I bought one of those cheapo DVD players this weekend. (around $80 US) Its about as cheap as they come here in Argentina. No $30 DVD players at Vons or Ralphs here. Its DVD, VCD, MP3, name any 3 letter acronym here, capabale.
Anyways, I’ve noticed something very weird. It has no problem playing many VCDs that just won’t work in my Powerbook with VLC, RealPlayer, or QuickTime. It also plays much more reliably / with better quality. On some of these VCDs I couldn’t even mount them as a file system, but they play fine in the DVD player.