Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Player for the $
Review: After trying a DVD-R full of MP3's in almost every unit in the store, this was the only one that could read it. I had first bought a Sony and returned it because it could not read DVD-R's with MP3's on them (very few players can). This Toshiba reads everything! It will also ramdom play MP3's if you want (another thing the Sony couldn't do). It also plays VCD (some players don't support VCD). This unit also has a few very cool features like "Auto Play" where it will skip intos and commercials on DVD's automatically!! The picture and sound are excellent. All this for $69! I'm very happy with it.
Rating: 
Summary: Make It Region Free
Review: First some generalities. The SD-4900 supports more disc formats than most players, including DVD, DVD-Audio, DVD-R, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, VCD, SVCD (see below), WMA, JPG. It will play both NTSC and PAL video, translating PAL for NTSC televisions. The picture and sound quality are clear. On the negative side, when playing CD-R media (but not CD, DVD-R or DVD), there is a low-level clicking sound; it sounds as though the laser reader is constantly tracking. Also, the player does not remember where you are in a movie when you switch it off (most DVD players do). Apart from these minor complaints, it's a good player.Second, I come to the real reason for this review, which is that this is an easy machine to modify for region free playing and for SVCD viewing. You can find full instructions for these modifications at my home page www.math.uga.edu/~djb. As they come out of the box, most players bought in the USA are region crippled, which means that they will not play DVDs purchased in Europe, for example. I take a very dim view of people preventing me from viewing DVDs that I have purchased on a player that I have purchased. If you do not live in the USA, it is very likely that you can go into a shop and buy a DVD player that will play discs from all regions, so this does not apply to you.
Rating:
Summary: Progressive Scan Problem for SD-4900
Review: I bought this DVD player to replace an irritating Go Video model that wouldn't play audio CDs and loved to skip at the slightest scratch in a rental DVD. Overall, the Toshiba SD-4900 has been a worthwhile replacement, especially considering its low price! It has performed very well with almost every DVD I've rented, even ones that are a bit scratched up. It plays audio CDs perfectly and I've had no need for a separate CD player component in my stereo system.
The remote is a little annoying -- some of the buttons aren't grouped in an intuitive way -- but once you've used it for a while, you do get used to it, and it's no big deal.
I'm not an audiophile or digital video expert, so I won't comment on the technical specifications. I actually have the signal routed through a tuner that dates back to 1986! Obviously, this means I sacrifice the clarity of a digital signal, but I have to say the picture still looks great -- it's only going to get better if you're using quality, modern equipment to go with this player.
So what is the one big annoyance? On my old DVD player, if I was interrupted and stopped playing a DVD, I could come back later and pick up where i left off, as long as I didn't eject the disk. Not so with this model. Unless you leave a disk paused (which isn't supposed to be a good idea for lengthy periods of time), the DVD player will shut itself off automatically after several minutes... and it will lose your place in the movie, even though the disk was never ejected. Very annoying if you get interrupted even once or twice.
Still, on balance -- I recommend this model for its excellent performance for the price.
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD player at low cost
Review: I bought this DVD player, and use with my Sony 29", using S-Video. The remote control is easy to use, but didn't control TV or VCR.
The MP3 screen Menu is limited at the first 8 caracters name of the files, but works fine, if you make a CD using ASCII format instead ISO9660 format, you can see the first 11 caracters intead 8.
The Setup Menu is the same of some LG DVD players, you can play SVCD using the same hack for the LG 5xxx series (at your risk). You can make a region free using a special CD, looking for "lg5000.zip" at Google.
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD player at low cost
Review: I bought this DVD player, and use with my Sony 29", using S-Video. The remote control is easy to use, but didn't control TV or VCR.
The MP3 screen Menu is limited at the first 8 caracters name of the files, but works fine, if you make a CD using ASCII format instead ISO9660 format, you can see the first 11 caracters intead 8.
The Setup Menu is the same of some LG DVD players, you can play SVCD using the same hack for the LG 5xxx series (at your risk). You can make a region free using a special CD, looking for "lg5000.zip" at Google.
Rating: 
Summary: Great picture but my old Toshiba SD2109 was better.
Review: I bought this to replace a broken Toshiba SD2109. The picture is great but some of my cds don't play. It's not great on slightly scratched disks which is tough since I rent from netflix. My biggest disappointment was that this unit no longer displays the time remaining on a DVD movie like my old Toshiba. I'm returning it for that reason alone.
Rating:
Summary: Misses perfection in an ugly way
Review: I got this DVD player in the hope that it would replace my current pair of Toshiba SD3750 and Phillips DVD726. See, I wanted to be able to play commercial DVDs, DVD+R, and DVD-R. My SD3750 played DVD+R like a champ and had great ergonomics; the DVD726 had lousy ergonomics (had issues making its remote teach my MX500 too), but read DVD-R just fine. The reviews say this thing can do DVD+/- in addition to doing multi-region and PAL-NTSC conversion on the fly (just like the DVD726 -- another function I wanted), so I picked it up. Good points:
It's thin
It's got controls on the front which makes it easy to control it w/o remote
It's got a decent remote that taught my MX500 without a problem. Bad point:
Oh, just one really. When you put a DVD-R in it, it makes a constant and horrible whirring/grinding noise for as long as the disc is in there. It's ... just bad. That kills it for me -- I'll be returning it in the next few days. -roy
Rating:
Summary: Booby trap fixer upper
Review: I had the same pro scan problem with this (otherwise excellent)Toshiba DVD player, but it's not difficult to correct. The instruction manual says to press the 'stop' button to turn off the disc you're trying to watch, then press and hold the 'stop' button for at least 5 seconds. The Toshiba screen saver should then pop right up on your TV screen. Good luck... it worked for me.
Rating:
Summary: Great Upgrade
Review: I have a 1999 Panasonic DVD player and my girlfriend bought me this dvd player. Its great, i would have to agree with the other guy about watching Lord of the Rings with the new dvd player. I love it!
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I have always loved Toshiba electronics, so when I saw this DVD player I did not hesitate to buy it. It is not the quality I normally get when I buy Toshiba. Here are the reasons I returned it a 30 days later. I quite often will hit a button to display how much time is left in the DVD I'm watching. This feature is not even an option with this player. I could only display the elapsed time. I thought maybe I just didn't understand how to do it. I looked all through the book. The feature just isn't there. I quite often hit pause and with my previous Sony DVD player and could even hit stop then hours later hit play and resume watching where I left off. This player will do that but only for so long. After a while it goes back to taking you to the very beginning of the DVD even if I never hit stop or the power button. If you can enter a chapter number to go straight to, then you must have to hit some other button first. When I pressed the number buttons once a DVD was playing, it did nothing. Which brings me to the layout of the buttons on the remote. Not practical at all. Maybe I just wasn't used to it, but the one button I use the most is "Pause". Pause as in, I have to answer the door; or the phone is ringing; or I'm thirsty. Why is button so small and surrounded by other small buttons so close? Every time I looked for a button, I had to search and never could get used to the layout. When you are in front of the player, all the buttons look a like. Each one is a little dot and the text above it is very small. The contrast between the letters and the background was worse than what I see in these photos. I have better than 20 / 20 vision and had trouble finding the button I wanted when the lights were dim. I'm not sure what this next observation means, but found it interesting. The Sony DVD player I accidentally cooked with a very powerful receiver, and the Sony DVD player that replaced this Toshiba model would show widescreen movies centered perfectly in the center of the TV screen. However, the two main TVs I watch that are the monitors for this receiver are both Toshibas - A 57" 16:9 widescreen and a 37" tube. This player would show the movie with more of the black bar on the bottom than the top. When the picture was large enough on my widescreen to not have the black bars, it did seem like the top was too cut off. I suspect this is the cause of the DVD player, but in fairness to Toshiba, the receiver is a Sony. I did not try the DVD player directly connected to the TV, but I see no reason why a receiver would alter the signal it receives and amplifies.
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