Toshiba SDV-592 DVD Player / VCR Combo

Pros: UPconverting DVD-VCR Player. Picture at 1080i. PRICE POINT! HDMI. ONLY COMBO OF THIS TYPE.
Cons: Lacks solid feel, weak Remote, No picture adjustments. Slow Overall response.

What a surprise, this one was. I became curious over the concept of an Upconverting DVD player which is a rather exclusive HD market item, combined with of all things an dated Video concept the traditional VCR. The idea plays out well and does offer a ...

Pros: Good Price, Upconvert, HDMI, great picture
Cons: Slow loads sometimes and the brightness through HDMI being too bright. might be TV's fault

I have a Toshiba DLP television (52HMX94) that I wanted to get the most out of without going to crazy on spending towards a DVD player. An upconverting player is what I was looking for. My TV has 2 HDMI inputs so I wanted to utilize one of these ports ...

Pros: Great picture when using HDMI with DVD
Cons: Won't play 20th Century Fox movies

I have owned this unit since December 2004 and it took me this long to figure out a rare problem I experienced while playing certain DVD's. Occasionally, I would run into a DVD that would not play on the machine. A screen would appear that said, "This Disc not formatted for this region".

I recently joined Netflix and the two DVD's they sent me just so happened to be 20th Century Fox releases. Neither would play and both displayed the "not formatted for this region" message. I checked them on other DVD players and they worked fine. I checked the settings in the Toshiba and all were as they should be. It then occurred to me that maybe it was something to do with the way 20th Century Fox burns their DVD's so I searched my collection for other 20th Century titles and sure enough, they displayed the same message.

I called Toshiba and they sent me a firmware upgrade disk to reprogram the machine. I performed the upgrade but no joy. I have recontacted Toshiba and I await their answer.

I will update this posting once I get the DVD formatting problem resolved.