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08 Dec, 00:00
Updated 1/18/06. Owned for 6 weeks.
Highlights:
- Picture quality is outstanding. 800x480 resolution really shines. Viewing angle is excellent. You can see the picture on the screen clearly from any angle as advertised.
- Sound quality is good for the size of the speakers but with Toshiba DVD players lot of people are complaining about lack of volume. With my computers running in the background with fan noise, I had to turn up to volume to 75% to hear the sound comfortably. In a quiet room, 50% volume was acceptable. With highway noise, it produces adequate sound at max volume.
- Size/Weight: Dimension stated on Amazon is incorrect. Length and Height is about an inch shorter than stated. (approx. 10.25 x 2.25 x 7.75) It's still large. Due to it's size, it's hard to find a case for a car that'll hold this DVD player. I bought a Case Logic Sport case but it was about 1/2" too small. I had to purchase Monster To Go (Large) case. The placement of the speakers make the unit little bigger than necessary.
- All the A/V connections are located in the rear of the unit. It comes with composite A/V cable and component video cable. Additionally A/V In (composite only for input), S-Video Out, and Digital Audio are available.
- It was able to play my VCD disc as well as Audio CDs. It played DVD and DVD-Rs fine. It's also able to read JPEG files stored on CD. Supposedly it accepts Kodak Picture CD but that's not useful for me.
- Memory Card Support: It was able to read my Memory Stick. It scans the content in the memory card when you switch the mode then all the playable contents are displayed. I wish they used smaller font to fit more on the screen. Only handful of selection are displayed at a time in a list mode.
- Battery. Stated number is 4 hours. We were able to watch 3+ hours without any problem.
Additional thoughts:
It's solidly built product and it looks fantastic. Since picture quality is the most important aspect of any DVD player, it does not disappoint in that area. Miscellaneous notes: It does not have TV/CATV/FM radio tuner as mentioned in some initial news report of this product announcment. But then again it's $400 instead of $600 as initially reported. I wish it supported CF card. It supports Divx but I would've liked MPEG4(PSP) support only because I own a PSP. The lettering on the buttons on the unit are slick but little hard to read but it does come with a remote with most of the features of a regular DVD player. By far the biggest disappointment is JPEG viewing quality and performance. Pictures do not take advantage of the screen well. If I use 7MP photo then it downgrades it to ~400x300. If I use 3MP photo then it downgrades it to ~480x360. If I actually convert the photo to 640x480 on my computer then it displays it well. Did this feature get tested? How did this feature even make it on the player when it's just terrible? The zoom function is not like zoom function you'll find on your camera. It just zooms in on the poor quality converted image instead of the original image file. This fact alone prevents me from giving 5 stars since it was one of the reasons I paid extra for this model. It's really just made for viewing movies and playing music. It's not ideal for viewing photos from your memory card or CD. You are better of using AV cable from your camera and hooking it up to this player to view the photos.
Don't even bother trying to view images from CD. It runs at snail speed. If displayed quality was even acceptable I wouldn't mind but the image display is just horrible. To force me to convert images to 640x480 for decent viewing quality is simple unacceptable.
Things that would've made this product outstanding:
1) Better JPEG viewing capabilities and interface. It's a completely useless feature.
2) Size of the unit. It's hard to find a case for this unit due to it's size. At it's price, it would have been nice if they included a case specifically made for this player.
3) CF card support and MP4 support.
I'm giving 4 stars because as a DVD player, it's great.
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