Toshiba SD-2300 DVD Players

Toshiba SD-2300 DVD Players 

DESCRIPTION

The DS2300 is the first DVD-Video player with enhanced functionality provided the NUON processor.

USER REVIEWS

Showing 1-10 of 55  
[Jun 13, 2003]
audiophile1
AudioPhile

Strength:

hmmm, it works now

Weakness:

Toshiba is a crap-ola company for quality control. Remote was designed by a moron.

The unit worked fine, but not great for 6 months, then crapped out and stopped recognizing disks. I sent it in and they sent one back that wouldn't stay turned on for over 5 secs. Sent it in again and this one seems okay

OVERALL
RATING
1
VALUE
RATING
1
[Jul 24, 2002]
Rob
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Very SHARP picture and good sound, HDCD decoding

Weakness:

Occasional glitches, won't read CD-R's

Very good for a cheap DVD player. Sharp picture. I'd like to do a comparison to a Panasonic RP56 to see which one looks better on my TV just for fun though. If you like a SHARP picture go for it, if you prefer a softer picture you may want to look elsewhere. The sound quality of this player rules in it's price range. Just remember it won't play CD-R's, so get something else if that's important to you. It seems like the glitches only happen on rental DVD's, so I gotta say to some of the other reviewers, "Quit treating your discs like frisbees". Forget error correction, ability to read bad discs, etc. If you take care of your stuff, it'll work better (duh). One more point for some of the complainers - HDCD decoding takes place at the D/A conversion stage. A CD player can only output a digital stream of what comes off the CD - if the DAC in your preamp/receiver can do HDCD decoding, it'll decode as HDCD. If not, it won't. So yes, most likely you will not get HDCD sound from the digital outputs, unless you have an external HDCD decoder. This is true of **ANY** HDCD player, not just this one. All in all, it's pretty decent. If you compare it to a Krell, of course it's going to lose badly, but compared with similarly priced players it's quite good. Other equipment: Pioneer Elite 610 HDTV Carver preamp/tuner (CT-7?) Carver TFM-25 Amp Polk SDA-1C Speakers Sony ES CD Player (don't remember model, plays CD-R's though!)

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Mar 05, 2002]
Joseph Seibel
Casual Listener

Strength:

16x Zoom, HDCD playback

Weakness:

won''t play CD-R/W, MP3 CDs

Well, I am generally impressed with the DVD player overall, although I''ve been quite annoyed at the jumpy picture in a blank white screen! I e-mailed Toshiba at their technical service website; they told me to send it in for service. NO WAY! I''ll never see it again!

Similar Products Used:

SD3750

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 10, 2001]
Michael
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

GREAT PICTURE good sound MUCH better than average its everything u want in a dvd plus more (the game console)

Weakness:

1 disk thats a huge weakness but the only 1 i can think of

JUST ONE GREAT DVD PLAYER has everything its just great

Similar Products Used:

q

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
4
[Apr 26, 2001]
Brian Bush
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Good picture and HDCD decoding.

Weakness:

No support for CD-R, CD-RW, or VCD. HDCD can only be played back through analog outputs. Nuon is bad.

I had every intention of buying the Sony 7700 DVD Player (about $500), if not the 9000ES (about $1500), but my wife begged me to stop obsessing over them and just buy a player at Best Buy (while we were there) so that it could all be over. Little did she realize, it had only begun.

I have scrutinized every aspect of this player and found it to be very mediocre, if not a bit over priced.

Let me start by saying, don't be sucked in by the bells and whistles. This player has a lot of grade A crap that is totally useless. Case in point, Nuon. Nuon is the graphics chipset that this machine uses to allow it to Zoom and have smoothing scanning and pause. Nuon also allows you to use this DVD Player as a gaming console. (I will explain this joke in a minute).

You may have read about the "glitches" with this player. I believe Nuon to be at the root of this issue. These problems include occasional pixelization and system freeze. I have even heard of a few other fluky problems as well. All and all these issues are no big deal. If you have any computer hardware, you have to expect the reasonable amount of hiccups... even humans get sick from time to time. (If you haven't already, be sure to check Toshiba's website for the patch).

The problem is that the benefit of Nuon is very small if not null altogether. For one thing, it makes adjusting your sharpness almost impossible with discs like DVD Essentials that pause the sharpness test image. This is because Nuon will automatically sharpen paused images. In fact, It will add sharpness to any image that is not playing in regular mode. This gives you the perception that the player has better pause and scan abilities, when in fact it does not.

Nuon is there for one other reason. You can play games! Ooooooo! No doubt with the recent interest in DVD based consoles you might expect some pretty impressive images. Don't be fooled! This ain't Play Station 2. It is more like Atari 2600. Thanks to Toshiba for sending me a free copy of Tetris, so I was spared from wasting any money on a Nuon game or controller.

Why would the graphics and game play be so bad? There is a fundamental flaw in how Nuon approached the DVD Player as a gaming platform. They have chosen to generate the graphics on demand, rather than pull stored images from disc. Need an example? Doom generates the images, while Myst pulls selected images that were pre-rendered from storage. A DVD's capacity lends itself to having beautifully pre-rendered images and oodles of them, but Nuon wanted the challenge of actually creating graphics on the fly. They suck at it. This is a decode and display chipset. This is not a Ge-Force2 nVidia driven AGP 4x based machine.

All that said, I am only really irritated by the lack of support for several popular optical disc formats. In my opinion, "if it fits in the tray, it should play." Not the case with the 2300. This player will only play straight CDs and DVDs, with the wonderful exception of HDCD encoded CD playback.

HDCD is great! It is a backward and forward compatible format, if you can imagine. That means, HDCD's play in a regular CD Players and regular CDs play in HDCD players and they sound better no matter what combination you choose. This was a major selling point for me. In fact, the only other selling point was Toshiba's typical quality product at a good value.

The downside to this implementation of HDCD is that you only get analog stereo output. This sucks for two reasons. One, I spend a lot on audio cables and have been trying to minimize the necessary connections. Now, I am required to have two audio outs: one for CDs and one for DVDs. Two, I would prefer to use the DAC in my Onkyo 777.

Does HDCD sound any better? I will put it to you in this way: In blind testing, I could tell and my wife couldn't. These results should be quantified with the "Who gives a s***" indicator. I do like the HDCD aspect of this player.

One last bell and whistle to ignore... Nuon has a thing they call "Light Machine," if I remember correctly. This is basically the equivalent of Windows Media Player 7 and Real Video Player "Visualizations." If you like it on those, you will still find it lame here.

This player also supports things like zoom, multi-angle, blah blah blah image tricks. I have yet to see the real benefit of these features beyond porno, and I haven't seen any Nuon enhanced Porno's on the market. Thus, I seldom use these features.

Good stuff: The player has analog stereo and digital coax audio outputs, as well as component, composite, and s-video outputs. It support the blacker than black video option. It has an amazing picture and really great sound overall.

Take note of how much room I give my complaints vs. the room given to my compliments. This player is like my best friend and his girlfriend that I can't stand to be around. I don't plan to get rid of him anytime soon, but if I had things to do all over again, I might have gone a different route.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 360 and 560.

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
2
[Feb 17, 2001]
chris galardi
Casual Listener

Strength:

Intuitive menuing system, easy to use remote, NUON processor capabilities including 20x zoom and pan, NUON games

Weakness:

i have experienced the occasional slight pause, apparently on a layer change

I have been quite happy with my Samsung DVD-N2000(Extiva). The extra feature set offered by the NUON processor, including the 20x zoom and pan, screen-fit function and easy to use menuing system are a great added value. The addition of some nice video games utlizing the NUON processor are just icing on the cake.

Similar Products Used:

none

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Nov 15, 2001]
Gary Vandegrift
Casual Listener

Strength:

super picture

Weakness:

does not play cdr or cdw

I am very pleased with this model. I have had no problems at all. Picture is superb!! I highly recommend. Consumer rated # 1 in lastest issue.

Similar Products Used:

panasonic

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 12, 2001]
Michael Gierdowski
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

NUON microchip adds lots of features, light display for CD playback, passes PLUGE, component ouputs, digital audio out, nice looks.

I searched this site extensively trying to find the best player for my budget. Toshiba and Sony seemed to have the best average ratings so I was leaning toward them. One of the reviews I read mentioned 'NUON' and I had no idea what it was. After a little web surfing, I discovered it was the next up and coming feature for DVDs. Samsung and Toshiba are the only ones so far to release a NUON enhanced DVD player. I was not impressed with the ratings Samsung players received on this site so I decided to go with the Toshiba.

So far I am very happy with my purchase. I was able to get it at a great price too (about $235 + s/h) through Let's Go Digital, but the prices have gone up since then. Try using MySimon.com to find the best price ($263 at the time of this posting).

This player is the reverse of the Playstation 2; it is a DVD player that plays game. It comes loaded with features, some more useful than others. The 16X zoom feature works without making the picture fuzzy; great for checking out special effects or other areas of interest. The many FF and rewind speeds get you were you want to be fast. There is a 3 speed slo-mo feature (1/8, 1/4, & 1/2 speed) for those interested. Multiple angle shots are indicated by a camera icon that apppears in the corner of the picture. One of my favorite features allows you to go directly to any part in the movie by inputing the time code (h:mm:ss). I don't know if this is a common feature but I sure like having instant access like that. I enjoy features that allow you to customize your equipment. One such feature allows you to capture an image from any DVD and use it as the background for your menu.

As far as playing games, I haven't done this yet. I don't believe you can use the remote for this, so you'll have to buy a special game pad to do this. There is an offer in the packaging for a free game but I haven't received it yet. I don't know if I'll use this feature much to be honest, but it may be attractive to some people.

Unfortunately I can't be a good judge of picture quality, as I am watching it through composite outputs on an older 25" GE TV. Obviously the picture quality isn't very sharp, but I believe it is more a function of my TV and the output I am using than of the DVD player itself. Audio quality sounds great, though I can only rate it on Dolby Pro Logic as I don't have a Dolby Digital receiver yet (coming soon). The remote is laid out pretty well. The most used buttons are immediately accessable while others are located under a flip lid on the bottom half of the remote.

For those who think NUON enabled DVDs will go the way of Betamax, don't fear. Cable set-top boxes are being developed to allow cable companies to use this technology to provide games and other interactive programming to their customers. The first NUON enhanced DVD (Bedazzled) will be arriving in stores in the next few months, with more on the way. Even if it doesn't pan out, your DVD player will still play normal DVDs and there really isn't much (if any) of a price hike to get a NUON enhanced player.

I have watched 6 movies on it so far with only two flaws that I noticed. While watching Aliens, there was a slight delay for a layer change (I believe) right before they discover the girl Newt. The other was an artifact on the same DVD that I could not duplicate. All in all I am very plesed with the player and would recommend it to anyone looking for a high quality piece of equipment.

Similar Products Used:

None, first DVD player

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 11, 2001]
Robert Jones
Casual Listener

Strength:

Virtual Light Machine for music CDs, Super smooth slow motion, Zoom, Crisp interlaced picture

Weakness:

None so far

I am really having fun with this DVD player. The Nuon chip allows for some cool special effects. The virtual light machine buts out some nice graphic effects to the beat of any music CD. It also can play games but I have not checked this feature out.

The picture is quite crisp looking on my 27 inch Proscan TV.

Toshibas are supose to have more artifacts when viewing anamorphic DVDS but I really could not see any.

The only Movie the I viewed that did have some jaggies on diagnal lines was Toy Story 1. Some pixelization could be seen. This is not the case in Toy story 2 or Bugs Life, so it may be something in the way Toy story 1 was made.

Similar Products Used:

First DVD player

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 14, 2001]
mark
Audiophile

Strength:

Outstanding picture quality and sound

Weakness:

Frequent pixelation even with a cleaned /no sctatched disc

The player has a great picture but be aware that it IS subject to occasional picture artifacts! I have seen them on three different units! One has all the control over the picture that you could ever want. I think Toshiba had a great player in mind but forgot to make its tracking as good as their previous models!! The 3107 and 3109 track almost flawlessly but do not have the user control over the picture quality.

I talked to Toshiba and they said that the unit is supposed to have better tracking than the 3107, 3109, and the 2200. NOT SO!!!!!

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 3107 and 3109

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
3
Showing 1-10 of 55  

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