Customer Reviews

Toshiba SD-6980 DVD Player

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really tried to like this player. I wanted an upsampling player, needed SACD, and the CF slot was a big plus. Video quality was decent, not as good as my old Marantz DV-4000 (admittedly retailed for $499 5 years ago) but better than the POS Genica I have. Color rendition above average for this price range, definition was average.

I thought the upsampling actually degraded the DVD quality marginally. The 1080i output flickered into my Pioneer Elite PD920HD, I figured it was a bad unit, so returned it to OneCall for replacement (by the way, kudos to OneCall for their excellent service!). The second unit flickered in 1080i as well; it flickered both with DVD's and CF cards. By the way, having your photos displayed in 720P or flickering 1080i ROCKS! Great way to share photos with friends, they all ooh and aah on how great your photos look. Unfortunately with this player, the upsampling only works out of the HDMI output. FYI, when you display your photos in HD, you lose most of the flexibility of jpeg display--you can't zoom, do a slideshow, rotate images, etc. Not a big deal, but you ought to know before you invite your buddies over. I found that good ol' component 480p provided cleaner video than either the 720p or flickering 1080i. Your mileage may vary since I'm using a fixed panel.

Sound quality was just OK, bass reponse wasn't as deep as the better DVD players, but you can't expect Toshiba to put a decent power supply in a $199 player. SACD was somewhat disappointing, no imaging, weak bass, but the treble was remarkably grain free. My 1980's $600 Theta Cobalt D/A processor kicked the SACD all over the room.

Others have remarked about how counterintuitive the remote is. I found that the skip chapter buttons were where the fast forward button should be, and vice versa. Ditto for the power and drawer open buttons. In upsampling HD mode I thought the DVD player didn't respond very quickly. Just my $.02, this is my first Toshiba I've owned.

The manual is well written; this player is a breeze to set up, I just wish they would explain what some of their menu settings are.

In summary: For a retail price of $199 (I paid $151 at OneCall), this player does a whole lot. It plays SACD's, displays jpegs from your DVD's or CF/SD card in HD, upsamples to 720p or 1080i, played every SVCD, DVD+R, DVD-R, MP3 disc I could throw at it. It does everything reasonably well, probably far more than I could expect for $151. If the 1080i didn't flicker I'd keep it, but as it does, I'm returning this player. Maybe it's just my display, although I can't see how it would be as it doesn't flicker with my 1080i upsampled DVR using the HDMI input. I'll miss the CF card slot...

For all you who have read the past few reviews complaining about DVD-Audio and SACD playback being analog only.

All players are like that.
It is a requirement from the Record Companies.
Complain to the Record Companies.
You will not find a DVD-Audio or SACD player that does output digitally.

Hope this helps.

I bought this DVD player 1/25/06 for the fact that it plays virtually EVERYTHING - especially for the DVD-Audio support (surround audio DVDs).

I hooked it up using the Digital-Optical out and played it through my trusty Sony amplifier. I immediately noticed all my DVDs were playing as PCM 2.0 instead of Dolby Digital or DTS surround despite being selected onto those audio tracks.

I found the Toshiba's Setup defaults the Digital-Optical out to PCM instead of Bitstream, and Dynamic Compression and PCM Downsampling on. This is very odd, but when I switched it to Bitstream and no Downsample/Compression, everything played BEAUTIFULLY. So far...

Now I wanted to test out the DVD-Audio which was my main reason for buying this player. I could not wait to hear the beautiful 5.1 lossless sound! So I break out my INXS DVD-Audio disc and play it. Again I am treated to downsampling of the disc to PCM 2-channel! I read further into the manual and find - UGH - YOU CANNOT PLAY DVD-AUDIO THROUGH DIGITAL OPTICAL OUT AT ANYTHING OTHER THAN PCM 2-CHANNEL DOWNSAMPLED! What a mess! You are instead required to use the 5.1 analog outputs to get the true DVD-Audio surround to your amp!

So now I have to add 5 more cables (yuk!) to the back of my DVD player and amp to enjoy true 5.1 DVD-Audio, and bye-bye lossless now? Dunno...

I was pleased to try out the Digital Card Reader with my Fuji's XD picture card and find it works VERY well with minimum flaws and great navigation/options. The only trouble was names are limited to 8 characters, and if a duplicate is found it will not display any of those files. Usually not a problem as the camera uses unique names, but my daughter went and renamed them all and inadvertantly made some dups within the first 8 characters.

The unit has great navigation for DVD-Audio and CD-Audio discs. It also played (S)VCD discs in PAL or NTSC with no problems. Also played my few PAL DVDs without a hitch. It also read my DVD+RW and DVD-R DVDs with no issues. I haven't yet tried my DVD+R DL Dual Layer DVD movies yet, but I expect no issues there either.

It did have trouble with straight mpg video files (on a recorded data DVD) though, not playing the audio for any of them but playing the video just fine.

My only other gripes come with the fact that there was no CD Text support, and everything in raw file navigation was displaying the file names with a max of 8 characters.

Otherwise, the picture quality is fantastic, as is the audio quality via the digital optical out. Even the downsampled DVD-Audio discs in stereo sounded great, just very disappointing that it was not not surround through the Digital-Optical out. That is the one and only issue keeping this unit from being 5 stars!

The performance of the unit is flawless and the picture produced on my HD TV using the HD cord is super. While it does not equal true HD, it is as good as regular DVD's can produce. The remote needs work. For example to zoom the picture requires that two buttons must be pressed: the Zoom button itself (top left) and the enter button (bottom center). Frequently used buttons need to be centrally located and be made larger or at least brightly colored.

Thinking about the Samsung HD-841 - forget it! That player is horrible. Frequently froze up, refused to play many brands of DVD-Rs and would not play DVD+R DL discs. I bought the Toshiba SD-6980 in hopes of getting all that I had wanted from the HD-841. The Toshiba player is great. It handles all of the DVD-R and DVD+R I've thrown at it and plays DVD+R DLs as well. Also does a great job with DVD-Audio and SACD.

The player could be a bit more attractive - it has a bit of a "retro" look to it.

I found the product to be very easy to install in spite of my lack of electronic knowledge it was also at an excelent price it was also working great with all the DVDS i played on it.

Works great. Has a great picture on my Toshiba HD. As usual....remote is a bit complicated. I'm sure I don't use half the buttons. Very nice look to the unit.

I'm not a techno guy, but this unit works great for my purposes, which is simply watching DVD movies. So far so good and it came with it's own HDMI cable.

Great DVD Player. Easy to setup & operate. Does everything I wanted it for. Excellent player for the money. Would recommend.

I replaced my DVD player because as I watched Hi-Def TV, I began to dislike lower quality video. The Toshiba SD-6890 upconverts all DVDs to a higher quality image, usually 720p. The difference is very noticeable. I wish I'd done this sooner. It also came with a HDMI connector which is expensive to buy so I feel the price/value ratio is excellent. Great performance at a very reasonable price.