20 out of 20 people found this review helpful.
Toshiba SD-2800
Date of Review: Jun 25, 2002
The Bottom Line: This unit is a must have for any middle to upper end home entertainment system.
I bought this unit at a local Video Only via the salesperson's recommendation. I was impressed by the feature list, ease of use, and performance:
FEATURES
Component out Video: Red, Green, Blue independent streams for color information for the most accurate video rendition; this is only found in very high end televisions.
S-Video out: Chrominance and Luminescence are given separate channels so there is extra sharpness and definition (this is what I used)
RCA style out: this is the typical connection which offers very good clarity and sharpness especially compared to Coaxial cable.
Digital Audio Coax and Optical: My soundcard only has the Coax but some speakers use optical so if you are a hi-fi afficionado, having both will spare you some worry.
RCA style analog out: This is your typical setup and what I used.
MP3 playback: DVD players play regular Audio CD's, but some do not play CDR's. This one not only plays those, but also CD-RW (Rewritable CD's) and MP3's. See Performance for the issue with MP3 playback.
Dolby DTS support: This player decodes Dolby Digital and Dolby DTS signals. DTS is the sort of setup you might find in movie theatres. It can be had for less than $150 with the Logitech Z-560 Dolby Digital DTS THX certified 4.1 surround sound speakers.
VCD playback: I don't plan on using this player for VCD playback because VCD is only really popular in East Asia and is of subpar quality compared to DVD. No point really unless you have VCD's.
INSTALLATION
It was a breeze. I just hooked up the S-Video (you'll have to buy your own cable) and the Audio hookups to the back of my TV and I was in business.
Using the unit was simple with the provided remote. Make sure you read the manual to take advantage of the various audio and video modes. Of particular interest is the "Dialogue Mode" which emphasized the speech in a movie. Since DVD's are full of explosions and background sound effects and music, Dialogue Mode helps one hear the often masked speech in a movie. Subtitles also help, but the Dialogue mode is best.
PERFORMANCE
The player comes with the standard LCD salutations that are common to electronics nowadays and it also has a simple screensaver. While you might laugh, keeping a DVD paused has a chance of causing damaging "screen burn-in", something a screensaver prevents.
Video playback is outstanding, very sharp with several color rendition modes and nonexistent artifacting (little blocks and errors from decoding).
It was sharp enough that I could see the compression artifacts which are inherent to DVD's, something not a problem with the player itself.
The spatializer fake-3d sound feature works somewhat, but like all solutions of this sort, it is not substitute for true Dolby 5.1 or 6.1 surround sound speakers.
The player states that is has MP3 support, but it does not support MP3 playback from CD-RW's. The manual says it does not recommend it but it does not flat out declare lack of support. I know my CD-RW media is good because it is certified Fuji made in Japan. As well, I could not get any MP3 CD with directories to play properly.
Finally, I know this is an issue with most DVD players, but there is a half second pause when the DVD laser reads the other side of the DVD. I'm sure a memory buffer of 32MB would be very cheap to implement and would make the movie playback better.
FUTURE PROOF?
Well, this unit is very slim and light. It is also very sturdy. I know the Video Only salesperson bought one of these and he has dropped it a couple times without any mechanical failure. Optical drives are very reliable these days and there are little moving parts. However, this unit does not include Progessive Playback which is only a concern for HDTV or projector owners.
