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.

[SysTech_Larry]

I was able to track down a new Sony DVP-SR370,
https://www.samstores.com/product-sony- ... 22009.html

[SysTech_Larry]

They were sold out of the region-free version, but I was able to get the American version.

[SysTech_Larry]

The one they sent me did not play American DVDs and it did not offer a shuffle option for USB files.

[Barf]

The thread is already a month old, and the OP seems to have settled on a solution, but, given the title of the thread, I still want to point out that a (dedicated) Raspberry Pi makes an excellent media player. The 1 and 2s are possibly a bit weak, and the 5 lacks 3.5 mm jack (you can use a HDMI-audio extractor). Interesting are the dedicated "media player operating systems", like moOde. It can be installed directly by the Raspberry Pi imager.

I have a 1GB Raspie 3B unused lying around; I will probably try it soon.

Edit: more relevant URL.

[SysTech_Larry]

Does that work right out of the box?

I may go for the smallest Roku TV I can find, and use its USB/media player (with its screen turned off).

[Barf]

Does that work right out of the box?

Raspberry Pi does not come with a preinstalled OS. There are vendors who sell packages with a preloaded OS on a micro SD card, but probably not with a mediaplayer OS. But it is really not hard; there are tons of, e.g., Youtube videos.

[MaskedMan]

Does that work right out of the box?

I may go for the smallest Roku TV I can find, and use its USB/media player (with its screen turned off).

Roku media player hasn't been upgraded for over 5 years, the last thing was downgrade to where no longer played WMA files.