Toshiba SD-3950 Progressive Scan DVD Player

Rating:
Summary: It's a great player when it works
Review: We got this for Christmas because it had so many features for a relatively low price, and had good reviews. Unfortunately, within a couple of days--after, sadly, we'd trashed the packaging--it began locking up on us. Turn it on, load a DVD, and suddenly it won't play, won't eject the disc tray, won't do anything. Toshiba said we needed to unplug it for five minutes and it would reset itself and work. Turns out that does the trick, but it's very annoying to have to keep doing it most of the time we want to play DVDs. Perhaps it's an unusual glitch and you'll have better luck, but Toshiba had heard of the problem. Save your packaging, just in case!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent DVD player with Toshiba quality and performance.
Review: Toshiba makes top-notch DVD players with an excellent reputation for outstanding performance as well as quality and reliability. The SD-3950 has these desirable characteristics plus component video output for better picture quality and progressive scan technology for compatibility with HDTVs, all at a bargain price. You may not have an HDTV yet but you probably will have one within a year or two, so why not be prepared with a progressive scan DVD player when you can get one this good at such a low price? And the component video output will improve the picture quality even on non-HDTVs. This player is an outstanding performer at a terrific price.

Rating:
Summary: Audio????
Review: I bought this as a bedroom-only DVD player and am pleased with the picture quality. It's connected to a Toshiba 20" flat screen and the video image is wonderful. On first connection, there were strange pauses, but that never happened after setup was done. My only concern is that the volume does not go very high when playing. There is no receiver (it's a DVD to TV connection), and when I put the TV volume to full, the audio is hardly at high volume. I connected component video cables to the TV for stellar video reproduction and used the cheap in-box cables for the audio connection. It's somewhat irritating to play a movie at full volume and have it sound a notch above a whisper. If anyone has any possible solutions, please comment.

Rating:
Summary: Toshiba is excellent w/DVD
Review: I read the customer reviews at Amazon.com for this unit. It seems that heat has been a problem. I bought it anyway because I had an SD1600 that played very well. I am hearing impaired, and wanted the dialogue enhanced feature, so I bought it anyway and gave the old one to one of my children. I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and bought an expandable towel rack. It straddles my DVD player and raises the cable box about 5 inches above the DVD player. It has performed flawlessly since Jan. 18, 2004. The dialogue enhancement was worth it. My son made a DVD-R and brought it over. Again, perfection. I have played almost everything on this unit. No problems. Just to keep everyone informed, I am still very happy as of March 3, 2004
No April Fools Joke. Still working great as of today.

Rating:
Summary: Not such a good deal
Review: Great price,but had nothing but problems 1st time i used it no sound turned off the power restart it works fine,next dvd froze pushed all buttons even the power no response had to unplug the unit to get it to stop.did this on every other dvd i tried. Called toshiba was told to send it to them and they would replace it they sent me back model#sd-3960 it works fine,so i would aviod this model and get the new one sd-3960 i see amazon has it on sale too.

Rating:
Summary: Not happy
Review: I bought and tested this unit. In simple terms, my two year old DVD player read my disks better than this unit. Needless to say I returned it.

Rating:
Summary: Audio????
Review: I bought this as a bedroom-only DVD player and am pleased with the picture quality. It's connected to a Toshiba 20" flat screen and the video image is wonderful. On first connection, there were strange pauses, but that never happened after setup was done. My only concern is that the volume does not go very high when playing. There is no receiver (it's a DVD to TV connection), and when I put the TV volume to full, the audio is hardly at high volume. I connected component video cables to the TV for stellar video reproduction and used the cheap in-box cables for the audio connection. It's somewhat irritating to play a movie at full volume and have it sound a notch above a whisper. If anyone has any possible solutions, please comment.

Rating:
Summary: Great player with lots of featues
Review: I bought this player for our bedroom, to entertain my husband while he was recuperating. I has seen a similar one at Costco, but this was a little cheaper and the free Super Saver shipping delivered it to my door in 2 days! It was easy to hook up with our Sony flat screen TV. Works perfectly. We've watched DVDs and photo CDs. The best surprise was how well it plays music CDs and mp3's. I don't know much about how audio works, so maybe the TV is why it sounds so good. Anyway, my husband no longer feels like we need to buy a sound system for the bedroom. So, I got a great DVD player at a great price, and saved on buying any other equipment! Highly recommend this one!

Rating:
Summary: Great for the Price
Review: I was kind of skeptical after reading all the reviews, but I was pleasantly surprised. It works very well, the sound is great and it has a lot of functions you can play around with. After the rebate you couldn't really find a brand name DVD player in this price.

Rating:
Summary: Could be Great!?
Review: The Toshiba SD3950 has all the add-ons a basic DVD player owner could want. A very nice remote control, Auto-play for both DVD's and audio cd's (also autoplays Mp3's), very easy set-up...just plug in and let'er rip. That is where the niceties end.
The Toshiba SD3950 has terrible audio, primarily on Mp3 and CD playback. The sound is distorted, it's as though the outputs are overdriven. Audio on DVD's is not all that great either. You can set up the audio to hear dialogue using the audio settings, but you sacrifice overall audio quality, this because the player raises mid-range and nearly ignores other frequencies. Thus overall audio quality is sacrificed so you can hear dialogue you may not be able to hear otherwise.
Bottom line: NICE features, NICE Remote, VERY,VERY POOR audio!!!