Customer Reviews

Toshiba BDX2500 Blu-ray Disc Player (Black)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

I bought this player 2010-07-01 and found two weeks into ownership that it has random issue with not turning on via remote or power button. Its connected via HDMI directly to a Toshiba LED TV. I called Toshiba and they created a ticket for the issue. At first no one admitted there was a problem and later as we tried to diagnose the problem to find the cause they admitted that some but not all units exhibit this problem and it doesn't matter what set they're connected to. They hinted that replacement had corrected 95% of all customer problems for "no power up". Unplugging the unit for 20secs corrects it for a while.
Turning off the CEC HDMI link for TV control to the BD player will help most people. Also leaving my TV in the quick power up mode keeps something alive which allowed the unit to power on 100% of the time when the TV is left in that mode.

Don't get me wrong, Toshiba offered to RMA the unit up front so no complaints there. Also the Service Center connects in the USA!!!! +5 stars for that!

Its a nice unit, remote is easy to use, Net-Flix streams flawlessly through the RG45 cable. Its slow to start a BlueRay disc but I think thats normal. My only complaints are simple; If I push the eject button, do as I say and give me the DISC! Yes, its slow to respond in that way but picture and sound are great. Initially I had audio sync issues as the audio was delayed by surround sound so getting the correct settings in the Audio format output and receiver settings fixed that.

I'm sending it back and we'll see what comes my way in return. A newer model or a replacement of the same model?

**Update 2011-01-19
Since the 1st unit was RMA'd, Toshiba has sent me two more BDX-2500 on their dime shipping expenses covered. The same problem continues on each unit; they fail to turn on after normal daily use and you must unplug the BD player from the outlet to reset it. When it works I like it. When it randomly fails to turn on, it's hateful! Again, great customer service but the product has issues. Toshiba accepted my request to grant a refund for the player so I'm sending the 3rd unit back in exchange for check.
- I've turned to Sony and grabbed a BDP-S570 and I have not had any problems in two weeks of ownership. There were two major trade-offs; Sony lacks options for audio output choices over optical digital. Here Toshiba wins. The Sony is fast to power up and eject the disk, plays Netflix in HD video quality but has a Play Station menu and a bunch video stream options most of the world doesn't need (excessive useless clutter). I'll do a Sony review later. . .

waited months for this to come on the market. finally available last week. bought one for my sweetie.

context: she has a toshiba 32in lcd 720p hdtv and fios hdtv box. i have a sony s370 blu-ray player, sony a/v receiver, vudu bx100 hd streaming/download box, and dish vip411k hdtv satellite box with external hard disk dvr, output through an akai 42in plasma 1080i hdtv monitor and 7.1 sony speakers. we both have basic verizon fios internet connections. this is my fifth or sixth generation dvd player.

price: keeps dropping. worth shopping. as low as $128 so far. a real deal from amazon with free ship + no tax. beware of tigerdirect price guarantee ... they only give you the overcharge in their own funny money for your next order. at least bestbuy gives you real money credit back on your charge card.

appearance: excellent. better than the sony s370. and definitely better than the s370 pinhead button switches.

setup: easy for the player in general, but a bit fussy for online streaming services. must establish external accounts and link/activate player with pc online at same time. tedious, but effective. steps, sequence, and codes differ for each service. no hdmi cable included, so bring your own. critical firmware updates are clean and fast.

blu-ray: tested with parts of iron man and all of crazy heart. faster startup than sony s350, and maybe faster than the s370. excellent play quality, as expected.

internet: toshiba says you must use only their $50 usb adapter if you want a wireless connection. that sucks. when are manufacturers going to stop the proprietary hardware baloney they hope will drive related product sales? nice try. instead we moved her verizon fios wireless modem/router nearby, ran an ethernet cable to the player, and added a generic $15 usb wireless adapter to the pc. done.

vudu: WORTH BUYING A TOSHIBA BLU-RAY PLAYER FOR THIS CONTENT AND PROVIDER ALONE. only available otherwise via separate vudu box (out of production, but available on ebay) or a few other new products. pay-as-you-go. some but not all new films available weeks before netflix ... like book of eli and green zone. added device to my existing vudu account. compared to the dedicated vudu bx100 running amadeus software, hd quality (720p?) streaming with 5.1 surround sound was comparable. same familiar menus except for first screen. vudu even gives you a one-time first movie credit. nice. did not try streaming hdx quality (1080p) because her basic verizon fios connection (10mpbs advertised, 8mbps actual) would cause frequent buffering stops based on my beta tests of the vudu brazil software. vudu website says you need at least 9mbps (actual) for hdx streaming. fyi ... vudu bx100 performance remains excellent and has disk storage capability that a typical blu-ray player or hdtv lacks.

netflix: added device to my existing netflix account. used this for first time on other than pc to stream free films from instant queue. such a deal. image quality seems comparable to at least vudu hd quality (720p?) streaming. appears we were also getting surround sound, although was not really paying attention. fastforward/backward menu bar is same as for streaming through my toshiba laptop, but different from streaming through my sony s370 player. definitely prefer the toshiba version with incremental image preview boxes rather than non-visual timeline readout.

pandora: ALSO A GREAT FEATURE. when accessed directly, you must enter your username/password digit-by-digit every time using the player remote. a real pain. when accessed via vudu, you initially enter and store your username/password and instantly logon thereafter. slick. just like with the vudu box. much easier to access via vudu. my sweetie now uses this all the time.

remote: control of internet content appears inconsistent from service to service. frustrating. but vudu cursor movement more flexible with toshiba remote than with dedicated vudu remote on their box. would be good to have a key guide for each service.

rated overall at four of five stars primarily because of the proprietary usb wireless adapter thing.

have fun ...

july 6, 2010 addendum:

we've now watched several films in blu-ray, dvd, vudu streaming, and netflix streaming formats as well as pandora music. no static or freeze problems as described by others. needs firmware update? dirty disc? bad cables/connections?

but ... much like a pc, when connected to the internet the player doesn't always respond quickly and sending multiple commands may bring it to a dead stop. plus, it's not always clear what remote key does what when online. this is a new generation of disc players, so be patient.

regardless, i just ordered two more bdx2500s, one for my home office toshiba 32in 720p lcd tv, and another for a friend. good stuff and better value than sony or others.

july 13, 2010 addendum

forgot to mention before that the extra memory for bd-live can be loaded as an sd card in a front slot or as a usb device in the back. the sd card is much cleaner and easier in front.

earlier last week i tried a $15 tenda usb wireless-b/g/n adapter on the second bdx2500, this one for my home office. the player did not recognize the adapter. gave no wireless connection option. decided to get another standalone buffalo wli-tx4-ag300n wireless-b/g/n bridge/router with 4 ethernet ports to use with the player and laptop and two other future devices. first one still working well with my larger hdtv system. a bdx2700 is about $50 more than the bdx2500, their proprietary adapter is about $50, so toshiba wifi is a minimum $50 upgrade no matter what. i'd rather spend it on a generic external product and use it elsewhere and/or for other devices if necessary. otherwise, no problems whatsoever.

when connecting to the older av receiver in my home office i noticed that there's no coax digital audio output, but analog stereo output works fine here because i'm only using two speakers anyway. would use hdmi or optical output on a full home theater system.

just set up the third bdx2500 for a friend on saturday. used internet connection via ethernet wire from verizon fios cable modem relocated near hdtv. immediate and very smooth firmware update. easy setup. avatar in blu-ray looked amazing, even on an older 50in 720p panasonic viera monitor. connected to vudu and watched most of solaris, first movie free. excellent video and audio playback. absolutely no problems.

This was my first Blu-Ray player and I am very pleased. I bought it for the Netflix feature which works great. I also purchased a 50ft cat5 cord because you need a lan adapter to play internet material.

Bd load quick enough and play fine. SD slot is a big plus and the player plays video, MP3's and Pictures from a SD card with no problems. Home screen is easy to use and the picture quality is great.

I would would highly Recommend.

March 2011

Player Would Not turn on after a regular firmware update. Toshiba replaced it with a far inferior model. Would not buy.

On paper this player seems perfect, Blu-ray and multiple streaming services for under $150. That's why I was so disappointed when I purchased and had to return this unit not once but twice. Essentially there is some kind of recurring problem that causes intermittent "static" whenever it is on. The screen would show "snow"(similar to old analog TVs) and the speakers would make a loud crackle every 30 seconds or so. This would actually happen when nothing was playing and the player was just in the main menu screen, so clearly it's not a Blu-ray or streaming problem. The problem would get worse the longer the player was on, so I suspect it is heat-related. When it wasn't in static mode, picture and sounds looked great.

I purchased this unit twice from two different stores and had to return them both for the same problems. It's not my TV or cabling as the same setup works fine with a Samsung player I have. Bottom line, I wanted to love this player but it was consistently unwatchable.

The first thing I noticed about this blu-ray player is how painfully slow it was. It would take nearly 10 seconds just to open the drive tray. The UI is terrible, and also slow. It played discs fine until just after the 90 day warranty. Once that expired, the player began to freeze during playback, fail to load the disc, or skip entire scenes. A month after that, the player would not read a single blu-ray disc. The Unit would refuse to turn on unless I unplugged it and plugged it back in again (like other reviews have noted). Netflix streaming worked, usually. Occasionally the video would be all garbled and green. Weird stuff. Also, it does not include a search interface. Overall, this was a shoddy piece of equipment that failed to deliver basic services. Even from the beginning, the player would freeze if I tried pushing too many buttons before the commands executed. (stop, stop, open would lock up the unit. I had to unplug and plug it in again to turn it off). I had a respectable opinion of Toshiba, but this player has convinced me that they don't care to produce quality products. I will never buy another Toshiba product. I already gave them $100+ for a paperweight. TheyToshiba BDX2500 Blu-ray Disc Player (Black) will never see any of my money again.

The only reason I purchased this Blu-ray player was for the included streaming services and have no intention on using any optical media with it because I'm content with my Panasonic DMP-BD55.

For anyone wanting to purchase a BD player then their expectations should be 1080p HD video with DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD audio choices. Then why should your streaming video and audio be any different? The simple answer is bandwidth. But we should have at least some kind of HD, right? Some content providers only stream SD while others stream HD but forget that surround sound is part of the HD experience.

I didn't want to go the HTPC route and just wanted a streaming device capable of streaming up to 1080p and supporting surround sound and cost around one Benjamin. I tried the roku xds and it failed miserably for me because there was absolutely NO WAY to manually configure network settings; the only network device I've encountered that you can't do that simple function. I was also not impressed that it only had Netflix, Amazon and many ghetto-quality channels. Streaming quality of Amazon and Netflix varied and wasn't consistent.

I then tried the Western Digital TV Live Plus and was initially impressed with it's consistent stream quality but there wasn't much more for true movie channels. Watching independent web content on the big screen isn't my idea of fun, leave that for computer use when you're bored. All the extra capabilities of the WD like watching local content from different storage devices and LAN were of no use to me since I stick to my optical media for local content.

I should have stuck with my initial instinct and went with a BD STB even though there was that optical feature I wouldn't use. I only found one STB vendor that carried Slacker Radio, the only worthy music streaming service worth using, but the combination wasn't right and unfortunately it was a sony. I wound up selecting the BDX2500 because it had a mix of complimenting services: vudu, Netflix and Blockbuster. It would have been nice if Amazon was included with the player but it's a good compromise since the real winning combination is vudu and Netflix. Besides, my HDTV can already stream Amazon. With my XBOX 360 and the Zune service along with my FiOS HD premium channels and on-demand, I'm pretty much covered and sure fo find any movie I'd ever want to see. As for ANY web content, it belongs on a computer and not on my plasma. You can have your google TV and all those overpriced wanna-be low budget HTPCs. You're better off getting a Netbook and keeping it near your HT HDTV if you really need to access the web cheaply. If it's a size thing then get your quick web fix with an Android device like the G2. I didn't bother with hulu because I'm not into any of it's content. I also don't care about being able to watch video on a computer, that's what my TVs are for.

I initially just wanted to stream Netflix in HD but unfortunately they max out their experience with just 720p and stereo audio with few titles available. They are improving their selection but I really want to have surround sound as part of that experience. Apparently the ps3 has 1080p and surround sound availability now. Someone sold out! They really should roll out the update to ALL platforms before the end of the year!

The Blockbuster service is nothing to write home about since the little I played with was only SD and not the best streaming but comparable to Netflix SD. They offer a similar plan to Netflix but with Blu-ray included at no additional cost and with the addition of having the opportunity to drop off and pick up locally. I still have to look into what the Streaming offer is. I was given a free trial with activation of the player along with a five buck credit for use on a movie. I'll look for some old obscure movie since watching it on SD wont be a loss.

I tried Pandora and it's, well, Pandora. I'd rate it perhaps #2 behind Slacker and don't see getting any use from it since I've had Pandora on my plasma and don't use it.

And now vudu|movies. Yes, rentals available in SD, 720p and 1080p with 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus! I got a $6 credit for registering and saw Predators last night. Wow, streaming never looked or SOUNDED so good! This is the hands down winner of all the streaming movie services. Yes, it's not Netflix all-you-can-eat, and you have to rent (or buy) the movies BUT you're getting NEW movies when they're released for sale a lot of the times. This is one of the beefs I have with Netflix and their lack of any new movie available for streaming. The interface also includes a nice and helpful connection test to let you know what type of stream is best for you.

Now for those who are looking for more than just movies, the player INCLUDES vudu|apps. I've gone through several of these and the entire vudu interface is the best I've used with ANY streaming service. It's fast, responsive, modern looking and has good search options. People and reviews are missing additional "channels", streams or content because they have not looked at the vudu|apps option where there is plenty to offer. We're not talking ghetto-content here, we're talking real quality and commercial stuff you find on real TV. There is some of the indy stuff but there's quality over quantity here. You can find out more at [...]. If you're looking for a vudu enabled device then check this out, but make sure you select the correct devices that have vudu apps enabled. [...]

One thing this player has that none of other steaming devices can touch is boot time. I press the power button (yes, it really has one) and it's up in the main menu in 2 seconds. With the other devices I mentioned, you have time to go make some popcorn before it comes up (kind of like loading a Blu-ray movie). I can boot my notebook, log in, launch a web browser and get to this web page BEFORE those devices finish booting into the main menu.

Here are some random numbers while testing.
Power On: 2 seconds
Power Off: 1 second

Selecting the following services from the main menu until the service loads to it's main menu:

Pandora: 10 seconds to authenticate and begin playing last channel
vudu|apps: 11 seconds
vudu|movies: 3 seconds (from within vudu|apps menu)
Netflix: 18 seconds to instant queue
Blockbuster: 21 seconds

Firmware v1.14 06/21/10 (shipped and no other updates were found when I tried updating)

I got it at my local BB for a buck twenty with a free Toshiba Wireless-N USB Adapter (WLM-10UB1). I went for this model because I didn't need WiFi but the free adapter was a bonus. This adapter does 802.11 a/b/g/n and operates at 2.4GHz and 5.2GHz. All you do is plug it into the rear USB port and it just works without any sign of it installing itself. Boot time was not affected by having it plugged in. The interface for the adapter is pretty decent and it was nice that apart from the normal open, SSID and signal strength indicators, it shows the AP's capabilities (i.e. a/b/g/n). I'm not using the wireless adapter, only wired.

And a short word on streaming video. If you can help it then please, please, please use at least a wired Fast Ethernet connection because you'll be able to get consistent and reliable bandwidth. The next important thing is to make sure you have at least a 10Mb ISP connection. If you MUST use wireless then you really should use 802.11n in the 5GHz band. Remember, wireless is a convenience and good for your MOBILE devices to access non-bandwidth intensive content. Not everyone is capable of streaming dependable HD via wireless, yet.

In short, I found this is better product than a stand-alone "Digital Video Player". I didn't comment on the BD component since I don't care about it.

There are certain aspects of this that I really enjoy. Netflix and Pandora, for example. I'm happy with visual and audio quality, as well as the connectivity options.

But when I turn something off, I get annoyed when it doesn't turn off. When I hit the eject button, I get annoyed when it starts to play instead, making me wait ten seconds or so to eject the disc. And if you want to use any of the features connected to your router, then you should take that disc out of the bay. This is because you can go through the whole menu process, get to Netflix or Pandora, make a couple of clicks there, and it will just start playing your disc anyway.

I've got the remote...I want at least the illusion of control.

I bought it because I had a Toshiba TV and wanted the remotes to work together but my LCD TV did not have the Link feature so it didn't work. I was disappointed in the load times. It was very slow. After a few days it would lock up and not work until I unplugged it and plugged it in again. That happened twice in a couple weeks. The online streaming features were good with netflix, vudu, and pandora but missing things like youtube and divxtv.
I returned it and bought a LG BD550 for slightly cheaper than the Toshiba. The LG is very fast loading, works every time and has more online features.

The DVD player seems to be doing what I expected it to do. I am not very saavy about such things. I was disappointed that the HDMI cable necessary to use it properly was not included. There were many other cables included for which I had no use. But I was glad I had them because the first HDMI cable I had was defective. One of the things the unit can do is provide real time streaming of movies from Netflix, Blockbuster, etc. That function requires a wireless device of some kind which is sold separately. I would have paid more to have everything I needed in the same box. It looks nice. It matches my Toshiba HD television as if they were designed to go together.

I called Toshiba when the unit did not appear to be working properly. They were helpful, though a bit impatient with my ignorance. They determined the cable was defective and walked me through some steps, which I could never duplicate if I had to, which confirmed the problem was the cable.

I do not have the right eye to see a huge difference between the old DVD player's image (also a Toshiba) and the new. The pictures would have to be side by side for me to tell.

The price was great. I have no regrets other than I have yet to purchase the wireless device. As a result, I cannot judge the most important thing the DVD player is supposed to do.

I purchased this unit 6 months ago, have had problems turning on the device. On New Years Eve the device would not play new Blu ray movies. After 6 months Toshiba's
Policy is to exchange it for a fee, the fee is $30.00 less than the purchase of a new one. According to Toshiba forum this is a common problem with no fix.