p.s. as far as Peco and DCC, from what I have read, the new ones have no problem with being DCC friendly, the older ones (as well as the older Shinohara) had a few minor issues, but were easily fixed.
Uh...this is true as far as, "...can be made DCC friendly", but I'm not sure about being no problem to do.
I have only worked with Peco's new code 83 Insulfrog and they come with little jumpers before the frog that you have to cut to have a 'dead' frog. If you do this, the frog is dead for a considerable distance that may cause a short wheel base loco to lose power while going through the frog. I instead, left the jumpers in place and took my Dremmel and cut closer to the frog.
If you want a powered frog, they provide an already wired jumper for you to hook up to a switch to change up the polarities when the turnout is set to the diverging route. This is nice if you want power routing and a 'hot' frog, but this is not considered DCC friendly. There are many arguements about using powered frogs, but all come down to the big word of
"IF". If all your loco and rolling stock wheels are in gauge and the track is in gauge, you won't have a short.
Again, the Peco Insulfrog is power routing meaning that if your switcher goes into a two foot siding to do some work and the turnout is put back into the mainline position, your track is dead. This may be desirable, but if not you will have to power that short section of track with feeders just for that reason. A good place for power routing is a Switcher pocket to park your switcher and then throw the turnout and the power is off to it. Same for lighted passenger cars.
Now, please don't get me wrong here. Peco turnouts are very well made and look good. It all comes down to what you want to do with a turnout and how much modification work you are willing to make. The early Walthers Shinohara were a real pain to convert to DCC...a real big pain. The new Walthers and Atlas are now 100% DCC friendly, with the accepted meaning that the frog is dead and the correct polarity of power is always fed through to the staight and diverging route via built-in jumpers. All you have to do with them is put them in and you are ready to go. Besides, Atlas is cheaper than Walthers that is cheaper than Peco. (code 83)
The dilemma of code 83 cost versus code 100 cost is always present, but keep in mind that code 83 is much more prototypical in scale and really does look better on a layout.