Rating: 
Summary: Rest In Peace
Review: Procured: November 2001
Disposed: March 2004It was a work-horse while it lasted. DVD's still look terrific, but CD's no longer play. It does not pay to repair the unit.
To Toshiba: Unplugging the unit did not work. Two years plus 5 months is too young to malfunction. For shame.
Rating: 
Summary: Super Video Player
Review: The 4700 is as good of a DVD player as one could want with all the features you need. The zoom is great you can use just enough
to change all those widescreen films to full screen. I can't comment on the DVD Audio side, but for regular cd its a good player and for most probably a great player, but for a high end
audio system its just ok. My six year old Micromega stage 2 cd
player blows it out of the water on CDs, but I still love this machine and can't wait to hear DVD Audio discs
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent DVD player that plays all your CDRs: )
Review: The main reason I bought this DVD player is that it can play CDR disc as well. It surely is fun to load in your own CDR disc loaded with MP3s or VCD movie. The picture and sound quality is very good, better than the Panasonic AU120 model I had before.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect!
Review: The perfect DVD player. It has all the features you could want, and if you someday plan on upgrading your TV to HDTV (and you should), the progressive scan feature on this player will blow you away. This model packs in all the high-tech yet user-friendly features you'd want. Did you know that hardly any other brands feature a ZOOM feature like Toshiba does? Gosh, I thought it should be a standard feature. The Toshiba SD4700 (and most other Toshiba models) has it, as well as every stereo decoding feature you'll want or need. Prepare to be awestruck by the superior sound, picture, and breadth of options!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: The progressive scan technology is awesome and makes a difference. This is the cheapest progressive scan model by Toshiba but top quality. I recommend this DVD player over other players without Progressive Scan
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Good and Capable DVD player
Review: This is a very good DVD player. I have used now for some weeks, and tested it with Progressive scan as well as the interlaced mode. The picture quality is sharp and vivid with no traces of any artifacts, edge jagging etc. Without wasting any one's time, I would say that if you are a perfectionist this is the DVD player for you.
Rating:
Summary: Good player for this price
Review: This is my 3rd DVD player and I have been using it for the past 4 months. I started with an entry-level Samsung, then moved to the Toshiba 2800. The Samsung was slow to load discs and slow to respond to the remote. The Toshiba 2800 loaded discs faster and had added the advantage of being able to zoom the picture just enough to fill more of the screen, which is a great feature if you want to watch a letter-boxed widescreen DVD but are willing to sacrifice a small amount of the image on both sides in order to get a bigger picture. However, the 2800 did not have the feature set of the 4700, which includes Toshiba's "Navi" navigation feature. This allows you to access most of the other features of the player by selecting from a menu on a single screen, while keeping the picture in the center of the screen so that you can continue to watch the DVD. This feature, along with the ability to zoom a widescreen image in small increments, are useful features that I would not be willing to give up. The player has the usual outputs (optical and coaxial digital video included) and also supports DVD-Audio, though I have not used that feature yet. It also supports a variety of audio formats, but I have not used that feature except to listen to regular CDs ... Build quality seems good; the player has a solid feel. The remote is reasonably intuitive, though I found that the joystick was not always accurate; I could push it up and the cursor might go to the side instead. The video and audio quality of this player are both higher than the Samsung and the Toshiba 2800. There's clarity in the video image that was not there with the less expensive players, and the sound seems to have a broader dynamic range. I'm using the component outputs and running the video image directly to my flat-screen HDTV and the picture is excellent. For audio, I'm using the optical output into a Yamaha A/V receiver and the sound is also excellent. Occasionally, the picture will freeze for a second or two. If I rewind, the video plays smoothly, so it's not the DVD itself, it's the player. However, it's not frequent enough to be annoying, just sometimes noticeable. It handles layer transitions on dual-layer DVDs better than the two cheaper players I had, but it's still often apparent. I have not seen any of the pixelization that I saw on the Samsung, and the video image does not skip. At times, the audio can seem slightly out-of-synch for dialogue, but this is rare and goes away if you stop the DVD and restart. Sometimes the player fails to output audio and needs to be restarted. This seems to occur after playing an audio CD, though it can also happen if the player has loaded a DVD, but has gone into automatic shutdown because I've stopped watching the DVD to check out the TV news or answer the phone. Overall, for this price point, I am pleased with the player, and it is definitely worth the small increase in price to get the improved quality and a better set of features than an entry-level model. However, I can see now why people pay twice as much (or more) to get a high-end player. I plan to keep this one as long as it works, but I suspect that we will continue to see better quality and lower prices on DVD players as the technology continues to be refined. Bottom line on the Toshiba 4700: Pro: Great video and audio output, Toshiba's incremental zoom that allows you to "bump up" the image just enough to see slightly more of a widescreen picture on a non-widescreen TV, handy Navi feature, solid build quality, DVD-audio, and great value for the price. Con: Occasional video and audio glitches that might not occur on a higher-end model.
Rating:
Summary: Good player for this price
Review: This is my 3rd DVD player and I have been using it for the past 4 months. I started with an entry-level Samsung, then moved to the Toshiba 2800. The Samsung was slow to load discs and slow to respond to the remote. The Toshiba 2800 loaded discs faster and had added the advantage of being able to zoom the picture just enough to fill more of the screen, which is a great feature if you want to watch a letter-boxed widescreen DVD but are willing to sacrifice a small amount of the image on both sides in order to get a bigger picture. However, the 2800 did not have the feature set of the 4700, which includes Toshiba's "Navi" navigation feature. This allows you to access most of the other features of the player by selecting from a menu on a single screen, while keeping the picture in the center of the screen so that you can continue to watch the DVD. This feature, along with the ability to zoom a widescreen image in small increments, are useful features that I would not be willing to give up. The player has the usual outputs (optical and coaxial digital video included) and also supports DVD-Audio, though I have not used that feature yet. It also supports a variety of audio formats, but I have not used that feature except to listen to regular CDs ... Build quality seems good; the player has a solid feel. The remote is reasonably intuitive, though I found that the joystick was not always accurate; I could push it up and the cursor might go to the side instead. The video and audio quality of this player are both higher than the Samsung and the Toshiba 2800. There's clarity in the video image that was not there with the less expensive players, and the sound seems to have a broader dynamic range. I'm using the component outputs and running the video image directly to my flat-screen HDTV and the picture is excellent. For audio, I'm using the optical output into a Yamaha A/V receiver and the sound is also excellent. Occasionally, the picture will freeze for a second or two. If I rewind, the video plays smoothly, so it's not the DVD itself, it's the player. However, it's not frequent enough to be annoying, just sometimes noticeable. It handles layer transitions on dual-layer DVDs better than the two cheaper players I had, but it's still often apparent. I have not seen any of the pixelization that I saw on the Samsung, and the video image does not skip. At times, the audio can seem slightly out-of-synch for dialogue, but this is rare and goes away if you stop the DVD and restart. Sometimes the player fails to output audio and needs to be restarted. This seems to occur after playing an audio CD, though it can also happen if the player has loaded a DVD, but has gone into automatic shutdown because I've stopped watching the DVD to check out the TV news or answer the phone. Overall, for this price point, I am pleased with the player, and it is definitely worth the small increase in price to get the improved quality and a better set of features than an entry-level model. However, I can see now why people pay twice as much (or more) to get a high-end player. I plan to keep this one as long as it works, but I suspect that we will continue to see better quality and lower prices on DVD players as the technology continues to be refined. Bottom line on the Toshiba 4700: Pro: Great video and audio output, Toshiba's incremental zoom that allows you to "bump up" the image just enough to see slightly more of a widescreen picture on a non-widescreen TV, handy Navi feature, solid build quality, DVD-audio, and great value for the price. Con: Occasional video and audio glitches that might not occur on a higher-end model.
Rating:
Summary: This is a very good player!
Review: This player packs a lot of value into a relatively well priced package. On average, for a few more bucks than it's main competition (ehem...Panasonic, etc.), not only do you get progressive scan and CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3 playback but this unit also includes DVD-Audio, which delivers amazing sounding 24-bit 96KHz audio on 6 channels (or 2 if you prefer). It just kills regular CD audio. Toshiba's Colorstream Pro progressive picture on my Toshiba 43H70 TV (high def progressive rear projection) is as good as it gets for picture quality in this price range. No aliasing or artifacts, rich and detailed picture. Add optical, coax, and 5.1 outputs (all gold plated) plus component out (of course) plus cool looks (blue LED, scrolling + fading matrix display, cool navi menu, etc.) and you have an awsome player that people will drool over. Best in class for the money.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good DVD Player, But ... 30 April 2002
Review: This player performed very well for the first 100 days. We were very pleased with the picture and digital sound. Without the failure I would have rated it 4-stars. However, after 3-months of operation playing about four DVD/week the unit started stalling on scenes. Shortly thereafter, it would load a dvd or CD (even new ones) then give the message "insert disk". Apparently the player is unable to detect that the disk is already loaded. The unit appears to be fully operational except that it will not recgonize the disk just loaded. Initially, we managed to get the disk playing after opening and closing the tray repeatly four or five times. About 5-days later it refused to recgonize any DVD or CD that had been loaded into the tray and no amount of cycling the tray door helped. The message "insert disk" was all we could get out of the unit. At this time, I haven't seen anyone else who has encountered this problem. (Perhaps this is a case where the extended warrany might be justified?)
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