Has optical digital out which the Toshiba lacks, great price for a Sony product, excellent picture quality, very sleek

Does not play CD-R and no zoom

Overall an excellent buy if you can get one for less than $200

Similar Products Used:

None - First DVD player

Remote & great Fast Foward button ( see summary )

A-B button is 1-2 seconds off, timer display ( see summary )

I got this player because my old Toshiba was freezeing up during play on rental discs, and i couldn't have that so i gave this a chance, so far it's superior to the Toshiba already and thats why i'm doing this review early.

The Toshiba didn't have a seperate fast-foward button, with this one you press it down until you want to stop and it stops precisely where you take your finger off ( great! ) Also the track foward button goes through the chapters fast or slow for ease of getting to your favorite part of the DVD

The Angle button is better than the Toshiba and also the arrow keys are better because the enter button is in the center. Also you couldn't eject with the Toshiba's remote ( ironicaly the Toshiba costed 100$ more... because of 5.1 built in )

The only thing i have a beef the timer, you get two main options
1# see the times between each chapter( default )
2# see the time for the whole movie but have no idea what chapter your on

Goodluck!

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 3109 ( garbage! )
PC DVD dxr2
My dads Samsung 709 or something

Cheap, wide output variety, simple to set up and use, good sound and picture, small and light (easy to fit into the HT cabinet with a VCR!)

No zoom (is this important?), remote not backlit.

This is my first DVD unit. I originally bought the Toshiba 2150 and returned it unopened when I found out that it didn't have the optical audio output. Glad I did, as my HT cabinet space is cramped and this unit is compact (both in height and depth). Payed too much at Bryn Mawr, but sometimes it is worth paying the extra bucks so that you can return something without the postage/UPS hassle and expense....

Watched a Jackie Chan flick and "Casablanca", and have listened to music (guitar, orchestral, vocal) through it. Nice sound, clear enough picture, at least for my 27" TV. Don't know why I would want another unit until they come out with the new Dolby XS 8.2 (that's the new format where you need the ceiling speakers and the sofa vibrator).

By the way, I had to cut two 3/4" by 1.5" by 19" mahogany spacers to lower the underhung cabinet to allow my receiver (Yamaha RX-V995) to fit and the Toshiba would not have been able to fit on the other side with a VCR. I wonder why space/size is apparently not an often considered criterion when purchasing these things?

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Considered a Toshiba 2150

This is a FANTASTIC DVD player! I originally purchased a Samsung DVD-511 and had horrible skipping problems (total piece of garbage). I traded up to this model and for the extra cost (about $75) it was TOTALLY worth it. I highly recommend this unit to anyone who wants to watch DVD's on a budget.

Most everything you'd want at a good price.

No zoom feature (if you're into that).

First DVD player. Very pleased, especially at such a good price. No problems at all so far. Have played about 20 DVD's including the Matrix, looks (and sounds) great!

Value = Quality + features + price

Noisy transport (some discs worse than others, no pattern yet)

The Sony DVP-S360 is a solid value at around $250 ($249 at Best Buy) it comes with all three video outputs (Composite, S_Video, & Component), an easy to use remote (although it would be nice if it could control the TV and the A/V receiver rather than one or the other). The sound quality on CDs is comparable to my Sony CD player (now 7 years old). I have it mated to an Onkyo DS-656 Dolby Digital receiver w/ 5 channels (no sub yet)(it kicks!) via digital (fiber)and a Mits 26" via S-video. Now that I have a high quality video source and Dolby Digital/ProLogic surround, I most definitely want a BIGGER picture. So, a word of caution, if you buy a DVD player you WILL spend at leats $2,000 (once you buy the big screen TV to go with it ; )

I would (and have) recommend this unit to friends.

I have viewed The Matrix, The Abyss, Highlander, Wizard of Oz, plus about 6 other discs and not one problem. It played each of them flawlessly.

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Toshiba ?

Very Intuitive remote, very clear sound, fast access of menus and other extras on the disk!

Clear but "soft" picture. No Zoom feature.

I originally bought the Toshiba sd-1200 model and had to return it to the store due to the fact that it would not play the movie (don't laugh) Notting Hill! After exchanges of disks and players it still would not play. Toshiba Customer service didn't seem too concerned about the problem either. On to the Sony...
The remote is great compared to the Toshiba's. Nice layout and easy to use. The picture, although not as sharp as the Toshiba's, is still very clear. Colors seem a little dimmer too. Sound though is excellent! I'm no audio freak but I really could hear a difference between the two. That was a nice surprise. Oh...it does play Notting Hill. Another thing to mention is that layer transitions seemed to pause a tiny bit shorter than on the Toshiba. And accessing menus was very quick unlike the Toshiba where there was a pause to move to another selection.
Others have complained of sound, but I didn't notice it because it's in a video cabinet. I picked mine up for around $210. Overall it's played all my movies perfectly, even the Matrix without a hitch. I just wish it had a zoom feature and a slightly sharper picture, but at least all my movies now play!

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD-1200

Good layout on remote for budget player, low profile design, color saturation excellent, audio quality better than most budget players.

Picture noticably soft, but devoid of jaggies, giving a more film-like appearance. Depending on monitor/TV it's mated with, this can be a positive or negative.

After holding out for what many would say is an inordinate amount of time, I went down the DVD road mainly because of titles being released in letterbox format that were not released as such during the reign of LaserDisc. I did alot of reading and background research into current and past DVD hardware and was dismayed by the lipsync problems with what seemed to be a great majority of players from the big Asian consumer electronics brands (Panasonic, Sony, etc.). That was also a big factor in my holding back on buying into DVD until now; too many bugs not yet worked out.

OK, so I decide to give the Sony a try, hoping against hope that they've not bungled this new line of players with lipsync problems. So far (a month) no malfunctions have arisen and the unit works flawlessly. Apparently Sony engineers these players to produce a soft picture as a trade-off against jaggies, which is fine with me. Layer changes so far are quick and not noticable, granted I haven't played many titles through this unit yet.

Build quality is what you'd expect of a budget player; light weight, plastic facia, stamped steel chassis. Output jacks seem sturdy which is good and dual outputs for audio and video is a nice plus. Remote is decent for a budget unit, obviously not illuminated, but you can't expect that at this price level.

Audio quality via analog outputs is not shabby, though not on par with my external D/A converter. Switching between the two using the player's digital output (not surprisingly) showed apparent differences in resolution and soundstaging, but timbre and slam were not too far apart between the two. So a thumbs up for Sony in terms of the sound quality of it's internal converters and analog section. Probably the best sounding budget player.

If you can pick one of these up for around $200, it's a steal.

Similar Products Used:

First DVD player; long-time LaserDisc afficionado, current player is Pioneer Elite CLD-99.

good drive, price, all important functions, picture has excellent colors

some delays while changing layers, picture a little soft

The Sony is a very good player with excellent sond. The picture is a little softer like on other players or the pc solution mentioned above. You have to decide if this is important for you, before you buy it. Don't missunderstand me the picture sharpness isn't bad. If you often watch older movies this is even an andvantage.

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hollywood realmagic plus (pc)

Small, non-cluttered face, dts and DD capable

nothin

I just picked up this player last night from a sale at a local sony ES dealership
i have it hooked up to a sony db830 receiver optically and through the RCA video output to my tv
i know the picture would be better if i hooed it up through an S-video to my tv, but there is a curved line on the screen that is VERY noticeable and i cnat really do anything about it (its the tv's problem not the dvd player.) so the RCA input will do for now. and im not a videophile or anything so it doesnt make that much of a difference tome. the player works, has a MUCH better picture than a vcr, the DD and DTS decoders on my receiver work nice too
amazing sound
the remote isnt that bad either
ill give it 5 stars since its all i need for now and will be all i need for a while

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP-c650d