DVD players make excellent transports once modded. They typically beat CD-only players hands-down. They have the advantage of high-precision mechanisms and servo control systems for DVD's and with some players, like Sony and Philips, there are two lasers, one optimised for CD and one for DVD. This gives you the best of both formats. I highly recommend Sony DVP-S7700, DVP-S9000es and Philips 963SA as transports. All of these can be picked-up quite cheaply used on ebay or Audiogon.
However, all players have significant jitter on the S/PDIF output, so they need modding to fix this.
However, all players have significant jitter on the S/PDIF output, so they need modding to fix this.