Media Player Recommendations...?

[The Robman]

Just for my curiosity, what is the difference between Random and Shuffle?

[SysTech_Larry]

RANDOM is like rolling dice for each next track.
SHUFFLE is like shuffling a whole deck of cards and playing each track in that new succession.

With RANDOM, you might play the same track twice in row and never play some tracks. If you roll a die six times, there is no guarantee that you will get each number once in that trial.
With SHUFFLE, you play all tracks once and only once, just in a mixed order.

It is possible that early SHUFFLEs were still called RANDOM, but not vice versa.

[SysTech_Larry]

...I settled with a DVD player that still has analog outputs with a usb jack and a thumb drive...

What model did you end up with?

[zaphod7501]

It's a Samsung BD-C5500
Standard play is sequential but with a "shuffle" option. It was the last Blu-Ray with analog outputs. I went BD rather than DVD because they can play more file formats than DVD players. Overkill for strictly audio playback and tougher anti-piracy hardware on the HDMI outputs for Bly-Ray players.