Sharp picture. Sound quality.

Remote ergonomics leave a little to be desired. Minor bug in firmware.

Just got this to replace my Sony S560D which died promptly after the warranty expired. The picture quality is very good and actually so sharp at times that it reveals flaws in the DVD's themeselves. The audio quality is very good as well. A nice feature is the color/tint/contrast/brightness adjustments in the player itself.

The menu structure is a little odd and I've actually discovered a bug where the player gets stuck in pause mode if you hit pause after fast-forwarding. Pressing ff again or something (can't quite remember) will get you unstuck though. The menus look like they were programmed by different people or groups as the fonts and structure differ from area to area. The general feel of the controls are somewhat ad-hoc and random. Otherwise, you can perform any operation you need with a few button pushes. The remote is ergonomically poor in that it is thick in the rear and thin in front making it difficult to hold and access the buttons. I wonder who designs these things.

The build quality seems fairly good. I took it apart to see how well it was made and it uses quality components. The circuit boards are glass-epoxy as opposed to the phenolic junk that most manufacturers use. The D/A converter is Analog Devices, which is a very good brand. The MPEG processor is a Zoran, also very good. The op-amps are NJR which are decent Japanese parts. The output jacks are gold-plated.

Compared to my old Sony the build quality is much better but this player actually cost less. Of course none of this matters if the laser in this one burns out too. Though I don't usually advocate extended warranties I bought one this time because of the reliability issues with consumer lasers.

Feature wise this player can't be beat. Progressive-scan for $250 is a steal. Add MP3 playback, CD-R etc. I'm giving it a four stars for overall because the remote is ergonomically poor and because the menus are a little bizarre. For value at this time I doubt it can be beat.

Similar Products Used:

Sony S560D (horrible, unreliable)

Picture, price

None

Purchased the SD4700 to go with my Toshiba 42H81 tv. The picture looks incredible, especially with the new animated features coming out on DVD (Shrek, Fantasia 2000). The images are the best I have seen on a tv. Great price for all of the features.

Sound

Manual, setup design, sound selection

Down here in Daytona Beach it is possible to buy either SACD or DVD Audio players. Finding an SACD disk, on the other hand is virtually impossible. I picked up a Toshiba 4700 player yesterday (swallowed twice, and told my wife). I already had a couple of Chesky disks that would play on the player. I'm listening to the demo disk now. It was great before on a 96/24 player and Yamaha DSP A1--clearly better than the average CD. Now, using the 6-channel input and the Toshiba player, I'm stunned with the clarity and the quality. I dearly wish I could test a SACD player and SACD recordings, if it truly is better, I'm not sure how my ears would be able to determine the difference. Admittedly, I've just begun playing with the machine. Star Wars plays perfectly well in either on-board decoding or PCM or bitstream to the DSP A1 decoder. Soundfield from the Toshiba 6-channel was excellent, but suffers in comparison to DSP imterpretation from bitstream. DSP give a more theatrical feeling. Changing from one sound decoder to the other is clunky, but I've discovered it can be done quickly enough to compare scenes replayed with careful fingering of the two remotes (the A1's and the SD4700's). I suspect that I may still be using my LD/DVD Pioneer for movies, as I have before with my Panasonic DTS player in place. The Toshiba shares the main sound system, the Panasonic goes to the bedroom. If there is a tradeoff in operational convenience, playing a DVD Audio disk makes up for it.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Panasonic, Toshiba DVD players

Picture Resolution, Appearance, Remote design (90%), Useful Menu Selection

Transport lock-ups, No reverse frame still, weird audio implementation for Stereo

I thought I had just about aced it with this 4700. It had everything you could ever want and the price was super. Initial hook-up and testing went very well. However...
because of the inexcusable lack of reverse/still frame on this quality machine, it wasn't long before transport lock-ups began to occur. They also occurred when doing chapter searches, etc. I find it tiresome to have to pull the plug in order to regain control of anything. But in fairness, I do believe this issue is related in large measure to the transport logic which Toshiba has employed. Previous Toshibas I have experienced had complete frame advance/reverse control and it is puzzling why this would be omitted. In this implementation the reverse stepping will not lock into place when pause is hit. Instead, the scene jumps several frames back so that you can forward step to the point you were just at. Also, one has to wonder why the zoom feature was given precedence over the slow forward/reverse buttons on the remote? You should not have to open the compartment to access this feature. I have a sneaking suspicion that the zoom was featured precisely because of the transport issue I encountered. Long story short...I sent it back for credit after testing it side-by-side with the 70BK which I ordered when the Toshiba problems surfaced. Doing a straight comparison test of two virtually identical spec. machines was extrememly helpful. The 'normal' picture setting from the 4700 was spot on right out of the box. I used it, in fact, to calibrate the JVC User 1 setting. The AVIA tests showed remarkably accurate factory calibration for the Toshiba. My sole picture complaint was the lack of a sharpness setting. The 4700's picture can only be sharpened using your TV. Again why? They used to feature sharpness adjustment. The 4700 menu flexibility is very well done and although several buttons seem to be redundant the Navi-Menu system is quite good. Much better is the Setup button with it's quick and logical access to the most commonly checked/changed parameters. The one glaring exception is that of the picture settings. Getting to them through the Navi is too cumbersome. Overall, I say this is a very good player that needs just a few design/function touches to become great. Until then, it's JVC with an extended warranty for me. (Once burned, once learned.)

Similar Products Used:

JVC 501BK (don't laugh), JVC 70BK

Great Picture

No backlight on remote

Picture is lifelike, I bought this DVD Player after I replaced my older projection TV with a new Toshiba 55H70. Once I got the player I realized that I needed a new DD/DTS receiver. Needless to say several hundred later, I am in awe. The SD4700 plays tons of formats, the MP3 playback is ok, the 8 character limit to file names is annoying but workable. I like all the menus but they are impossible to operate with the remote in the dark. I swear the 3 of the buttons on the remote do the same exact thing. Don't believe the hype about progressive, I switched back and forth between interlaced and progressive, and it seemed identical, it looked perfect either way. Maybe I just don't have a well enough trained eye. For audio I have a Pioneer VSX-810 and together the combination sounds perfect. Another nice player that I was really checking out was the Pioneer DV-444, take a look at that if you have a Pioneer HDTV.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic

I have to ammend my previous review below.

YES

After having the SD4700 for three weeks, I returned it. In the time I had it, I played almost two dozen DVD movies. I found definite problems with the audio and the freezing up of discs. It's no fun watching a movie that keeps freezing for seconds at a time, sometimes over and over again. One time the entire player froze.

I took the player back to the store where I bought it, and they slipped one of their own DVDs in it, and it froze for them too. The longer I had the player, the more audio probelms I kept having. Mostly with the volume going up and down and not staying steady.

The SD4700 has some great features, if they actually worked! Great price for the features, if they worked! Not happy with this player at all, and very dissapointed.

Next time, I will try out a product for weeks before I review it here.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD2200

MP3 play,Audio DVD, menus

Video maybe

This is a head to head comparison of the SD-4700 and the Panasonic RA60 players. I picked up the RA60 from the Best Buy web site for about $20 less than the Toshiba. They are similar machines in many respects. The SD-4700 does have progressive scan, but I don't have an HDTV so that's not an issue for me yet. I compared them in the interlace modes. I was mainly interested in audio. I'd really like DVD-audio and SACD together but I'll have to wait a couple of years for that. Sigh...

Input/Output: Both machines have full decoders, component out, and optical out. The RA60 does not have a coaxial connection. The Toshiba remote is bigger but I had no trouble using either remote control. I found the Toshiba on-screen menus to be slightly more intuitive.

Video: Both machines had excellent video. I liked the Panasonic video better out of the box, however. The Toshiba video seemed slightly more subdued and had a more smoothed look about it. I was able to sharpen up the picture and get close to that from the RA60 by using contrast, picture, and brightness controls, but the RA60 picture still looked a little better to me. In the interlaced mode I found no evidence of the chroma bug in either machine (Toshiba is supposed to have it and Panasonic is not).

Audio: Six channel 96k sampled Audio DVD's were spactacular on both players. I used an optical connection and my reciever's decoders. Both machines played MP3s from 700mb CD-R. Neither could play MP3s from CD-RW. The Toshiba was much better with MP3s overall. The SD-4700 shows a play list containing the first eight characters of the file name. The RP60 only shows track numbers. The SD-4700 will play random tunes, the RP60 will not.

I liked both players but I'm keeping the Toshiba mainly because it has better MP3 capability.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic RA60-K

features,price

none so far

Had the toshiba 3109 for 2 years not one problem.thought i would purchase another tosh to go with mits hdtv,so far have not been disappointed have not used dvd audio as of yet so I can't comment.Picture is great have not seen a picture on a so called high end machine so I can't compare ,but I can't imagine it being better than this.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 3109

DVD video playback, menu, audio cd playback, compatibilty with a multitude of media.

MP3 playback and control

This player is great in all functions except MP3 playback and control. I really like how you can go in the setup menu while a movie is playing because the GUI menu icons are around the outer edge of the screen and the picture is reduced in the middle so you can still watch and see the affects of your changes (a few items can't be changed without stopping the movie).

I planned on keeping this player until I tried tried the MP3 functions. It has several flaws and one that is critical.
1) The song selection menu chops the name down to 8 characters and removes all space and if the name is longer than 8 characters, it essentially cuts it down to 6 because it adds the old DOS ~1 at the end.
2) There are few controls and it appears that the MP3 function was added as a last minute addition because there is almost no documentation.
3) The last and critical failure was the MP3 music quality. All high impulse sounds like some drumbeats and even the plucking of guitar string on quiet songs have a horrible tapping sound in them. I couldn't believe it had such a major flaw. I thought it might be my recording so I played it back on the USB input of my receiver and it sounded perfect. Then I recorded the same song at 96kbps, 112kbps, 128kbps, 160kbps, 192kbps and 256kbps and they all had the same problem except the 96kbps played the song back at about twice the speed so it sounded like chipmunks. I then took my cd back to Best Buy where I played it in a regular MP3 player and it sounded normal. Then I hooked up the SD4700 on display to a Sony home theater system and it had the same horrible tapping that the sales clerk agreed with. He told me to pack it up and bring it back. So I bought a JVC-SA75GD which is much better even though it only has analog output of MP3's.

If you don't care abput MP3, this DVD player is great but the MP3 playback is totally unacceptable.

Similar Products Used:

JVC-SA75GD

Sound

None so far

This is an update to my previous review. I'm still impressed by what the Toshiba player can do with DVD-Audio, but also bought a Sony SCD-CE775 SACD player and now I can compare the two. I've been playing the Sony SCD CE775 more lately because there are more titles available locally in SACD. I can now honestly say that both formats sound equally good, however. So, as long as the formats don't overlap what's available and the prices continue to drop or stay at the current level, I have no problem with buying what I like and listening to it in whichever machine it plays on. The lack of multi-channel titles is bothering me less than I thought and regular CD's play very well on the Sony as on the Toshiba.
The main reason I wanted to add more comment is that I have a solution to the problem of two units requiring the same input for six-channel sound. Believe it or not, I found a useful salesperson at Best Buy, who suggested I try two AV switchers. AV switchers are small boxes with four or three sets of S-Video and video/audio RCA input jacks going to one output set. While most switchers are narrow and sleek and run about $40. There is a brand made for Playstation II that is rectangular (and black) costing $20 per unit. I taped one atop the other using black duct tape. I then ran six short audio cables from the Sony 775 to the first three av inputs, top and bottom--using yellow on top for center input and yellow on bottom for subwoofer, mains to the top and surrounds to the bottom red and white. Duplicated the setup with the Toshiba DVD Audio at the second position. Then fed my amp 6-channel input from the two switchbox outputs, making sure there were no mismatches. Voila! It worked. A true audiophile might say there is a difference, but I cannot tell that there is any degradation of sound quality whatsoever. I suspect there are other enthusiasts out there who may find this useful.

Similar Products Used:

In sound, Sony SCD Ce775