Dolby Digital, Zoom

Skips Easily, Especially Audio

Just to give Toshiba a little credit... I bought this player online several months ago... it skipped on audio and DVD movies. I sent it back to Toshiba and got a new one immediately. Much fewer problems now, except semi-rough audio CDs still skip.

good picture quality, good sound

the remote is a bit of a puzzle

I got Toshiba 3109 a couple of days ago. The picture and sound are great, but I seem to have a problem with a brand-new "Enemy of The State" - on chapter 18 it switches from English to French for a couple of seconds and then freezes. If I stop and then hit play again it works fine until for some reason it skips over half of chapter 23. The problems is not random - they always occur in the same places and as I said before the disk is brand-new. The Matrix and The Mummy work fine. I guess I'm gonna try Enemy of the State on another 3109 and on Sony 550. I'll make conclusions then (maybe it's the disk...) Did anyone else have such problems? I'll give it a 4 for now

Dual Disc Tray, Upgraded Audio Output over SD-2109, Build, Picture and Sound Quality

Silly messages when it turns on and off

Ordered mine from Reference A/V (www.reference-av.com) for $329. A great player, although I've only used it with 3 movies so far. Also, it plays scratched discs very well and has not skipped on me with music CDs yet - in response to the 2nd last comment. In fact, I have my bookshelf speakers right next to it and it hasn't skipped!

Incredible crisp sound quality, Great picture.

can't read CD-Rs,(not the players fault though)

I love this machine, I've had no problems with it. One scene in "Vampires, was blochy but it was the disk. It was a rental and was scratched. I paid $290. fpr it on E-bay. Iwanted dolby digital 5.1, and boy do I have it! No problems yet. I will never go back to VHS. this thing rocks!!! Especially with a Sub. I only have an 8 inch. When I pop in the Matrix, the entire first floor shakes! I am one happy guy!

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Cambridge basscube 8

Excellent sound/picture, full-featured, nice styling

no auto-continuation from tray 1 to tray 2

Excellent all around DVD player.
This puppy has almost every feature you would want.

For CD's the internal 96khz/24bit decoder and HDCD filtering does an excellent job. It's almost as clean as my NAD T760 reciever but with much fuller bass.

Picture is as good as any other DVD. Perfectly displayed Video Essentials test patterns.

Have no use for the built in Dolby Digital decoder, but nice to have since this is such an affordable player.

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Panasonic player / Encore DVD-rom

I've had the 3109 for almost five months now and so far so good... I've come to find the dual tray feature quite useful even though at first I thought it may be useless fluff. Picture, sound, features are great. I do wish it had slightly better bass management setup for the internal DD decoder. Zoom feature is a must! Now I can't imagine ever owning a player without it.
PS. Please do not post questions, prices, etc. unless you are actually submitting a review. I think all of the miscellaneous 1's and 5's from people who aren't actually reviewing the product makes the overall rating stats basically useless. There are numerous home theater forums out there where your questions are welcome.

Excellent Picure (on 31" Hitachi TV)

Serious ringing (on 65" Mistubishi Platinum Plus)

Before I got my Mitsubishi, I loved this unit. The S-VHS output looked great on the Hitachi. Audio is excellent, I've had no mechanical problems while watching at least a couple of hunderd discs. The dual tray is nice if you're lazy like me. If you have a big screen TV (55" +), don't even think about this. On Lawrence of Arabia, the dunes have a hard black line around them, on Oh Brother, Where art Thou? the contrast between lights and darks also exhibits this line. This occurs even using the 480i outputs. Good unit for 32" and smaller monitors.

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Denon DVD-2800

None

Poor quality. Laser pickup unit breaks, and results in "Disk Error"

I had the SD-3109 for about 10 months and was happy as a clam, until the unit quit working. One evening, I turned the unit on, dropped a disk in, and got the dread "No Disk" error. I know a lot of people think this is a result of bad or scratched DVD's but that is not the case. It was a clean DVD, and from then on it would not read any DVD, even ones I own, and had previously viewd. So, off to the repair shop it went. At that point it was under "Parts Only" warrenty, so it took 2 months (the part was on backorder, go figure), and $60 in labor to have repaired. When I got the unit back, it functioned normaly for 2 months, and the did the exact same thing. After reading the reviews here, I cannot believe this is an isolated problem, but rather a poorly designed unit or part. The player is now out of warrenty, so I guess it is bound for the trash heap, and I will have to pick up a new DVD player. You can bet that Toshiba will not be on my list to check out. I am sorely dissapointed in the quality of this unit, and I would be hard pressed to purchase another Toshiba product. To those of you who have not had a problem, good luck. I hope it doesn't hit you, but if it does, you might as well toss the unit.

Features-Connectors-video component, SVHS, optical and digital audio output, image zoom, HCCD, Dolby Digital & DTS

No backlit remote.

I got a great deal for this "second room" DVD player and a mystery.

First, I paid $150 for this $500 MSRP unit as an open box return. (Suggestion-Make an offer no matter what the price says ($180)because stores want to move returns ASAP.) Since I'm connecting it to an older Pioneer AV reciever with only Dolby Pro Logic (Remember that format? I can't assess the many expensive features other than picture and sound via the regular composite and RCA type plugs. Everything works fine...so far.

Second, help me anyone. Is this a Progressive Scan unit? I have printed in gold letters on the front in the middle of my SD 3109 "Digital Progressive" but no where in the owner manual or from all the search of web sites (including here) mention progressive scan capabilities. The SD 6200, the model above looks exactly like the 3109 (w/one cosmetic difference) has progressive scan. Anyone enlighten me on this mystery. I like to know if I got a progressive scan unit for $150!

Five Stars for Value (price/features)
Four Stars for Overall because I haven't evaluated all the features (component video, digital output, and HCCD)

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Sony

5.1Chan Audio out; R/B/G video out; ease of use

Won't read VCDs that I burn! ARRGH!

I like the dual tray because I'm just too lazy to get up and pop the 2nd movie in! :)

Unit is connected to a Toshiba 34" HDTV. Most DVDs that use 16:9FULL or theater screen formats are awsome to watch.
Picture quality is excellent (of course, depending on the DVD ROM itself). The audio is amazing since I have the full 6 channels in use, using 2 amplifiers for front/read as well as subwoofer and the HDTV as Center front.

Have had no problems until now. My Lost In Space DVD will no longer read past 1hr 31mins xxseconds. I think it's the 2nd layer. However, other dual-layered DVDs work fine so it may actually be something wrong with the L.I.S DVD (even though there are NO scratches/marks/smudges).

I called Toshiba Canada about this problem. Even though the machine is out of warranty and that the problem may be the DVD ROM itself, Toshiba has agreed to upgrade the firmware AND to confirm whether the problem is the machine or the DVD itself. If it's the machine, they said that they would still fix it under warranty. ya gotta like that kind of support!

I give almost full ratings to this machine, but knock off a point due to not reading burned VCDs.

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n/a