Toshiba SD-3960 DVD Player

Rating:
Summary: Serious flaws
Review: First off, let me say that I own two Toshiba DVD players: this SD-3960 (one month) and an SD-1600 (four years). I love the 1600 but it all of a sudden has problems reading slightly scratched discs, so I got the 3960 as replacement. Only, now, I'm having more problems with the new 3960 than the old 1600!

Out of the box, the 3960 rejected 2 brand new DVD discs. Not a good sign! I've had numerous other problems (with both new and old DVD discs) including:
- complete freeze during playback
- obvious mpeg decoding artifacts during playback (the screen turns to multi-colored jibberish squares for a split-second, and if I "rewind" and replay the scene again, the jibberish is gone!)
- the Skip/Next button not working and instead freezing playback
- Play from menu not working (the screen goes blank, the unit's display shows the chapter number incrementing 1, 2, 3... etc.)

I've contacted Toshiba customer service and they are going to exchange my player for another one, at my expense for shipping costs. If possible, I'll update my review when I get it.

Needless to say, I'm seriously regreting the purchase of this DVD player. The MP3/CD playback works great, though.

UPDATE, March 2 2005: I received my replacement, except they sent me a completely different model! As such, I'm keeping my 1 star rating for this product and will rate the replacement product separately.

Rating:
Summary: BROKEN WITH NO PLACE TO GO
Review: I bought this DVD player after my last one broke. I had my last one for 4 years and this one for less than 7 months. The player got very hot and it froze up. This was a consistant problem. I am shocked. I own several Toshiba products and this is the first to crap out like this. I am left with a very shotty warranty and no DVD player. Very sad.

Rating:
Summary: Ugh, what was I thinking...
Review: I bought this DVD player during the Christmas Season and used it one time to play a full length movie, and a second time to play a 30 minute work out DVD. Then...All of my DVD's are "BAD."

This DVD player won't load/play any of my DVD's. Considering that I have to now contact Toshiba to repair my "new" DVD player bites.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best sounding cheap DVD players out there...
Review: I chose this model because it was recommended on several Internet audio forums for providing the best sound quality at such a rock-bottom price. In fact, it is used by referenceaudiomods dot com as the base model which they convert into a super high grade audiophile-quality CD player by adding in certain components!

I still have my trusty old Panasonic for watching movies, but I use this Toshiba for listening to CD music, and it does provide a really nice sound quality---more detailed but also warmer and more "alive" than most DVD players, which tend to sound kind of cold and closed with music.

Don't really understand what many other reviewers are complaining about, I've yet to have any problems with mine---Toshiba as I understand it is one of very few electronic manufacturers to NOT outsource their products, so they retain quality control over all of them. I've never had a problem with their laptops or TVs.

Rating:
Summary: will not play all region one dvd
Review: i did some research on this dvd player before buying. i checked out consumer reports and they recommended this model. i usually associate toshiba with high quality, but not this time. this dvd player will not play all region one dvds. i recieved 6 dvds for christmas and it would not recognize 3 of them. i found out that i am not the only one with this problem with this model. next it will not save the point you are at in a movie when you turn the power off. finally, the front panel display only shows the chapter number and not the time elapsed. the good points are that for the disk it plays it produces good sound and picture.

Rating:
Summary: It's Junk
Review: I purchased the Toshiba SD3960 after returning a previously purchased Toshiba Sd3950. I bought the SD3960 because the SD3950 audio was distorted while playing Mp3's and it was very hard to hear some dialogue from DVD's. The SD3950 tray also locked up occasionally. I bought and returned 3 different SD3950 players!!!
The SD3960 has much better audio, but consistantly gets very hot (2 players bought and returned). The smell shows up shortly after turning on the player. The heat and smell doesn't dissipate, even after three weeks of use.
Both of these players could be a near perfect player with all the options and ease of use. The SD3950 has a GREAT remote which was changed for the worse on the SD3960. The LCD display was also changed from a full function display on the SD3950 to a 4 digit antiquated setup on the SD3960. I will be returning my latest Toshiba SD3960 NEVER to buy another TOSHIBA DVD player again.

Rating:
Summary: Cheap Plastic
Review: I used to really like Toshiba products, but not so much anymore. This DVD player has a lot of problems. I bought it off of Amazon and have had it for two weeks. With component cables hooked up, and sending in both 480i and 480p this player will flash the screen black when there are moments in movies with bright flashes, such as lightning or flash bulbs. Doesn't sound like it would happen often but it has happened in every movie I have watched on this player. Also, it will hang between chapters in about 1/2 the movies I've watched. I would really recommend purchasing another brand, spend a little more. I'm sending this one back to Toshiba and will purchase from another company. It's not worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: TOSHIBA SD-3960 = #1
Review: Just like consumerreports.org reported, this is THE BEST DVD player that produces the best quality picture. I'm glad I listened to CR and not the other reviews on here. I will be buying all Toshiba products from now on.

Rating:
Summary: Not a user friendly DVD-Player
Review: My 5-year-old Pioneer dvd-player recently died on me and I purchased this Toshiba model. It seemed to have all the features I wanted and looked like a decent player in the store. Did I make a mistake!
It is not at all user friendly. Like other reviewers stated, it takes forever for the tray to open, playback freezes often between chapters, it grinds more often than a beginner shifting a manual car and there is no display on the front of the player.
Furthermore, the remote is a royal pain to use. The design is horrible. I have had the player a week now and still can't find the buttons on it without an exhaustive search.
Also, compared to my last player, this model is really slow. It takes a rather long time for a dvd to initially load.
On a personal note, I also do not like the scan feature on it. My last player would scan until you released the button and then begin play again. On this model, once you hit the scan button, it goes into fast-forward or reverse mode until you press play again. I personnally find this annoying.

I am not at all happy with this player and it is going back to the store this afternoon.

Rating:
Summary: Not ALL bad!
Review: Reading the other reviews I decided to write in toshibas defense! The DVD SD-3960 is not all that bad...I mean come on its only 69.99, what do you expect it to do? Make you coffee in the morning? It just does what it says, Progressive Scan!!! I have not expirenced any problems with the player getting hot, or a flickering saturated picture. I switched from the Samsung N-501 Nuon player. And I noticed a huge difference. The Picture is brighter the sound has better range and the progerssive scan worked like i expected it to. The remote however is a POS BUT if your like me you have 50 remotes and one master universal remote to control everything, so no big deal. I hope this helps.