Stunning picture at a fabulous price.

Menu highlights display somewhat slowly.

The picture quality on the Toshiba is more than anyone could ask for at $180. Things are sharp, colors are realistic and saturated. I'm sure it's outperforming my 20" Panasonic TV.

What's more, it has all composite, s-video, and _component_ video outputs, for ultimate picture quality. It also has the ability to use expanded black levels, and display anamorphic titles on regular 4:3 TV sets, which were 2 crucial features for me.

It can also play DTS with a compatible receiver, and plays VCDs too (for those who care). I have no problem whatsoever with dual layered DVDs.

The only downside of the player is that the highlights showing which menu option is selected is slightly slow is appearing, aometimes causing frustration as I wonder if the player is frozen (never happened). The remote's pretty nice actually.

Fast forward and reverse aren't particularly smooth, but I don;t think it matters very much.

If you're wondering whether to get into DVD or not, don't wait - just get this Toshiba!

Great picture AND sound

remote control ergonomics

I am first and foremost an audiophile. Don't get me wrong, the picture is just as important BUT the sound is too. I had an opportunity to try other models at home and was most impressed with the Toshiba sounding the best and still reproducing a great picture. I tested music CD's before I tried DVD's to gather my impressions.

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Pioneer and Panasonic DVD players, same price point

Picture

remote is ok

I thought that this was a very good effort over a VHS and thought that this was a very good DVD player for an affordable one.

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none

VCD's seem to be noisy?

All in all a good DVD for the money (I paid $279. CDN) After reading the other reviews however, I have had no problem playing the following: DVD/VCD/CDR/CD and as for CDR's any colour will do. Hmmm??

Ease of use, nice layout of remote

remote could be lighted for those romantic movie nights when you have the lights out (wink)

I had my Toshiba DVD 1200 for exactly 1 year to the day and the main controller arm as well as the main board had to be replaced. Fortunatly, the parts were still under the 1 year warrenty and the service center was local so I did not have to send it out via MAIL. Cost me 55.00 in labor to get the thing fixed. I was told by the service dept that toshiba would have charged over 500.00 for those very parts!!! Unbelievable...Anyway, I did all the research I could on DVD's including coming to this site and Toshiba was the best rated. Guess I got a lemon.. maybe it will last another year without any hookups!!!!

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none

great picture quality

no optical out
remote sucks
the dvd just died

i have used it for 4 month now and yestreday it just died it won't play any dvd's

it has the worst remote ever with buttons so small u can only operate with a toothpick
and no optical out

i guess u have to stay away from this one

picture, Use ability, all functions on the remote.

Will not play certain cd-r's and cd-rw's

So far so good, Like the unit allot and also like that I am able to watch any movie that I want regardless of the code since it is a code-free dvd Player :) It has a good clean picture and is very easy to use and set-up have watched over a 120 movies on it and have not had one movie kicked back at me... Also Plays Vcd's good the ones that you get on the web....

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First one...

Zoom, No problems so far with over 40 DVD's

Front Panel, Doesn't play CDR's.

This was my first DVD player. Works good with my 32" Toshiba TV. Would have liked more features... like playing MP3 CD's or VCD's, etc. Was a bit hard to figure out, but that's expected as it is new technology for me.

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None

Price, reliability, zoom, video output

Small remote, no memory

After carefully reviewing all of the players out there for a reasonable price and studying the reviews, bith here and at other sites I decided this was the best value. After shopping around and waiting for the right deal it finally showed up at Mobshop for $159.95, less Visa Rewards rebate of $25, less Pointclick rebate of $17. Even at the $199.99 that it is selling for in stores now, it is still a great value.

We have watched about 30 movies in the last four months with only two incidents. Both were while watching DVDs from Netflix (which for east coasters is not worth more than the free month). Both times the problems were the DVDs themselves and not the player. Overall this player handles well worn and scratched DVDs well, but in one case a good cleaning solved the problem. Luckily, in the other case, the DVD was double sided. I flipped it over and we were on our way. We have not encountered any other problems.

As far as features, the zoom is great and can get you to the perfect picture size where a DVD is letterbox only. You can also play with the screen settings to use wide screen to get a larger picture without losing much of the image. The remote, although small is not as bad as I expected. You can do nearly everything from the remote...wives hate this. Unfortunately this player does lack a memory feature that allows you to shut the player off and resume in the same place when you return. However, if you just note the title/chapter you can search and restart at any point.

Finally, one of the first things I did is to get an S-video cable which has made all of the difference. We have a 27" Magnavox stereo TV with S-video input (which is not quite as good as component video). Although you may not see the difference immediately, you will get used to the sharper image produced using S-video.

Overall, I recommend this player for the beginner or casual viewer. It may not have all of the bells, but for the price it is the best I looked at. I bet I'll still be using this player 5 years from now.

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This is the first!

Picture quality, construction quality, value, ability to support 16:9 anamorphic mode, ColorStream component video output, on-screen bit rate indicator (accessible by pressing DISPLAY on remote commander).

Mediocre ergonomics for remote commander layout. No optical TOSLINK output. Inability to read CD-R and CD-RW media.

Had I not been short twenty dollars, I would've purchased the Sony DVP-S360 instead of the Toshiba SD-1200. However, I didn't mind trying a different brand for once. (This explains why I called my remote a "remote commander", Sony calls their remotes that!) Video quality is remarkable even with the composite connection. Dolby Digital 5.1 downconversion to 2.0 isn't bad. Video downconversion did not show noticeable artifacts. So far, my only complaint is with the layout of the remote. However, when I can get the hang of it, my ability to use the remote should be second nature. If you are considering purchasing an entry level DVD player, consider the Toshiba SD-1200. An excellent value indeed. - Reinhart

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Toshiba SD-2109
Toshiba SD-1600
Sony DVP-S360