Which is better for PICTURE - Panny RA71 or Pio 656A?

I'm about to order my THIRD DVD player, since my first one (Sony 525D) lipsyncs all over the place, and the Samsung S224 I got to replace it (why bother with expensive again if there's bugs in them hey? urm, how wrong I was) produces subtitles at random on discs such as R2 Guesthouse Paradiso and R2 New Jack City - even if you turn them off in the menu system... Oh - and the Samsung hassss aaaaaa reeeeeaaaaallllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy sssssssssssllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooowwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww OSD

Now - I need multiregion, and will probably use Techtronics. They have the Panasonic RA71 on a good deal, but it's a 2001 machine. The Pioneer 656A appears to be better, but it's nearly twice the price and the build ain't up to much by the sounds of things...

Which one is better on reliability, lipsync, and layer change speed? I could care less about DVDa/SACD, since IMHO vinyl still has them beat - oh, and there's little on either format I'd want to buy that I don't already own on vinyl anyway...

I could go for cheaper, but then the machine MUST also have Macrovision cracked, as my olde worlde Sony 25F2U telly HATES Macrovision with a vengeance. I also need 2 SCARTS if poss so I can loop my old Laserdisc player in and get a swichbox out of the equation.

Any ideas?

OH - how far behind the Pioneer is the Panasonic likely to be picture wise - they're throwing in 3 year guarantee and a nice price - so it's VERY hard to decide...