Is everyone out there who has reviewed this DVD "video" player blind?
I received mine months ago and it has the worst video playback I've seen to date! :-/

The problem that I see is terrible conversion of 16x9 (widescreen) encoded video to letterbox played back on a 4:3 television.

If you have a 'standard' 4:3 playback device STAY AWAY FROM THIS PLAYER!!! The 2109 will give you MUCH BETTER VIDEO PLAYBACK and for MUCH LESS $$$$.

Based on this "rip off" of a product, It will be a long time before I consider ANYTHING Toshiba makes "high end."

And for those of you who dont' agree with me, open up your Toshiba player and compare it to the poorly reviewed 3108 player that Toshiba sold for ~$500. - Chip after chip, and PCB after PCB say 3108 all over them. :-(

If anyone at Toshiba is reading this, and you disagree... NOT! - I'd be happy to have you buy this product back.

-Jake

I have had the Region 1 2107 for a couple of years and been extremely satisfied with its performance. I really didn't think my set up could get much better - it has !
I have just upgraded to a french PAL/NTSC SD9000, modified for multiregion playback (it does this automatically).

Pictures are simply stunning.

Sound is just awsome.

And its built like a brick s**t house !

I recently replaced my Toshiba 3107 which had some very annoying problems: layer switching, audio drop-outs and a few incompatibility issues.
I auditioned several DVD players for almost a month: Toshiba SD-9000, Marantz 930, & the Sony 7700. I really thought that the players ALL performed really well when compared to one another but I felt that the Toshiba was far superior when used with a 16:9 television. (I own the Toshiba 40" widescreen). I have to agree with previous comments about the soft masking of the Sony 7700 DVD player. My big complaint about the Marantz was the poor ergonomics on the unit, especially the remote control.

I may have probably picked the Sony overall if I had a 4:3 set.

At this price range, though, 4:3 or 16:9, you can't go wrong with this unit. Toshiba's consumer level players don't even come close and this player has none of the problems I had with my previous players: Toshiba 3107 and Marantz 810.

This player is a 5-star with 16:9 sets but may only be a 41/2 star with 4:3.

Here it is Saturday afternoon and I have owned the Toshiba SD9000 for about 72 hours now. Most of that time has been speent with the unit running the Sheffield/XLO Test and Burn in CD's tracks 6, 7, and 8....my usual procedure for burning in any piece of gear before any serious audition. I ran thru the setup with the included "Video Essentials" disk, watched the Bruce Willis movie "The Fifth Element", and listened/watched the included music video.
For background, my audio system consists of an Audible Illusions Mod3A, current version, with Amperex 6DJ8's and 6922's, a pair of BEL 1001 MkIII's, and Martin-Logan's Aerius-i's, biwired. Normally the CD playback system is all Audio Alchemy, DDSIII, DTI 2.0, and a DDE 1.2 HDCD. Digital cable is an Illuminati D-60, I2S bus cable is an Audio Magic Mystic Reference. I also feed a pair of Dahlquist DQ-1W subs with their DQ-LP1 crossover and an Adcom GFA-555II.

Cables from the DAC to Mod3A are JPS Labs Superconductors, I also use these from the pre to the amps. Speaker cables are bi-wire sets of 1/2" Andrew Heliax with each pigtail end (+ & -) made of 8, 1' lengths of the conductor from Audioquest Type 4 twisted together, and heavy gold lugs securely crimped and silver soldered. Speaker cables are about 8' each in length. These are my own hombrew versions of the JPS speaker cables...just larger material.

I bought the Toshiba unit on sale at one of the local mid-fi home entertainment dealers from one of my Ham radio buddies who works there. I also had read the reviews on the different web sites about this unit and had high hopes for the quality of audio and video from this unit...at a bit over $700 with tax, etc., this unit cost me about double what I bought the DDS III for from HCM Audio when they still had new units about 2 years ago.

The only other comparison to DVD that I have really been exposed to is at my part time job where I work for a high-end dealer that sells via mail order and the Internet. We have a Cal Labs player into a Turbscan line doubler and that feeds a Dream Vision projector.

First thing I noticed about the Toshiba, at least on my 6 year old Zenith 32" TV which does not have any of the advanced video inputs like S-video or component, was that the motion artifacts that I had seen on the projection system were absent on my screen in the letterbox mode...I attribute that to the difference in magnification between the two setups, but the Toshiba was very good in this instance nonetheless. Picture quality was superb and the 2 DVD channel audio sounded decent. There was less motional artifacts and better definition than my Sony DSS setup.

The next set of results, though, have me wodering about this units "audiophile" capabilities. I have listened to many different segments of different CD's thru it, using the coax digital output into the DTI and DDE combo, and while the burning in of the unit has helped some, it still has deficiencies compared to the Audio Alchemy transport.

First, the bass quality is different, it's softer, looser, more ill defined, less of it. Treble is not quite as clear or as clean and seems to get a tiny, tiny bit congested at times. Transient attack, punch, etc., aren't quite in the same league.

Second, the imaging is nowhere near as good, sounds seem to hang on to the surface of the speakers rather than exisisting in space. The central image seems good, but just does not seem to have that air and space around it that helps create a more holographic image.

Third, depth, height, and width are all substantially diminished when going from the AA to the 9000. There just isn't the sound of the "space", especially in the "Trinity Sessions" CD, that I have become used to.

I used Chris Isaak's "Baja Sessions" HDCD, Patricia Barber's gold HDCD "Cafe Blue", The Cowboy Junkies "Trinity Sessions", Donald Fagin's "Kamikyriad", VTL's "Toolbox", and Andreas Vollenweider's "Caverna Magica" for these tests as I am very familiar with all these disks.

Each and every time I switched back to the Toshiba, things just seemed to collapse and lose that little bit of magic that two years of tweaking on my system had been able to deliver. I really don't know all the mechanisms at work here, but, it sure is interesting to hear in a system I am intimately familiar with, such difference just due to a digital source! According to some, there should be no difference, bits are bits, right? WRONG! I really didn't believe that there could be such a difference, I thought that those who said that there were such digital differences were embellishing the truth. I couldn't have been more wrong!

Thinking that it might be the stand that the AA was on vs. what the 9000 was sitting on, I then moved the 9000 to the Bright Star Air Mass that the DDE sits on and also plugged it into the same outlet on the Tice Solo power block....well, it did a little, but, the differences were still there and still audible. And yes, I tried the TOSLink output vs. the D-60 connection and the coax won over fiber, but barely, both sounded quite the same. The audio outputs from the Toshiba itself, in comparison to the DDE, was not even in the same ball park as far as clarity, freedom from grunge, dynamic range, or stable imaging was concerned. Before this move, I even cleaned all connectors with Kontak, then Caig's DeoxIt D-100, then treated with ProGold, just to ensure that there were no questions here.

I also removed the cover just to look inside at the construction quality and while I didn't really note anything spectacular, it was of typical competent, far-eastern manufacturing type of construction. But, as far as being a $1000 component? I don't really think so...while the RCA connectors on the back have gold plated ground connections, the center connections are not gold plated...tin? silver? Who knows...I guess that I expected a bit more.....

I originally went into this thinking (hoping?) that the Toshiba unit being of more recent manufacturing and of an "improved" technology, would simply sound better than my "old" Audio Alchemy drive. Well, so far, that hasn't happened, but, I will keep running the burn in tracks for another day or so and see what happens....if the CD sudio doesn't improve, well then, I might as well have a cheaper player just for use with the TV and keep my DDE as my main digital source. It would be nice, though, to have a unit that sounded as good as the DDE with good CD's to eliminate one extra component....

I guess the bottom line is that if I had never heard anything better then I would probably have been satisfied, but since I had gotten used to a certain quality level of reproduced sound, IN MY SYSTEM, the Toshiba does not achieve the same level of performance. It is a good video playback device, but, after 3 days of burning-in, it has nowhere near the level of audio CD quality that the older AA drive is able to produce.

So, 5 stars as a video product, 3 as an audio only device.

I just need to clarify my earlier posting...there were a few times when I stated that the Audio Alchemy piece was the DDE...well, as anyone familiar with AA gear knows, that's the Digital Decoding Engine, not the Digital Drive System! So, please forgive me for my typing errors....it was the DDS that I was directly comparing to the SD-9000.
Thank you

great picture, sharpness & color controls

discontinued?

I have a TW40X81 and a SD-9000. Compared to other players I looked at (by Sony and Pioneer), the Toshiba had a sharper image. It can also pass a PLUGE signal. Since I got mine real cheap (

Video,audio and build quality.

None

Jake's an idiot. This player has produced the sharpest picture to date on my 4:3 RPTV. The Sonys are blurry in comparison. Check this player out on a calibrated TV and you'll be impressed! :)

Solid build quality, good sound quality, solid image quality

Remoteis goofy

The Toshiba is a very solid performing player with impeccable build quality. Image is softer than the Sony 7700 but the color are more warm and natural. Sound quality is more soft and natural as well. The older Sony 7000 player sounded the best but didn't have dts encoding. and its successor didn't seem to have the care designed into it as the earlier model and sounded more crystalline. However both are still fine products. The biggest issue I have with Sony though was not their technology they make a very good player. The thing I hate about Sony is lack of reliability inherent in their product line. I never had any audio product that I purchased from Sony last for an reasonable amount of time. SD9000 sold itself to me because it’s solid in all of its attributes. It is no Cal Labs 2500 nor Theta DaVid or Denon 5000 but it is a very good player just the same at about $1500 dollars less.

Similar Products Used:

sony 7700, sony 7000, marantz 850, denon 2000

Quality of Sound and picture. Ablity to read DTS,DDand PCM.

NONE

I am an avid fan of this web site and can't believe all the horror stories about DVD's that have problems reading disks or take long periods of time before a picture appears on the screen. I'm not going to bore you with all the technical advances this machine has over other products just tell you straight out. The Toshiba 9000 is a great player. I compared it with many overpriced units and still found myself favoring the Toshiba. If you get a chance to demo this unit , get out the remote and test all the cool features it allows you to perform. The unit I bought was an open box returned after Christmas. I assume the spouse found other ways to spend a grand

Great machine Fantastic value.

Similar Products Used:

JVC, Sony

Build quality, performance

None

The SD-9000 is better than the Sony 7700. The Sony will not pass a Pluge pattern and the Toshiba is one of the very handfull of players that will. This should silence all those negative critics posting negative reviews about this player. It is by far the best player on the market at or near its price-point. To think they're available used as low as $625 is incredible. If you see one for that price, I'd buy it quick! Easy 5+ star rating!

Similar Products Used:

Sony 7700