The price at Amazon is a LOT more. However, they have several reviews, and most are absolutely terrible. I am looking for a SMALL DVD player, so this isn’t quite right, but with the reviews, I’d have to pass. A Bad Item at a Good Price is still a Bad Deal.
I own this product, and it is AMAZING. No problems whatsoever. I only paid $30 shipped for mine, though, from a friend. At least I know I got a good deal on it!
The description says it plays DVD-R and -RW. After looking around, I found it also plays +R and +RW discs. I also found lots of reports of a consistent stuttering problem when upconverting DVDs.
Wow - that’s what I get for composing such a long post! A flood of responses sneak in.
I’ll try to answer a few questions .
region free , yeah, the code posted above works after it finally takes (bad remote?)
VCD, SVCD, NTSC, PAL - yeah, I vaguely remember testing all the above
XViD - yeah, I used the sample test disc from one of those dvdhelp type forums that has a plethora of codecs and MPEG1/2, AVI/SViD files. It played many/most of them flawlessly
upconversion - average. The Toshiba HDDVD player supposedly upconverts MUCH MUCH better, and of course, the $150 or the $200 versions of the Oppo upconverters are also vastly better. And no upconversion over component.
Whew.
Like I said, skippy, faulty, flawed … good if you watch movies in 10-20 minute fits (say, with dinner every evening, continuing the next evening etc) - so it can be powered off to cool down and avoid the skips.
In my opinion, candidate for one of the worst woots ever, and one of the worst DVD players Toshiba has made (Yeah, quite a bit more explicit compared to the relatively gentle tone of my dvdrhelp.com review. Deal.)
Ooof… And it’s Belkin, too - so you didn’t even get some sort of “quality”.
www.bluejeanscable.com for all your quality cable needs (when it matters) - there’s plenty of people on eBay selling totally decent HDMI cables for a couple bucks. The only time you MIGHT need a higher quality cable is when you’re going very long distances, and signal loss/noise might be a concern. 6’ - absolutely not a concern, even with crap cable.
Anyways - interesting woot - I’m put off by the bad reviews, and all my TV’s HDMI ports are used up. Hey Woot - HDMI reciever maybe? HT in a box?
I did that with the LG they sold me - the one that didnt work worth a damn for anyone - i was able to load regionfree firmware, but then NONE of my Lucasfilm original DVDs worked, I got region error - and if I remember the Disneys didnt work either. It also didnt fix the freezing/skipping, but thats another issue.
Theres many forums online that list firmware upgrades and alternate firmware, even for DVD-ROM/DVD-RW drives, but I’m not gonna post any.
heres a paraphrased quote from a review “The Toshiba SD-K850should not be considered. I went through three units. There is a design problem. Every DVD discs I put in, even brand new, will have the one or two annoying five seconds freeze anywhere during playback.It appears to be the HDMI out feature that causes it b/c the next model down without HDMI doesnt have the same problem”
i have this identical dvd player. i got it for about 50 bucks at a sears. i wouldn’t suggest it. i got it because there was a real piece of crap dvd p;ayer for like 35 bucks, and i figured i’d splurge for the name brand (toshiba) and pay 15 bucks more. my main complaint is the speed and reaction time for navigating through dvd menus, and the speed and reaction time of the player when fast forwarding or rewinding. everything just reacts slowly. i remember even posting reviews with my unhappiness on a couple sites. i think amazon and epinions. is it a good deal for 39.99? maybe. toshiba is a good brand, but i wouldn’t expect any type of performance at all. and you can’t turn off this friggin blue laser light shining from the loading tray that illuminates the whole room when the lights are out…
<edit> - my mistake, i actually have the similar model sd-4980, not sure what the differences are…
You want HDMI cables at a good price?
HDMI cable at Walmart $48.44
HDMI cable at electronic box store $98.99
Paying less than $5 for the same thing at Monoprice… Well you know
from what i have read, it seems to play all formats, including xvid. it has subtitle support too, in srt format. there are optical outputs for surround sound.
since the hdmi cable is included, it’s a bonus - i think this will definately sell out.
Yeah. I knew for <= 6’ it didn’t matter, and that was the cheapest I could find locally. BestBuy was over $60 for the same cable. (For some reason, I wanted one right now and wasn’t willing to wait for one to ship.)
The concept of a “quality” cable is a myth these days.
HDMI is a DIGITAL format. 0s and 1s. There’s no such thing as “quality” because there’s no such thing as loss.
NEVER get screwed by buying “quality” cable for a digital purpose. HDMI cables should be bought as cheaply as possible, as there’s no other factor. If I knew how the pins worked I could wire one out of copper hangers.
The same goes for Digital Coaxial speaker cables, which is just regular composite cable, and the ones they sell at Best Buy for 100 bucks are no nicer.