Rating: 
Summary: Nice player-fatally flawed
Review: All the glowing reviews are true as to picture and sound; but the player has no onboard dts decoder. This would be just an inconvenience, were the player not set to output the dts sound out the 5.1 analog out section, as digital noise! This means, if you are listening to a DVD Audio disc, and switch to a dts disc, such as Toy Matinee, and you forget to switch the receiver to another input, you will get the most awful, speaker ruining, ear shaterring noise imaginable. Imagaine 1000 fax machines amplified by 1000. The machine, should cut out the dts signal from the 5.1 outs. The machine is an accident waiting to happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Chroma bug and audio difficulties aside, a great product
Review: Considering this is my first standalone dvd player, it's hard for me to fully ascertain how strong this product is. I bought the 4700 for the video quality more than the audio features, and in this respect, I am more than pleased. But it's not all peaches.After two months of owning this product, I have confirmed that this dvd player has the ill-fated "chroma bug" problem. I only became aware of this recently when watching Vertical Limit on DVD. While watching the "making of" featurette, there was significant bleeding of bright red, especially evident with the subheadings. For the more casual consumer, this isn't that big of a problem, because it's hard to notice. But I'm sure any meticulous buyer will want to know. However, since many of Toshiba's, Sony's and Pioneer's lines of dvd players are conflicted with this problem, I don't see any reason to particularly bash this model. (By the way, this chroma bug flaw can't be fixed. Let's just hope future mpeg decoding technology will overcome this problem. As far as I know, only the Panasonic brand has consistently avoided the bug.) The chroma bug issue is not a big deal, since it's rarely noticeable to the untrained eye. What's more important is the overall picture quality, and that's where this product shines. I'm using this player with standard analog connection (no S-video, no hdtv, interlaced mode), and the video is SUPERB. I can only imagine how much better the progressive scan would be. There should be no concern that the video display will far surpass expectations. However, dealing with the audio features can be frustrating. Switching between 5.1 Dolby Digital audio, DVD-audio discs, normal CDs, and mp3 music requires you to switch modes manually. There is no automatic conversion, so if you use this player a lot for audio playback between different mediums, be prepared for some tedious menu changing. Some reviewers have complained of the player's poor mp3 playback. I don't know personally since I only use this player to watch DVD movies, but I could imagine audio problems existing. The LCD panel only has 8 characters, so I'm sure this will come as a problem for long mp3 filenames. The zoom feature was surprisingly good, and although I think the remote is ugly and bulky, I quickly adapted to it. The manuals and documentation were pretty good, and the Toshiba website seems to provide good support and FAQs, although I haven't found them to be necessary yet (that's always a good thing). The warranty is only three months, which is downright sad. Despite it's flaws, I'm still giving it 5 stars. Why? Because 1) the video is superb (my main priority), 2) there are a plethora of features, 3) lots of connectivity choices (all gold-plated), 4) $250 (Best Buy) is an absolute steal for a progressive scan player, 5) very simple graphical menu system and ease of installation, 6) fast and silent disc loading, 7) plays problematic discs (ex. Matrix) without fault, and 8) it doesn't heat up and seems to have strong build quality. Weighing the cost-benefits, I'd say it's as close a perfect product as one could get for the first-time or casual DVD consumer. An audiophile, however, might want to entertain more scrutiny.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible picture / sound - poorly built
Review: First of all let me say that I am MORE than pleased with my purchase of this product from a viewing standpoint. Picture and sound leaves me speechless. I found myself going back to watch movies I haven't seen in ages. I you have a TV that supports the progressive scan feature of this player you should not be disappointed! My problem with this player is apparently the poor construction. I had the player for 55 days and the power supply went out. The company autorized service center I took the player to for warranty work said he averages at least 1 call a DAY to fix a Toshiba player. It took 3 weeks to get the parts needed from Toshiba to fix it. I tried to contact Toshiba 3 times for advice and never got a reponse. Incredibly poor customer service. I'm more than happy with the purchase when the player is working. Maybe I just got a bad one and I'll have no more problems...let's hope. Keep this in mind when deciding on a Toshiba however.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible picture / sound - poorly built
Review: First of all let me say that I am MORE than pleased with my purchase of this product from a viewing standpoint. Picture and sound leaves me speechless. I found myself going back to watch movies I haven't seen in ages. I you have a TV that supports the progressive scan feature of this player you should not be disappointed! My problem with this player is apparently the poor construction. I had the player for 55 days and the power supply went out. The company autorized service center I took the player to for warranty work said he averages at least 1 call a DAY to fix a Toshiba player. It took 3 weeks to get the parts needed from Toshiba to fix it. I tried to contact Toshiba 3 times for advice and never got a reponse. Incredibly poor customer service. I'm more than happy with the purchase when the player is working. Maybe I just got a bad one and I'll have no more problems...let's hope. Keep this in mind when deciding on a Toshiba however.
Rating:
Summary: I'm satisfied with it
Review: I bought this a few months ago after doing as much reading of DVD players on the internet as I could. Not that this one was the only one I would have bought, but at the price, ratings, features, I felt I was getting a good deal. I live overseas and there are no real stores to go into to see the DVD players in action. I didn't want a basement bargain model, but didn't need a super duper machine either. I almost went for some other Toshiba models, but I didn't want a multi-carousel player. Getting up to change a disk isn't a big deal to me. When I got the player in the mail, it hooked up easily and worked right away. That also told me it was well built as it was mailed to me in the manufacturers box with no external or internal damage to it. I haven't read the manual extensively, but it was easy enough to figure out how to get the thing going. I don't think there is a long load time once you put in the DVD's. I love how if you stop watching the movie, turn it off and come back to it later, it starts right where you left off. I have had no problems with skipping or freezing up either. I lent a DVD of mine to a friend and she returned it saying something was wrong with it as their machine wouldn't play it. I put it in mine and had no problem watching it from start to finish. (I wish I could tell you what they had, but I don't know). I know this isn't a highly technical review, but when I put a DVD in, the picture is great, the sound is fine, remote works without a hitch and it is all a no brainer, then I can't complain. I would buy the same thing again if I had to. Haven't found a thing wrong with it or something that I wish was different.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent player - just one question
Review: I bought this region 1 player to sit beside my region 2 Sony. The reason for buying a seperate player was to avoid problems with the RCE issue and people taking the lid off your player to "chip it" and subsequent warranty problems. This may have cost a few dollars more but not much.
This is my first Toshiba product after being a loyal Sony fan and I must say this is an excellent and easy to use player compared to the Sony.
Plus points are the ease of set up and ability to remain watching the movie whilst making settings, a fantastic picture and an excellent price.
The only question is "does it display the remaining time of the movie?" Can anybody help me out on this one?
I had to buy this through Z shops for international shipping, received a great product, a fantastic price and excellent service, thoroughly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Picture and sound
Review: I have a 50in Toshiba HD TV with this DVD plaver and it is fantastic. For half of what others want for features this DVD plaver is more than worth it.
Rating:
Summary: excellent DVD player
Review: I have had this unit for several months. It's a great performer. The controls and remote are well designed and the picture is very good. CD's and DVD Audio disks sound superb. Some of the controls on the unit itself are kind of small, but once you get used to them, it's not an issue. I did not need to "tweak" the controls at all to get a great television picture. An excellent choice if you can find one.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Quality at a Great Price!
Review: I just bought the SD-4700, and I have to say it's an amazing player. I am running it in the Interlaced Mode, and it displays a stunning picture- I can only imagine what the Progressive picture is like! The DVD-Audio option is fantastic, putting you right in the middle of the music. The slew of options, the beautiful picture and sound, and an easy remote make this the best DVD player on the market, all for (as great price).
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent player with some minor problems
Review: I purchased the SD-4700 mainly for its progressive scan feature and I must say that it does make a big difference. I'm using this player with a Philips digital widescreen HDTV (32" tube) and, finally, I'm starting to see the full potential of the DVD format. Some people may argue that since a lot of new TVs (especially HDTVs) are equipped with high quality line doublers, you get all the benefits of progressive scanning directly from your TV, but at least in my case, the SD-4700 does a much better job than Philips' own "Natural Motion" technology in presenting progressive output while still maintaining that "film quality" of the... err... film :) The remote control is a lot easier to use than previous Toshiba models and provides very easy access to all the features you may need during playback (e.g. subtitles, audio and angle selection). It also contains a rather large joystick that makes it very easy to navigate menus. Also worth mentioning is the fact that all the controls are also available on the player itself. Very useful for these times when you accidentally "misplace" the remote. As for the supported formats, I had no problems playing DVDs, VCDs, music CDs & CDRs and MP3 CDRs. The MP3 support is very basic and has some quirks. For example, I still can't really understand how the player determines the order of tracks. Seems a bit random to me but there must be a logical explanation here :). Anyway, the feature actually does work, the overall sound quality is good and that's what counts. I haven't tested the player with DVD Audio discs yet so I can neither confirm nor deny the problems reported in other reviews. Now for the kinks, which are minor but still prevent this player from getting 5 stars: 1. Some widescreen HDTVs (my Philips among them) do not allow the user to manually set the aspect ratio for progressive signals. This means that you may get just a little bit frustrated when you play widescreen, NON-anamorphic DVDs ("letterboxed" -- where the "black bars" are coded into the frame to make it display correctly on 4:3 TVs). Your options with these DVDs are to either watch them letterboxed in a rather small 4:3 viewing area (annoying!), have the SD-4700 stretch them to 16:9 (annoying because it will mess up the aspect ratio) or use the zoom feature of the player to try and get the optimal picture (frustrating but doable). What this player really needs is a smart zoom feature that removes the black bars and scales the picture to fit the screen (like most widescreen TVs have) but I guess you just can't get it all. That said, since most new DVDs are anamorphic (contain no black bars and therefore always displayed in the correct aspect ratio), this can be considered a minor inconvenience. 2. The player has some problems displaying menu items in 4:3 progressive mode: highlighted menu items sometimes get totally messed up. This doesn't happen with native 16:9 DVDs or when you set the player to stretch everything to 16:9, so it's not really that big of a deal. 3. Pixel cropping - I think this player crops almost half an inch off the bottom of your picture (I made sure this was not a problem with my TV not being properly aligned). According to the AVIA test signals I used, over 25 pixels were cropped out and that's considered a little too much. Still, I guess many people wouldn't notice this glitch because their TVs are probably cropping so much more... :). All in all, I am very pleased with this player. You really do get a lot for your money here! Sure, there are a few kinks but they are not horrible (unless you are a non-compromising videophile). If you have an HDTV, you really owe it to yourself to get a progressive scan DVD player, and this is probably one of the better (and cheaper) ones out there.
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