This is a nice player, a mate of mine got one from Fry's for $37 a while back, we think it's basically a Yamakawa 218 (which I got for the same price a while ago) in a different box, black instead of silver.
Plays DVD-R's fine, and should do MP3 DVD-R's as the Yamakawa does.
www.dvdrhelp.com for region free hack, still has macrovision and RCE though :-(