regarding a replacement laserdisc player, bit of advice as I had to do some reading when I bought mine to make a more informed choice. whatever you buy, make sure you buy a Pioneer, period. anything eles unless it was a very top of the line model ever really measured up to pioneer players for the visual quality.
I had a Pioneer 515 that was quite respectable, this had similar electronics etc to the better 925. the pioneer elite 90 and 91 series players are considered to be pretty much the best but of course then you pay more.
benefits for you is that you are in the states, there are more available to choose from for a fair price from ebay. UK OTOH had a more restricted choice on ebay to buy.
get as good as you can as this will make your picture quality much better and leave less processing work to eliminate mosquito noise from the source capture. this is particularly important where ESB is concerned as the LD of this film has much more mosquito grain than the other two, particularly in the early Hoth scenes.
I found the avisynth dust filter particularly good for empire to help eliminate the noise although I daresay the new MSU filter would do equally well.