Great player...worth the price?
Written: Jul 23 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great pictures
Cons: costly
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| slimtae's Full Review: Toshiba SD-5109 DVD Player |
I don't know much about DVD players, and what makes a $1000 unit different from a $200 player. I remember 15 or 20 years ago, when CD players just become mainstream audio equipment, I had no prayer of hearing the difference between a $1000 CD player and a $200 one. Some people I know swear to me that the difference was real.
What I know about the Toshiba 5109 is that it is one of the few players out there that has progressive scan capabilities...which means that instead of displaying every other line of resolution at (480 total), it displays them all at once. Intuitively, it seemed to make sense that such a unit would deliver better picture than a conventional player. So I wnated one. The problem...the cheapest price I could find was $700. Other units in the store cost much less. I was all set on buying a conventional unit for about $200-$300 at a Best Buy, when I saw an open box model of the 5109 on the shelf. The price...$399 with a 30 day refund guarantee. I snatched it up. I also bought the very expensive component video cables for hook-up.
When I first popped in a DVD movie, I was very pleased with the result on my new 46" HDTV. I don't know whether it was the progressive scanning, the component video connection, or the expensive cables. Maybe it was a combination of the three. Pictures were amazingly sharp. I've heard that "A Bug's Life" was supposed to look spectacular on DVD. So I bought one for my 3 year old son. I was floored by the quality of the images. The characters seem almost to jump out of the screen, colors are crisp down to the smallest detail. The dual disc tray is very convenient. You can set up the player to deliver pictures for a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ration screen. The player has Dolby Digital, and apparently it can parallel process so that you can hook up more than one TV to it and see movies simultaneously on different TV's. My only problem....the remote is humongous.
Would a conventional player deliver as good a picture? I don't know...like I said, I have trouble discriminating the difference. But if you want to be assured of having a DVD player deliver spectacular images, you couldn't go wrong with this unit. Retail price is fairly high still, but should come down in the coming months.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
slimtae
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Reviews written: 95
Trusted by: 11 members
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