Right now, I think the BEST player for music and video is the Creative Zen Vision M. It is SUPERIOR to the iPod 30GB for the following reasons:
1) Better battery life for video -- ZVM 4 hours vs 2 hours on iPod 30GB
2) Better video display - ZVM 262,000 colors vs 65,000 colors on iPod
3) Easy to use user interface my 7 year old can use (Creative is suing Apple for violating patents on UI so who imitated who?)
4) Supports subscription music so you can fill the player with a virtually unlimited number of songs for a flat fee of $10 a month with a pre-paid one year subscription, rather than buying songs. Given that a 30GB player can old 5000 songs or more, this is a huge savings over buying the songs. Besides, if your hard drive fails, you don't lose the songs you bought. You just download the rentals again. (Apple doesn't support subscription music)
5) Less expensive places to buy the same songs you can get on iTunes -- 79cents, 88cents, or 99cents versus 99cents on iTunes.
6) Built-in FM radio in case you need to check the weather, news, or just wanna listen to something different.
7) Shortcut button on the UI.
8) Parity with iPod -- it displays album art, plays audio books from Audible.com
Any of the Creative Zen players is a good bet. I also have a Zen Microphoto (my wifes) and not a single problem in 8 months.
The new Zen V or Zen V Plus also look pretty sweet.