Progressive Scan, Great Zoom Feature, NAVI Menu on the Remote provides an easy Icon based display to select features.

Playing MP3's on CDRW's is not recommended for this product.
Doesn't bother me as I don't play MP3's anyway. It does play MP3's on CD-ROM, CD-R(650MB/74 Min. only).

I have this player hooked up only to my TV, no receiver, no extra speakers, or anything else, and the picture and the sound are great. Picture is much better than the Toshiba SD2200 I used to own. I can't believe how great the picture is, and that's not even using the progressive scan feature. I like the remote, and it's better than the remote on the Toshiba SD2200 too. One thing I love, if you stop the machine in the middle of playing a movie, you can immediately get back to where you stopped by just turning the machine back on and pressing play. As long as you don't open the tray, you can always get right back to where you left off, wether you just stopped play or shut off the player completely, it doesn't matter. You can also open and close the tray from the remote, which is a nice plus. You can select subtitles from the remote with out having to go into MENU. It's a nice looking DVD player.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD2200

Great remote and menus.

None at this point.

I have nothing but praise for this player, just as I had for the previous Toshiba players I had. Sure I read all this hype over this "chroma bug" but I never have seen one. I won't go into lengthy detail but this player has functined perfectly with all dvds or cds that I have inserted. I have it hooked to a 55" Toshiba rptv and the video is very clear and others tell me it is the best picture they have seen on a large tv. Go figure... I haven't upgraded to HD yet... I just keep my tv calibrated with VE.

Similar Products Used:

Tosh 2109, Tosh 1200

top drawer picture
killer audio
DVD Audio
great build quality

None so far

I've had this player for about a week now, and I am truly amazed! This Toshiba has the best picture quality I have ever seen on a DVD player-crisp images, accurate colors, and no annoying picture glitches. The DACs on this unit are superb, whether listening to regular CDs or DVD Audio discs. My CD collection has never sounded this good. The remote is well layed out, although backlighting would have been a nice touch. This unit has digital prosgressive scan, but evn through the S-video output, the picture still kicks ass! This is the best player I have see for under $700 bucks! I'll post a follow-up review in a few months. No chroma bug here!

Similar Products Used:

too many to list

Great picture quality.
No compatability issues even with scratched rental disks.
Great CD Audio Quality.
DVD-Audio.
Progressive Scan.

Having to switch between 6 ch Analog and Bitsream after playing a DVD-Audio.

After having this player for a couple of months I have nothing bad to say about it.

Some other reviewers have seen problems with pauses in disks, I have not seen any such problems. The only pauses I have seen are on multi layer disks and the pauses are shorter than I have seen on other DVD players.

So far this player has been rock solid and has not had problems even with scratched rental disks.

Great picture quality, especially with the component outputs. Great sound quality with audio CD's. The sound quality of DVD-Audio is definately impressive, however I'm not sure how I feel about some of the mixes on the discs that are currently available.

The only negatives are common to every DVD-Audio player and that is the lack of digital output for DVD-Audio (one way to stop digital copying). Unfortunatley this necessitates switching back and forwards between the 6 channel analog, and the bitstream output modes.

One of the best "bang for the buck" players out their.

Similar Products Used:

Various mid range DVD players.

Price. Features.

Freezing up with some DVD's

I purchased this unit to connect to my Mits 55" HDTV, since it has true progressive scan with 2/3 pulldown. I was moving my Pioneer to the family room to mostly use as a CD changer and sometimes DVD player, as it lacks true progressive scan with 2/3 pulldown.

I tried the Lost in Space and Twister DVD to test it and everything was fine. Good picture and sound. However, when I put in 2 new DVD's that I just bought, they froze up and didn't play. I then hooked the Pioneer back up and they played perfectly. I will be taking the POS Toshiba back today and stick to true quality products and establishments. I normally deal with a high-end store in Raleigh for all of my HT needs, but thought I could save a few bucks on this unit. I should have known. Stick to quality products to give you your money's worth and stay away from the crap that you can buy from Circuit City and Best Buy. I still have a Toshiba 3109 DVD player that just collects dust because it too froze up on DVD's. I guess that brick wasn't heavy enough to teach me.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DV-C36

All the formats it plays, good picture and audio quality

Critical DVD-Audio problems

Although I liked this player very much at first, I had to return it. If you are not going to use it for playing DVD-Audio discs, you may ignore this review. Otherwise you should be aware, that this model has a severe bug, affecting at least one DVD-Audio disc that I have listened to - it doesn't play one of the tracks on Metallica's Black album DVD-Audio disc (track 4 - "Unforgiven" from the Surround playlist). It actually plays the track, but no sound is coming out from the 6 channel audio outputs of the player. The ways to "retrieve" the sound are: press FFW or Rewind while playing the track, or do a reset from the player menu. It is not a problem with my player only, because I tested it in the store with another SD-4700 player - same result.
I also read about exactly the same problem another reviewer had with a similar model - Toshiba SD-5700 - published on this site. It wouldn't play 3 of the 8 tracks on one of his DVD-Audio discs.
I am sorry to say, that regardless of the very good first impressions, I had to return the unit and bought a JVC XV-D721 DVD Audio/Video player for pretty much the same price. It played everything OK.
To me, this is a fatal problem and I would like to alert all consumers, who intend to use SD-4700 for DVD-Audio.

Top video and audio quality among mass market DVD players. Good DVD-Audio re-production. Excellent error correction capability. Easy to use NAVI menu.

operation noise from disc tray. Easy to be confused output selections.

This DVD-player packed with all useful features in a value package. The most useful ones are progressive scan and DVD-Audio capability. The market price is $10-$30 cheaper than the same line from other competiters. However, the quality of both video and audio are on the better side.

First, its video quality is noticably better than my Pioneer, which has better quality than the Apex models made in China. Specially when I played VCD's. It looks brighter and cleaner.

The audio quality doesn't sound worse than my Sony CD player which used to be a top mass market model (Best non-ES model 15 years ago.)Well, this is a mass maket product. So you don't expect premium components. However, it uses at least gold-plated terminals. This Toshiba's own D/A converter does generate sounds a little bit inferior to Sony's. However, I am using digital cables to connect them to my Denon AVR3300 (also a good mass market model.) If I play them using Denon's D/A converter, Toshiba seems to sound a little bit fuller than Sony does.

You don't expect perfect DVD-audio sound from this model either. No manufacturer makes perfect sound for only $250 range. It is again because of the non state-of-arts D/A converter. The good thing for a DVD-Audio is that, it usually contains both good signals (for DVD-Audio only) and DVD-Video's compressed audio signals. So I could compare the sound that can play by DVD-Video format and the sound that is designed for DVD-audio format. Can I tell the difference between them? Yes! The Dolby digital track sounds good, but harsh. The DVD-audio (must be output by 6-analog audio channels) sounds significantly different. It doesn't contain too much harsh, bright highs. However the musical highs are still there! So this very fatigue free. The sound image would be deeper and wider. sound position would be more accurte both side-wise and distant-wise. I would say most people prefer DVD-audio sound to Dolby digital or DTS (not to be confused with DTS CD's, which I have not audited yet.)

I have a CD, pure classical. My son made a scratch on it, half of the tracks on this CD cannot be played by my SONY CD player. I was considering that was a lost. However, this Toshiba DVD can play it with easy. I can only notice (with full concentration) very distinguished digital-type noise (about once in 20 seconds). Those noise are weak, could be easily confused with string noise in the music itself. Therefore, this CD is saved, so are several other DVD's which were scratched and would freeze here and there on my Pioneer DVD-player.

On the whole, I am satisfied with this DVD and will keep it. The noise from the tray while playing is noticable all the time (so is for my Pioneer DVD.) Some menu item designs could be improved. However, my profession is to use computers a lot. Therefore I can easily learn how to program any audio vidio components. I don't care about non-friendly designs. As long as it works, it is fine to me. Since I don't have too many DVD-audio discs to test, I have not encountered any defacts on this machine yet. My rating to this model is a full 5 star at this price range. I can safely recommend this model to every one who is looking for an good quality entry level DVD-player with many usuful features.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV-414.

DVD-Audio support, progressive output, low price

defective audio implementation, irritating scanning controls, flawed documentation

The 4700 was due in June, then July, then October. It finally hit retailers last week (November). You'd think they would have used this extra time to test the design. But the results indicate otherwise.

A lot of people waited all this time because the 4700 finally combines all the features you should demand of a DVD player today, and it does so at a low price. The primary features I'm talking about are DVD-Audio support, progressive output, and the ability to play CD-Rs (the absence of which is a pathetic shortcoming on many players). Even if you're not going to use these features immediately, why buy a player that doesn't support them, when it's obviously possible to offer them for around $200? Take the feature list and the price, and consider those the positive portions of this review.

Unfortunately, Toshiba's execution is flawed. Problems became apparent immediately. My 4700 had no video output from the composite or S-video jacks. On the back of the unit there's a switch for interlaced or progressive output. In the progressive mode, the composite and S-video jacks don't work; this is in the doc if you look hard enough. But I had tested the unit with the switch on both positions. What the doc doesn't tell you is that you have to "reboot" the player after moving the switch; it doesn't do anything while the power is on. You want to irritate customers, Toshiba? Make them wait four months for a product and then lead them to believe it's defective when it finally arrives.

With that mystery solved, I could finally test the player out. To test CD-R playback and CD Text, I made a CD with the song titles encoded on it. It played back fine, but the process revealed two flaws. First, the scan controls are extremely irritating, because they're not momentary. One press of the forward or reverse scan button will send the 4700 scanning forever. To stop the scan, you have to press Play again. This probably doesn't sound as annoying as it is, but think about the most common use of the scan: to scan back a few seconds and review something you want to see or hear again. You press scan until you get there, then release the button. But not on the 4700: You have to press the scan button and then quickly move your finger over to the Play button and get ready to press it at the right time.

The CD Text (album and song titles) display works, but every time you want to use it you have to turn on your TV and go into a menu to activate it. Then you have to leave your TV on to make the feature useful; the player's LED display doesn't even scroll the song title, so you only get to see about five or six characters of it. Good grief.

The real problems with the 4700 are in its audio. The 4700's audio implementation is bizarre and defective, and it makes listening to normal CDs a real problem.

The current A/V receivers have a major shortcoming: Despite the fact that DVD-Audio has been announced and ratified for years, the receivers still can't decode a DVD-Audio bitstream. What does this mean to you? It means that all the Dolby Digital processing in your receiver becomes worthless when you hook up a truly current (DVD-Audio-capable) DVD player. The DVD player has to do all the decoding, and deliver the six channels to your receiver through six RCA cables. Of course, you'll leave it this way when watching movies too, so the decoder in your receiver will never be used. The DVD player is doing all the work.

So, when you play a Dolby Digital 5.1-encoded disc, you get six channels of sound delivered to your receiver through the six cables, as expected. But what happens with stereo material?

The manual doesn't say what will happen if you play material that has two Dolby Digital channels (like an older stereo movie), and I don't have any lying around. But if you play a disc that has two PCM channels, like a regular CD, the DVD player will do Pro Logic decoding on it! First, I was surprised that the 4700 has Pro Logic decoding at all. But it does turn out to be necessary. I suspect that most receivers, like my Denon AVR-3801 (see my review elsewhere), will not allow you to attempt Pro Logic decoding when using the six-channel analog inputs. This is understandable.

The problem is that you obviously don't want to do Pro Logic decoding on regular albums, which aren't encoded that way and which usually sound terrible when "decoded." But thankfully, the SD-4700 has a separate pair of audio jacks, just for regular stereo. You can just run another pair of cables from these jacks to the CD input on your receiver. When listening to music, you can just select the CD input on your receiver instead of the DVD input, and enjoy regular stereo, right?

NOPE. This is where the true defect lies: The so-called stereo jacks are still affected by Dolby Pro Logic processing. Instead of left and right, You get the left front and right front channels; when listening to music, this means essentially no vocals or other content that's mono. That content is all lost!

So is there any way to get proper stereo out? Well, Toshiba gives you the ability to select what you want out of the digital jacks on the back of the unit (in case you are, in fact, letting your receiver do some decoding). You can choose between a raw bitstream or PCM. But for some reason, they threw in a third option, which does not have anything to do with the digital outputs: 6Ch Analog. This controls the functioning of the analog jacks. If you select "bitstream" or "PCM" instead of "6Ch Analog", the player for some reason stops doing Pro Logic decoding. This is monumentally stupid. What if I want Pro Logic out of the analog jacks and PCM out of the digital ones? Or stereo out of the analog jacks and bitstream out of the digital ones? If you select "6Ch Analog", there's no way even to figure out what's coming out of the digital jacks.

The real problem here is that there is a menu missing, which allows you to select what comes out of the six-channel jacks. The secondary problem is that the stereo jacks, which should always deliver regular stereo, do not. Why are they there, then?

With the increasing capabilities of these entertainment devices, we're seeing that their designers are sadly lacking in common sense. In fact, they're going backwards. We can't even get a remote control that's physically correct anymore (they're all bulbous at the BACK, which is exactly the opposite of how they should be). So we shouldn't be surprised that "features" are now useless because they are inaccessible or defectively implemented, but we certainly shouldn't put up with it either.

Has every feature a DVD player could have except HDCD and SACD compatibility.

Mediocre, inaccurate sound quality. Flimsy build quality

I picked one of these up a week ago at Best Buy but already returned it. If you are looking at one of these units primarily as a video source, you should ignore this review and read one of the more detailed, all-encompassing ones below. When I bought this unit, I was looking for a unit for both audio and video playback. When I found the Toshiba inadequate for music playback, after a 48 hour burn-in, I did not finish testing it for video.

Although this unit is advertised as having a 192khz/24 bit DAC, I found the music quality to be, on the whole, no better than my 1984 Pioneer cd player that I just retired. There was no real improvement in detail and there was a harsh, electronic sounding element to many of the instruments, especially keyboards and piano; male voices were also a bit thin. This player had problems with imaging, projecting some instruments onto the left side of the soundstage when they definitely belong on the right side; puzzlingly, it did place other instruments in the correct place on the soundstage. The sound on the Pioneer 440 was significantly better, probably due to Pioneer using a Burr-Brown DAC in their unit, rather than whatever one it is that Toshiba used. The Cambridge Audio player clearly outclassed both the Toshiba and the Pioneer when it came to sound, even though it had a less hi-tech 96khz/24bit DAC.

There were a couple of basic features about the Toshiba that I did not like. First, its build quality seems quite flimsy. For a full size DVD player case, it only weighs 5-6 lbs and seemed like it would not last too many years. However, it is about a pound heavier than other, less expensive Toshiba single disk DVD players, and its drawer mechanism is sturdier than the cheaper Toshibas' drawers, as well as most other brands one finds at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.... I also didn't like the remote. It has quite a few features and buttons, but for some reason locates the number buttons and a few other ones under a hinged cover panel on the bottom of the remote, which is inconvenient to access. It is also quite a bit larger than most other DVD remotes, except for Onkyo DVD players (which have 50 identical shaped buttons lined up in tight rows and are practically useless).

I was looking for a player with audiophile sound quality and this one definitely does not have it (unless I simply received a mildly defective unit). Based on my personal criteria, I would rate this unit two stars overall. However, I imagine it does have some pretty good video features, and most potential customers would place a greater emphasis on video, so I will upgrade my rating a star. I give it one more star for value for having a lot of features, including progressive scan, DVD-Audio, and built in Dolby 5.1 and DTS decoders.

Similar Products Used:

Cambridge Audio DVD 300, Pioneer 440

Nice remote, excellent error correction, excellent interlaced video to my 8 year old 27" TV.

Noisy transport, and defective sound with some DVD-Audio discs.

I'm going to be returning my SD4700 for one main reason....

I'm noticing some faint digital noise in the front right speaker, surround right, and to a lesser extent the center channel speaker. This is when playing the DVD-Audio (MLP) tracks on the following 2 DVD-Audio releases: Immersion (Starkland) and Studio Voodoo (DTS Entertainment). The noise is NOT noticeable when selecting the DD 5.1 tracks from Immersion or the DTS tracks from Studio Voodoo.

The other DVD-Audio disc I own, Bela Fleck's Tales From The Acoustic Planet Vol. 2 (Warner Brothers), doesn't have this problem. The only difference is that the Bela Fleck release has the MLP tracks in 96kHz/24bit, whereas the above 2 problematic discs have the MLP tracks in 48/24 (at least from what I've read about these releases).

I'm thinking my SD4700 is defective, especially since the left channels playback without any digital noise.

Also, a note to SD4700/5700 owners. To hear DVD-Audio (MLP) tracks through the 6 analog outputs, make sure you select "6 ch analog" in the player's setup. You also need to select "multichannel" as the input on your receiver. And on some releases you also need to select DVD-Audio (MLP) from the disc's menu. Don't forget to switch back to Bitstream (or PCM) in the player's setup when watching movies or listening to CD's.