Toshiba SD-2800 DVD Player

I purchased this machine as a second player for my living room when I finally got tired of unhooking my other player to move it to a different tv all the time.

When I started shopping for my second player, I looked for two features that I sorely miss from my first player; dialog track enhancement and zoom features. Of the 15 or so units available at the Target store up the street, only one had both features that I wanted. I saw several units for sale that had one or the other feature, but, only this Toshiba and a nearly twice as expensive RCA unit I saw on Best Buy's website, had both of the features I wanted. I've not owned too many Toshiba products in the past (at least not anything that says Toshiba on it-since so many products are ultimately made by the same company and sold as bits for later assembly, who can know for sure?) but the features available on this one attracted my eye so I decided to give it a try.

What's in the box:
The unit (very slim will fit in the narrowest shelf area of your entertainment center), a RCA/F plug audio/video hookup cable (no svideo, composite out, etc. cable is included). Remote control, 2 AA batteries for your remote, manual, free offer stuff, warranty card.

Hookup:
The back of the unit has a the full selection of common connectors (even some I've never heard of) you get:

-Video out RCA/F plug (most of use use this video connection)
-SVideo out (only newer tv's have this, it's a mini DIN style connector)
-Video out component (this one is outside my knowlege, found on high end components)
-Analog audio out (RCA/F plug-this is what most of us use on older tv's equipped with RCA plug input)
-Bitstream/PCM optical audio out (another one I've never seen and probably only found on high end components)
-Bitstream/PCM coaxial audio out (another mystery to me)

Connecting the unit was simple on my older tv using the RCA/Fplugs and the cable provided in the box. They are color coded you simply match up the colors and push it in the connector at the player and on the tv. For whatever reason, I've never seen a DVD player for sale that has a rf modulator(so you can play back on channel three or four like vcr's do) built into it so you are forced to connect it to your tv via the RCA/F plugs on the front/back or if you've got a really fancy new TV with svideo or component output those connectors are also provided. If you've already got something plugged into your tv's auxilliary inputs there are switch boxes available that provide four or more sets of audio/video connections and allow you to select the unit you want via some kind of switch. Walmart and Target both carry these switching units. If for some reason your tv doesn't have auxilliary inputs or they don't work it is possible to purchase an external rf modulator that will take the signal from the player and output it on channel three or four to be played through your tv.

Features:
Like most DVD players available for sale, it has a spatializer function for making your TV speakers sound even better as well as the ability to output dolby digital and dts sound (with an external decoder this machine does not have one built in). In addition to the normal audio output stuff found on most dvd players, this one also features zoom and a dialog enhancer option that I think improves speech tracks a great deal on your good old standard stereo TV speakers.

All controls are available from the front of the unit as well as from the remote, including a fairly easy to use zoom control that allows you to select a section of the screen to zoom in upon via a joystick like knob (the front of the unit sports a knob, the remote uses the arrow buttons used for moving around in the menus).

The menus on the player are well laid out and it's fairly easy to find the functions you need to adjust. The remote has a "EAM (enhanced audio mode) button that gives you quick access to set your audio mode to normal, 3D enhanced, or dialog enhanced, audio modes. Next to the EAM button is a dedicated EPM button (enhanced picture mode) that gives you some control over how the movie picture looks (without playing with the color controls on the tv), selections available are normal, enhanced black mode, movie 1 (increased brightness), movie 2 (enhanced deeper colors), animation (enhanced contrast for japanimation or other animated movies). These are the features I use the most and feel are most important, the unit also has the usual range of features found on most other players such as fast forward and rewind (at a respectable speed (it has 4 different fastforward or reverse speeds)unlike my old player that is limited to 4x mode only.

The remote:
Looks like your standard remote for a tv or other electronic device, this is not a multibrand remote that can also run your tv, it's dedicated purely to the player. As discussed above it's got the standard set of buttons, buttons for dvd/mp3 playback a few special ones for setting the audio/video modes. It should be noted that it also has a eject button on the remote. My old unit doesn't have that

What I think of the quality of the unit:
I don't have a big screen tv, fancy surround sound speaker setup, dolby digital decoders, or any fancy equipment like that. I have your atypical 20" Zenith Stereo tv with a decent set of speakers on the front of the TV. With the 3D enhancement or dialog enhancement selected I think the sound is wonderful from my TV.

I've run approximately a dozen DVD movies through it since I've had it and only two gave me any problems; the Matrix and the just released Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone DVD. Through experimentation I found that I had to turn off enhanced black level video mode (I now run it in Movie 2 mode) to make it stop glitching whenever a explosion or other large amount of sudden activity came up in the movie). In fairness, anyone will tell you that The Matrix will stress out most DVD players, it's considered a good movie to test your player with. There also have been several articles on the internet about some DVD players having problems because of all the copyguarding crap the movie companies are putting on dvd movies these days, at least so far, I've not found anything this player absolutely can't play. (One would expect that Harry Potter is probably heavily copy guarded.)

I think the remote is very well laid out and easy to use, including the easy to use zoom functions. The only thing about this player that kind of makes me uncomfortable is the fact that it doesn't have a true power off button.

When you are not playing a dvd, the unit is in standby and partially powered at all times. I read on the internet in a review of the 2700 (the model before this one) that the 2700 frequently blew components in its power system (diodes) when left on standby all the time. This problem is supposedly fixed in the 2800 (do you believe that?) so I guess only time will tell. When I compare my old Philips 701 to this unit I must say that the audio output is a vast improvement over my old unit that I often have to turn up to full volume to hear what the actors are saying.

Miscellaneous:
In addition to dvd and video cd's this unit can also play audio cd's and mp3's. It has the usual set of controls for repeating or skipping music tracks etc. The remote has a button that lets you dim the display on the front of the unit or change what is displayed. This unit has a hard wired power cable unlike my old unit that has a plug-in power cable. Unlike some dvd players, this unit offers NTSC only, no PAL support like my old player has. I haven't found a region-free kit available for this unit yet, but since several are sold for older Toshiba models I can only assume that there will eventually be one for this unit as well.

I like the unit, it's small, easy to setup and offers a both zoom and dialog enhancement features which are tough to find together on one unit.

UPDATE ON THE GLITCHING ISSUE 6-27-02: Well, I found another movie that the unit has a hard time with, Batman- Mask of the Phantasm (animated) it seems that on some movies, every time there's a crack of lightning or an explosion of some type the screen goes all screwy like it's losing sync. I took the player back to the store and exchanged it for another of the same machine and the second unit also displays the problem although not in the same spots on the movie as the first one. I have emailed toshiba and they asked me to call their 800 number to work on this issue so either they've heard this before or I hope there is some fix for it.

I also put the unit on my other, newer, television and the problem isn't quite as bad so it may at least partially be my ten year old television. I've got a couple of more months to fool with this before Target will no longer exchange it so I guess I just have to decide if this is a bad enough problem to give up a unit I really like.