Toshiba SD390EKB Upscaling DVD Player
Posted by Notcot on Apr 8, 2010 in Home Cinema & Video |
5 CommentsReply |
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Having bought a Toshiba Regza 37″ 1080p TV a few months back, we’ve been really impressed with Sky HD, it looks incredible on the Tosh and really shows the capabilities of the HD format.
However, as good as our DVD recorder is, the component progressive output wasn’t quite up to standard. We have an enormous collection of DVD’s, and decided we’ll get a Blu Ray player as a christmas treat for ourselves, so in the meantime, i searched for a cheap, good quality upscaling player. Having looked around we settled on this little corker. I do not want USB and hundreds of outputs, snazzy remotes and dazzling looks – i just want something that had the guts to do the job. This, people, really does the trick!! I have it on good authority that the upscaling chip is exactly as in the more expensive Toshiba SD590, only this one skimps on the outputs a little and is a tad smaller all round.
Even in native DVD resolution at 576i there was a vast improvement on our older DVD player – but scale up to 1080p and immediately there is a huge difference. Ok, this is NOT Blu Ray, but only a fool would disagree that the picture quality looks tremendous. Pixar’s Cars is easily on par with the HD broadcast on Disney HD, and older stuff like The Good The Bad & The Ugly looks superb, with razor sharp detail both close up and well into the backgrounds. Be aware though, that the old saying goes here; Rubbish In=Rubbish Out. Our Gavin and Stacey DVD looked better, but due to the average encoding the Tosh could not polish out the defects, so please bear in mind that upscaling will not suddenly make your terrible looking DVD’s shine like a new pin!
Overall, i am really impressed. It is fast to load, quiet, easy to set up, and at £40 you really cannot go wrong. If you have a top notch display and want to give, (the very best) of your DVD collection a new lease of life, you’d be hard pressed to find more bang per buck than the Baby Tosh
Rating: 5 / 5
Picture quality is as good as any other DVD player that I have owned, remote is rubbish – very small and impossible to use in the dark (fortunately an old remote from my old dead Tosh DVD player also works with this model) My DVD was easily made multiregion as follows
1. Power On
2. Open Tray
3. Press 9879 0 (0 = Multiregion, 1 = Region 1 etc etc)
Only downside with this player is that it doesn’t remember your place after being turned off (my Samsung DVD does and my wife finds this very useful).
Rating: 4 / 5
I was sceptical at first thinking how can a dvd player upscale an ordinary dvd but at the price on Amazon I ordered one and how glad I am that I did.The difference in picture quality is amazing.Obviously it needs to be connected to the tv via an hdmi cable and then by pressing the hdmi button on the remote handset whilst your dvd is playing the resolution is upscaled to auto by one press of the button-480p/576p by the next-720p then 1080i and finally 1080p on the last press.It really does make a difference to the viewing experience at the fraction of the price of a blue ray player not to mention the price of the discs.The unit itself is sleek and has all the usual functions of a good quality player with cd/ mp3/ and jpeg playback.This unit is great value for money and even if the upscaling element doesn’t interest you there is a scart socket for conventional playback of your dvd’s but try iy with the hdmi cable and I think you’ll be impressed.
Rating: 5 / 5
Straight off I’d like to make it clear that at present I’m not using this DVD player with a HD television so I can’t rate the picture quality in HD mode.
I own 2 other makes of multi-region capable DVD players and after compairing them all here are my postives and negatives to this particular DVD player.
Positives:-
1) You can open and close the disc tray via the remote control.
2) You can time search, although you have to arrow down once you select this option and key in the time/scene that you wish to jump to.
3) Fast forward by up to 100 times normal speed which is easily the fastest I’ve seen.
In addition you have the more basic commands like the standby function, menu, setup, reverse, forward, previous scene, next scene, paus/play button, repeat, slow, a-b, slow motion, subtitle, angle, audio, zoom, random, programme, four arrow keys for direction, plus the HDMI button too.
Negatives:-
1) The biggest problem for me is the fact that the display only shows which chapter you’re on and does NOT show the time elapsed/remaining on the display itself.
2) Using the display button it shows you how much time has elapsed and how much remains of the film/cd that you’re playing, but for some reason rather than coming up at the bottom or top of the screen it’s been placed pretty well in the middle and although it’s pretty transparant it does impead the view of the film and covers 20-25% of the entire screen space.
So on the whole a good solid DVD player that could so easily have been great with just a bit more attention to detail 8 1/2 out of 10.
Rating: 4 / 5
I needed to replace a dvd player used on second t.v.in house which is an old set but still good.The Toshiba,apart from being a trusted brand,seemed too good to be true at the price but using it has proved what its title says( upscaling ).I had not heard about upscaling and the picture quality is improved.The machine runs quietly and is so easy to use ( i am 62 ).Very pleased.
Rating: 5 / 5