So my DVD player finally died on me last night. I had been expecting this to happen since I got back from my Europe trip. The damn thing started having serious problems loading DVDs and froze during playback and skipped parts of the movies.
So last night it ate a DVD and I had to remove the top cover to be able to free the Netflix DVD.

Ran out to Best Buy to get the cheapest DVD player they had to offer which turned out to be an Insignia for 40 bucks including a 2 year warranty.
Already tried it out last night and it seems to be working fine. So I'm back in movie watching business!

All that's left to do is make it region free. Found the way to make this happen on the Web so that'll happen tonight.