Customer Reviews

Toshiba SDP93S 9-Inch Portable DVD Player, (Black with Silver Trim)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Just picked this up in preparation for some long trips this summer with the kids. So far, this new Toshiba appears to be the trick.

Pros:
-A good 9" screen
-DivX compatibility
-Memory card support for music, JPG's, and DivX
-Swivel Screen
-5 Hour Battery (per specs,I haven't stress tested this yet)
-Works w/o battery (hooked to AC or Car)
-DC Car Adapter included
-Full featured remote
-Dual headphone jacks

Cons:
-DVD operation is slightly noisy
-Volume could be louder (it's fine with headsets)
-Memory card is SD only. SDHC would have been much better.

Good luck and hope this helps.

*** 10/31/2009 Update

While we don't use it all the time, it's been a winner on our various trips. If you're looking for a DivX capable portable DVD, I highly recommend the Toshiba.

We just returned from a 2000+ mile road trip with young children, and the Toshiba SD-P93S was a life saver. Here are our impressions:

Pros:

* High-resolution 800x400 matte-finish screen is beautiful compared to the lower-resolution 320x240 screens of other players we looked at. Screen color and sharpness is excellent when viewed from either side, or from the top looking down at the player. When viewed from the bottom looking up, colors washed out considerably, so we avoided mounting the player where you would need to look upwards at it. Sun glare off the matte-finish screen was not an issue. We noticed that the built-in menu system of the player was designed for a lower-resolution screen, but it was still readable and navigation was easy with the on-player buttons or remote.
* Speakers are mounted on either side of the screen, directing sound toward the audience. We don't let the kids wear headphones, so it was good that the speakers were plenty loud enough to overcome road noise. Some sound crackling from the tiny built-in speakers was evident at high volumes. Another nice thing we discovered about rear-firing speakers was that the sound coming to the front of the vehicle was muted, and not distracting.
* The IR signal was probably just bouncing off the rear window, but we were able to control the player from the front seat just by pointing the remote toward the rear. No turning around and leaning over the seats to operate the player.
* DIVX playback was flawless, and played from either burned DVD+RW disks or an SD memory card. Multiple movies can be burned on a disk, and the player's menu system is used to navigate through them.
* Anti-skip is not an advertised feature, but we had no issues with the player skipping except for one section of very rough road. We had to stop the movie and resume playing to get it working correctly again.

Cons:
* According to the manual, you cannot have the removable battery attached to the unit when operating off of the cigarette lighter power adapter. Therefore, the battery cannot be charged from your vehicle. Power to the cigarette lighter in our vehicle cuts off when the ignition key is turned off, so pulling into the gas station and turning off the engine also turned off the player. We eventually learned that if you STOP the movie and turn the player OFF, then turn the vehicle off, the movie will resume from the same spot once the player is turned on again.
* Some ghosting of the image was visible during high-action film sequences, similar to older LCD TVs.

Neutral:
* It requires firm pressure to correctly snap the disk into place. More than once we did not have the disk mounted correctly, and the player would make a loud whining noise and not play.
* No case for the player or vehicle mount is included. We made a wooden bracket with wrap-around velcro straps to suspend the player between the front bucket seats, which worked great.

Summary: We purchased this player instead of the highly-rated Sony's because of the added DIVX support, and were not disappointed. This has brought a whole new level of comfort when traveling with children.

I purchased this hoping it would be a little step up from the cheap, no name models I have bought in the past. I was hoping the machine would run smoother and last a little longer. I found that the machine runs very noisy and it seems to skip and stall easily and regularly, even with brand new discs and no disruption to the player. I found the player to be very frustating, especially when watching a film with mostly dialog (very hard to hear in a car going down the freeway mixed with the loud whiring of the player). I often like Toshiba products, but I am very dissapointed in this DVD player.

My daughter, 12 years old, wanted a portable DVD Player for her birthday and asked me to research it. I didn't want her to waste her money on the no-brand-name stuff. But, she only had so much money. I found this on sale at one of the electronic super stores locally. I recommended it to her because it had good reviews from experts; she bought it.

Pros:
* The video looked great.
* It was easy to operate.
* It looks very nice (shiny pearl white).
* Comes with a five hour battery (It lasted a little over five hours on one charge).
* Comes with AC charger.
* Comes with Car Adapter
* It's a bonus that she can also listen to her MP3s, although she doesn't need it since she has an iPod.
* Did I say it looks real nice?

Cons:
* On-board speakers could be a bit louder.
* Does not come with a carrying case.

"I just got it and I'm still finding out about all this thing does. The SD card slot (SDHC would be better)for viewing JPEG photos or MPEG videos - way cool. The external speakers are not impressive, but for awsome audio, get a good pair of headphones - WOW! The remote control works great with lots of slo-mo, fast forward, repeat, and zoom options. And it even comes with an AC adaptor,a 12VDC car adaptor, AND video cables. All you need to buy for this little jewel is a case to carry it around in. I think the 9" screen is just right - not too small so that you can't enjoy the video, and not too big so that it feels like you're carrying around a full size laptop. This player has more features for the price than most other players I looked at. We'll see how it performes down the road, but so far I'm very HAPPY!"

The internal speakers are terrible.....with add on external speakers using the headphone port the audio is pretty good. Make no mistake this machine is primarily for DVDs. The picture quality is good and CD's with an accompanying DVD seems to have the best sound, again only through add on speakers which are not included with this machine. IF your using headphones it's OK too.

Great player, I've used it for a month or so now. Swivel is nice, it's not too heavy or bulky and picture/sound are good via headphones. Biggest disappointment is that it only seems to support .divx files, not mkv (which is Divx-Plus) or avi. So if you're using HandBrake or some other free ripper, you also need to buy the DivX converter software and store a 2nd copy of every movie in the .divx format. Would be much easier if they supported the mpeg-4 format which seems to be what everyone is using these days.

Like many people,I was a little put-off by the reviews that warned of noisy operation and the like. I did a lot of research and concluded that for this pricepoint,it was worth the risk to try it out. Boy,I am glad that I did! The unit is easy to setup and play. My test was to play a DVD with a great soundtrack. Loaded Beverly Hills Cop 1 and plugged my Sony Pro headphones into the unit. All I can say is "Simply Stunning" through the headphones. I have had this beauty for 6 months and have used it every day. Works great,although the startup noise is a fair,although minor complaint. Overall,while watching a DVD movie,if you are more than 12" away,the noise is not that noticable. If you have a decent pair of headphones,you will be more than happy with this unit.

It has a good resolution but the colors are off and there's no way of improving the image (even with a change in contrast or saturation). The earphone sound is good, but the machine is very noisy. I use it when I am on my treadmill, so that loud sound is not bothersome, but if I decide to watch somewhere else, it will be. The remote is rather small for the number of buttons and the sensor is not very sensitive so have to actually aim for the left side of the player (where the sensor is) and press kind of hard. It has an SD card function and a AV in function that I will never use.

After a lot of research I bought this unit for my wife. She's OK with it, but I don't like that it's so noisy. It's really loud for a disk spinning. If your laptop made this much noise, you'd be alarmed. Second, I've used it little, but the display features are unimpressive. For example, I couldn't find a way to display in a clear way time remaining. Not recommended.