Good picture and sound.

Brought player in three times for repairs. Weaknesses as mentioned above.

I had experienced the same problems most SD2710 owners were having. slow loading,freezing, noisy motor and wouldn't even play DVD-Rs. Had replaced laser head assembly and software upgrade just before warranty expired. All problems solved. Makes me wonder about Toshiba quality.

features

not reliable

total crap. bought this 8 months ago and watched 5 movies tops. now i have no sound and the front panel display had gone out. can't believe how crappy this thing is. will not buy anything from toshiba again. and i don't recommend anyone to do so either.

Similar Products Used:

panasonic

Good quality and features for the money. Extra Bonus of 10 free video rentals would have been nice.

Although CDs sound very good on this machine, I was very disappointed that the LCD does not show the track or time remaining for the song. This was very annoying to me, since I often like to just play certain tracks on some CDs that now is very difficult to do. Another small annoyance, is that the black borders around a wide screen movie are not deep black, but one shade of black lighter. The Panasonic RV31 has a darker black that frames the movies better in my opinion.

I use this unit in a rental ski condo (www.parkcitytownhome.com) and have had few problems with it so far. I personally have viewed several DVDs on it and thought the quality and sound were very good. The rest of my system, not shaby for a rental, is: Sony Receiver STR- DE635 Sony 32"TV: KV-32S42 Speakers: Sony Subwoofer and back, and Canton DL-220 front Sony auto A/V Switcher It has some nice features like the zoom, screen saver and two digital sound hookup options. It also has a set of RCAs. This allows you to hookup this device with your receiver so that both the CD and DVD buttons work - important for my renters who could be confussed otherwise. The features and Toshiba quality were a factor in buyin this unit, but frankly, you''ll probably only use the zoom when you first get the unit; it''s not something frequently used. The screen saver, especially since renters may leave it on, however, is nice. The main reason I purchased this unit is that there was a special promotion that was supposed to give you 10 FREE DVD RENTALS from Hollywood. But I NEVER RECEIVED THEM over the last 4 months. BUMMER. If the majority of your use is for DVDs, this system would be a good choice. However, if you want to use it for CD listening a lot, be careful and see my weakness commnets below.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic RV31 - Returned. Difficulty hooking up digital optical cable.

good video quality both coaxial and optical digital out zoom component video out

odd quirks in LCD functions displayed. disc spinning slightly noisy, but not a problem from normal seating position. limited front-panel controls (no FF)

I have only view one movie with this unit, but the video & audio quality seem solid. This looks to be a good basic unit, especially for the price. Have not tried the multiple formats, so cannot comment. The only surprise has really been the weak LCD. What surprises me is the default behavior of only displaying elapsed time. This is particularly annoying when playing a CD. ie when skipping forward you cannot the track number, only elapsed time. Before someone jumps to correct me, yes I know there is a button on the remote to "toggle" the display to track (and chapter etc). The only problem is the power-up state defaults back. If you do everything by the remote, this may not be a nuisance, but if you just walk up to the unit and want to check out track 8, for example, it''s annoying. My previous Panasonic A110 displayed the track number by default (elapsed time, too?) don''t remember and it went belly up, hence the Toshiba replacement. Also, when a disk is "stopped" instead of showing total time, it shows zeros. Minor nits, I know, but you really wonder what they are thinking when they decide these trade-offs. But, for the primary mission it has - playing good video - it seems to be a solid unit (though no apparent improvement over the three year old Panasonic).

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic A110

features for price, zoom

somewhat touchy laser, remote (but who cares when you have a marantz remote instead)

Overall, this unit is a good value for what i paid. It has 4x zoom, which similarly prices players lack. It also has both optical and coax outs, which is nice. I had no problem at all with amazon.com, unlike these other people. These things are made in China, they must have gotten duds. As a manufacturing engineer, this doesn't surprise me, but i seem to have gotten a good one. Also, i don't think that the motor is all that loud.

Playback has been good, although the laser skipped twice during Saving Private Ryan. The picture is good, and the sound is great with my Marantz and my JBL Studio speakers. The optical out definitely provides the best sound. The remote sucks, but i have my Marantz 8000 remote, so who cares.

I tested the mp3 player out with good results. It reads mp3's on my cdrw's, which is nice. It has an on-screen display for mp3 playback, which is a step up from other players (just remember to keep names short). Wish you could ffwd and rewind mp3 songs, but i am glad it converts mp3 songs to pcm into the digital outs, another thing that other players don't always do.

my slowly growing system:
Marantz 8000 receiver
JBL S310's and S26 speakers
Sony cdp cd545 CD changer

features for price, zoom

somewhat touchy laser, remote (but who cares when you have a marantz remote instead)

Overall, this unit is a good value for what i paid. It has 4x zoom, which similarly prices players lack. It also has both optical and coax outs, which is nice. I had no problem at all with amazon.com, unlike these other people. These things are made in China, they must have gotten duds. As a manufacturing engineer, this doesn't surprise me, but i seem to have gotten a good one. Also, i don't think that the motor is all that loud.

Playback has been good, although the laser skipped twice during Saving Private Ryan. The picture is good, and the sound is great with my Marantz and my JBL Studio speakers. The optical out definitely provides the best sound. The remote sucks, but i have my Marantz 8000 remote, so who cares.

I tested the mp3 player out with good results. It reads mp3's on my cdrw's, which is nice. It has an on-screen display for mp3 playback, which is a step up from other players (just remember to keep names short). Wish you could ffwd and rewind mp3 songs, but i am glad it converts mp3 songs to pcm into the digital outs, another thing that other players don't always do.

my slowly growing system:
Marantz 8000 receiver
JBL S310's and S26 speakers
Sony cdp cd545 CD changer

Best zoom quality

Slow loading, motor noise, remote design

I compared these dvds one by one with the same dvd, vcd and cd on my 52" RCA TV and on my Sony sterio system with Bose 301 speakers. There were little differences among these machines in sound and picture. They are all very good. Pioneer DV-440 and Toshiba SD-2710 got a little bit better in sound and picture. Apex-600A seems to be a little bit incompetent. Sony DVP-NS400D were between. Hard to tell the differece between S-video and Component-video out. They all play dvd, vcd, cd and mp3. Their major differences are as follows:

Toshiba SD-2710 ($195, made in China): Best zoom quality in DVD but not functioning in VCD. With 24-bit/192kHz audio DAC

Pioneer DV-440 ($195, made in Malasia): Nice slim desigh, With 24-bit/192kHz audio DAC, No zoom function.

Sony DVP-NS400D ($195, made in Japan): Have built in Dolby Digital decoder, With 24-bit/96kHz audio DAC, No zoom function. !!Disk stucked when machine flipped over!!.

Apex-600A ($160, made in China): Poor zoom quality, Poor outlook, but can zoom VCD. Have karaoky function but not sensitive enough, With 24-bit/96kHz audio DAC.

Due to these factors, I have not finally decide which one I am going to keep.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV 440, Sony DVP-NS400D, Apex 600A

A lot of usefull features, good picture and sound, easy to program

Reliability, noisy motor

I bought this unit yesterday and it goes back to the store today. I wanted to use it strictly for viewing DVDs. Audio quality and MP3 playback were not of big concern so I can only comment on the DVD experience.

My unit had problems with stopping and resuming during the playback of a movie. After stopping, hitting the play button caused it to freeze and emit swishing sounds for about 2-3 minutes, after which time I got a message indicating disk error. Retrying produced the same results. I ejected the DVD and reloaded it. More swishing and same error. I put in another DVD. Swishing and same error. I turned the unit off and back on. Tried with two DVDs. More swishing and same error. I unplugged the unit from the wall outlet, waited about 3 minutes and turned it back on. After this, the unit started working again. However, after attempting stop/play again, I got swishing sounds and the same error again.

I believe that stop/play is a basic function and it must work flawlessly regardless of the price of the unit. I also expected an appliance not a computer that needs to be rebooted after it freezes :)

On another note, the motor is quite noisy and I could hear it from around eight feet from the unit.

Excellent Picture Quality and Sound

Remote is cheap and Confusing

We bought this machine 2 weeks ago and I can't say enougfh good things about it. The picture quality is excellent and the sound is superb. For the money this is an excellent product. My only complaint is the remote is quite cheap and somewhat confusing for first time users of DVD players. I would highly recommend this machine to anyone. You won't regret it!

Audio, video, outputs, controls, compatibility, looks.

Noisy when spinning a disc, takes a little too long to load a disc. The build is somewhat weak. The onscreen menues are a bit slow, and the remote may be confusing.

I can't say how satisfyed I am with this player. It provides the same performance as players that cost much more than it. It has all 3 major video outputs: composite, s-video and component. The audio outputs are both optical and coxial, and also analogue RCA outputs.
The analogue DAC of the unit is a 192KHz DAC which provides decent performance for this price range.
The compatibility is just amazing: CD, CD-R, MP3, DVD.. you name it, it has it!
CD-Text is also supported, but unfortunately the MP3 feature is a bit lacking as the machine doesn't read the songs' ID3 tag so it can't display song info - but besides that it also works well.
The remote control is not the best looking and may be difficult to use in darkness, but it has all the options.
The menu OSD is excellent and covers really all options but is a bit slow perhaps...
Still, the amazing amount of options is great, and the video and audio results are great as well.
The zoom option is implemented the best I've seen on any DVD player and the slow-motion and fast-forward modes are also excellent.
The look of the player is great. My player is actually golden and I think it looks better than the black one.
Its very lightweight so you should be careful about not pulling one of the cords as it can fall... :)

All in all, an excellent bargain. There are several weaknesses but they are not serious. However, the most important thing, IMO, is the A/V performance - and they blow big time with this player. I compared this one to a highend Toshiba SD9200 player and video results were identical.

Very recommended.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer 535