Toshiba SD-5970 DVD Player with HDMI

Rating:
Summary: Not good at all!
Review: Be careful...this player has problems with the HDMI! Mine started acting up during the first DVD movie I used. After about 30 minutes into the movie, the picture just froze/locked up for about 10 seconds. Later on after about an hour into the movie, all sound disappeared for a few seconds then suddenly came back. (I was taking my sound through the optical output to my 5.1 receiver.)

After the movie was over I shut the player off and had dinner...turned the player back on to play another DVD and this time the HDMI didn't work at all when trying to play the DVD. The intial Toshiba "splash" screen worked through the HDMI, but the moment the DVD was inserted and tried to play the screen went all blue. Switching back to old Analog proved that the rest of the player still works...just not the HDMI portion of this crap machine.

Also I can further attest to the terrible response time of any of the front buttons as well as the remote control.

I tried to call Toshiba's customer service hotline, but alas it's too late now on Friday and they are not open on the weekend...how nice. I guess I'm stuck until Monday. :(

Rating:
Summary: VERY CRAPPY
Review: I bought one for $120 new. I was excited about this product as i just got a 46 inch toshiba hdtv. I hooked up the component cords as well as the hdmi. I Had 4 friends over and they couldnt tell between the hdmi 720p/1080i, or the 480p. They all looked almost the same. A bad thing i noticed about this was the picture was streached on wither upconversion mode, and that was crummy. I wouldnt buy this i would wait for HD-DVD, or better technology. Other things that were annoying

1. slow remote speed!
2. the disc's chattered, very annoying.
3. remote is real poor design
4. operates very hot, smelled like it was burning up, but it wasnt.

i would stay away from this player

Rating:
Summary: AVOID!
Review: I just bought this thinking that it would go well with my LCD HD ready monitor since it had an HDMI output. Well throw that idea out! Everything that should be there is there however the only problem that I had was that they didn't work.

The HDMI output was not working at all and my LCD has an HDMI interface and a special HDMI channel. I was sitting there waiting to see something great but there was just pitch black.

That was not the last of my problems with this seemingly promising DVD player. I took my set of component cables and connected them to my LCD and to tell the truth I was impressed with the resolution. That's why I gave the DVD player one star. However, the DVD player tended to freeze up for reasons I cannot comprehend. My DVDs never did that with the other DVD players I have at home.

So please learn from my mistake and do not buy this.

Rating:
Summary: You get what you pay for!
Review: Needles to say, I was excited to see such a low price on an up-converting HDMI DVD player. When I got it home however, the excitement vanished. I hooked the 5970 up via the HDMI connection to my Sony kp51ws520. The first thing I noticed was that it clips the black level, making it somewhat difficult to make out finer details in dark scenes without adjusting the brightness to an unacceptable level. Moments after noticing this, the unit began freezing for a second or two every couple of minutes. I turned it off and decided to try the component outputs. When I tried to turn it back on none of the front buttons would respond, so I had to use the amazingly unresponsive remote. The picture quality with component video is remarkably better in regard to color and black level. If you're thinking this doesn't make sense, I agree. The only explanation I can figure is that in ann. attempt to produce a cheap HDMI interface Toshiba decided to use poorly made circuitry for that section. I returned the unit, and will buy something else that lives up to the potential of HDMI. As a side note, I'd like to say don't let the inclusion of a cable influence your decision. The included cable is crap. [...]. The cables there are silver-lined and gold-plated ("Rev2").

Rating:
Summary: Good picture, but...
Review: One positive thing about this player is that it delivers a high-quality picture through a totally digital HDMI interface.

But there are several things, which in my opinion, make this player unusable:

The remote control is very unresponsive. Often I have to press a function several times before it will "register" with the player. In general, the entire unit is sluggish. Opening and closing the tray using the button on the front of the unit is a slow operation.

The player does not remember where you left off on the current disc if you press stop and leave it alone for more than 10 minutes or so. This is such a basic operation I am surprised to see this feature lacking in a model these days.

When viewing 16x9 material, the player renders the picture just fine. But if I have discs containing 4:3 material, the player will stretch the picture to fill the entire screen, which is not the way the material was intended to be displayed. This happens only through the HDMI interface.

Several discs that I have that can be read fine by my old DVD player had problems with this one.

I seriously think that they just weren't ready to release this and were trying to get this out to market as soon as possible. Sony has an HDMI upconverting player, but it is not widely available yet (although you can get it here on Amazon). I have not tried that player yet.

Rating:
Summary: Died after only 3 DVD movies
Review: Other than the HDMI connector, I can't think of anything that is good about this unit. The remote is extremely painful to use, can only get response after at least three try pushing the remote button. Even the button on the front of the player has the similar type of response, push, push push then it MIGHT respond...

After only two movies, the player stoped reading the DVD and showed "BAD" message on the screen. Allright, I thought it is the problem with the DVD. Change to another DVD, played about 30 minutes, signal disappeared. No response what soever from either the remote or the button on the front of the unit other than power up and power down. Wasted at least an hour power up, power down, wait for 30 mintes then power up again. Hoping that it will reset itself. No success. Couldn't even get the DVD disc out. I had to get the screw driver and open the cover to manually push the tray out.

Don't waste your time on this player.

Rating:
Summary: Fell apart within 5 weeks
Review: The good reviews got me to buy this - I have a plasma, so I wanted to HDMI upconversion. Unfortunatley this thing has many problems. BUYER BEWARE!

1. It's remote is laid out very poorly, nothing is easy to find on it.

2. It comes on very slowly, sometimes, just to get the tray to open, it takes 3 or 4 trys.

3. It SKIPS! No, it's not my DVD, I have another and tested the same section of the movie and it didn't. The player just froze, like a slow computer when it has too much to handle.

I am returning this item today, luckily BestBuy had an extended return policy during the holiday. You may not be so luckily. I do NOT suggest this product unfortunatley.

Rating:
Summary: Split Personality
Review: The reviewers who rated this below 4 must have gotten a different DVD than I did. In my case the remote works fine as do the buttons on the front of the unit. I don't have to push the buttons two or three times to get it to work. The only thing I can crticize is the remote, it is not very attractive and doesn't contol many TV functions. That is fine though since I can use my multifuntion remote to do every thing except change resolutions.

It plays DVD-Rs that I have recorded without a hitch and the picture is fantastic. I was anxiously awaiting HD DVDs but now I really don't care. It will probably be years before the sort out whether Blue Ray or HDDV will dominate.

Rating:
Summary: Solution to these non working HDMI dvd players !
Review: The Toshiba is a slim, nice looking DVD player. But that's where it ends. If you need a dvd with an HDMI connection with an upconverted signal, there are not too many choices out there right now. What happened when I connected the Toshiba DVD player to my 50 Sony LCD projection TV was annoying. About every 15 minutes of watching a dvd movie, the screen would turn solid blue for about 5 seconds, then continue. It seems that the Toshiba needs to flush a software buffer (used for upconversion) every so often and connot do it seamlessly. So this pause happens about 8 times during a 2 hr movie. And the manual says this pause is normal!??! Also the picture would sometimes 'pixelate', or show up in large distorted checkered blocks. The manual says to turn down the TV's sharpness to stop the 'pixelation', but that didn't help.
The Sony DVD with HDMI connections and upconversion isn't much better. All of the reviews state that the unit stops playing after a few days! And who wants to pay $300 for the Sony DVD, when it doesn't even come with an HDMI cable.
One solution to the problem is as follows. My brother has a Samsung DVD player with upconversion that uses a DVI connector, and it performs beautifully! So what I did was purchase the Samsung DVD player with upconversion that comes with a DVI cable for $179. I then purchased a converter plug for $29 at Best Buy that converts one end of the DVI cable into an HDMI male format. That allowed me to plug the DVI side into the DVD player and the converter plug HDMI side into the Sony LCD television. This causes the TV to get only the video signal from the DVD play. But thats OK. Why would you want the digital sound sent from the DVD to the TV anyways? Most TV don't know what to do with the digital sound signal. The Digital Sound signal needs to go to the Surround Receiver. So I connected the DVD digital optical out to the Surround Receiver's digital optical in with a seperate optical cable, and the theatre system never sounded better! And the upconverted picture quality from the Samsung at 1080i is perfect! Problem solved !

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT PURCHASE if you plan to use the HDMI interface!!!!
Review: Toshiba is "recalling" this DVD player due to poor HDMI performance. Visit their website:
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/dvd/
select customer support
and then updates/notices.
The SD-5960 will be in the pop up window.