Lots of good suggestions already posted here. Me? 30 years in the CE biz, former national trainer for Sony Canada.
Pioneer units are great mechanically and have great video processing and scaling, especially the Elite models. My first choice for a real Bluray unit.
Sony PS3 will give you awesome picture performance. The Toshiba made processor has way more hosrsepower than you will find in a regular BD product because of the need to run HD games.
Panasonic units are very good and affordable. The 80-series model has very good audio quality and is a consideration if you are going to use it a lot for CD audio, but frankly I would recommend having a dedicated CD player, best being a Pioneer Elite D6 or Marantz 5003.
Without shooting the moon? Buy a Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD or BDP-F23FD. Or alternatively any regular line Pioneer unit. A PS3 will give you better picture quality but the Pioneer trumps it for reliability. And get a good HDMI cable, not just a stupid over priced Monster Cable (via Best Buy).
Enjoy!
Or WalMart. The display for HDMI cables there was empty of $40 cables.
I recently got a 15ft flat HDMI cable from Monoprice for $15.