Would you still buy an SACD player? Would you stay with the Sony?
Yes, I would still buy an SACD player if I needed another one. I have probably 100+ SACDs, and some of the early ones aren't hybrids (thank you, Sony/Columbia), so even if they stopped making SACD software tomorrow, I'd need a player anyway. Fortunately, there's still a lot of classical, and some jazz, being newly issued on SACDs.
In fact, given my bad luck with the limited longevity of all my other Sony equipment, I bought a cheap Oppo universal player a couple of years ago to have as a backup. Fortunately or not I haven't had to press it into service yet. I still occasionally think about getting something better (Marantz is probably the go-to brand for SACD players before you get into the megabucks range), but now's not the time for me to do that financially speaking.
This must be the Matt Anker I guess:
Matt Anker
What did he do then? Why did the Sony need modifications?
Yes, that's the Matt Anker. The Sony worked fine from the beginning, but considering it was a cheap unit to begin with, I wanted him to upgrade a number of its basic components to audiophile quality parts. Between what I considered was a reasonable price for his work, and the fact that the player itself only cost be about $100 itself (on clearance at Circuit City a few years back), I decided I could justify paying to get the extra work done. Here's a link to a description of what he did (no point in my retyping it all here):
Mods to Craig's unit