Check out
Creative. I'm not sure what they do nowdays but about 3 years ago I got a Creative Zen Vision:M. It plays mpeg 1 and 2 as well as mp4. Also plays WMV files and also DIVX and XVID (these formats are the standard for download videos such as TV shows) and all these codecs are built in. So you just drag and drop at any screen res and it plays. Very cool. Sound quality is top notch too. Very refreshing to have it support loads of codecs at any resolution compared to the resticting iPod range.
As I said, that was a few years ago now though, there might be newer and greater stuff available.
Although I've not personally owned one - I hear good things about the
Archos range of players. The better ones can play lots of different codecs like the Creative. The Microsoft Zune is pretty cool (built by Toshiba) but I think it's fairly expensive and I think it can play all sorts of videos (WMV, MP4, H.246 but no divx/xvid support).