume, and what features you're going to require.
If your main concern is to pay the lowest possible price, you might consider DVD players like Apex and KLH, which I saw for about $44. They offer a full set of basic features, and most people are satisfied with the picture quality they produce. While the overwhelming majority of the DVD players sold under these brand names work just fine, quite a few consumers have reported problems (for example, the DVD tray won't open). Still, the prices are so low that many buyers are willing to tolerate the fact that while they're saving money, they're increasing their exposure to possible hassles.
