Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba SD2805 5-Disc Carousel DVD and CD Player

The best thing that can be said about the Toshiba SD2805 is that it was once top-rated by Consumer Reports. Now how you feel about Consumer Reports' ratings is one thing, but if this was considered a great machine at a street price, how can anyone complain about it?

Toshiba has traditionally made fine televisions, and many have lauded their line of DVD players as well. This model offers a solid performer at a ridiculously low price for a 5-disc changer. Considering other favorable reviews of this model on other DVD-related sites and in magazines, I went ahead and ponied up for a couple.

What can be said pro and con for the unit?

First off, the cons:

1) Not a stylish bone in its body. About as exciting to look at as a beige wall.

2) The aforementioned (by other reviewers) slow response to commands. From checking around, it seems that all multidisc players are a bit laggard in responding, though. Is the Toshiba any worse? I can't say for sure, lacking any empirical stopwatch figures.

3) Inputs and outputs. If you have a VCR, dish receiver, DVD, and TV, you may have a problem if you lack an AV tuner/receiver capable of handling all the inputs and outputs. The SD2805 sadly lacks an S-Video input, having only an output. Same for some of the other more recent forms of ports; you've got every possible output, but few inputs. So if you have an older TV lacking a plethora of different inputs, you might have a problem if you don't have a way to juggle all the inputs and outputs. This problem is true of most DVD players, though. Why manufacturers can't provide a way to avoid buying a new receiver to handle this last, additional device, I don't know.

4) The remote is poor. Not universal, not even a decent size, it sadly falls in with many of its brethren in providing far too many buttons. Why manufacturers can't provide more modal buttons, ones that have multiple functions, I don't know. For instance, on the SD2805 the "play" button pressed once just plays. But what if pressed again it paused? Pressed once more, it could play again. In short, no need for a pause button. In fact, using this as an example, I believe that half the buttons could be eliminated. The other issue lies in how some buttons don't work without pressing them several distinct times. The "disc skip" button held down should cycle through the discs, but it does not. In short, as necessary as a remote is to accessing specific functions, this one seems an afterthought.

And now, the pros:

1) The picture is tack sharp and stunning. Unlike cheap DVD players, the picture does not "bloom" or "breathe", meaning solid, perfectly-saturated colors "within the lines" and no pulsing of colors or images. This is the best picture I have seen on a player that is not progressive scan ( - which is essential for HD TVs.)

2)The audio is excellent. A few CDs revealed a more spacious feel than I got from my old CD player when driven through the same speakers and receiver.

3) Did I mention it was a multidisc player - a price point for many single-disc players?

5) Plays about every format of disc out there.

In short, you can have a top-rated DVD player for less than half its original SRP. Is this a closeout? Sure it is. Toshiba just announced a new line of players with built-in Tivo. Still, if you have not taken the DVD plunge and love a value, this is the unit to get.

I've had a string of players with what I imagine are [bad] video decoders; my Onkyo would sometimes just freeze up at one screen for about five seconds, the RCA not only did that, it produced horribly pixelated scene transitions. The RCA also seemed to put out terribly low audio levels; I had to crank the TV to hear the silly thing. The American Beauty DVD seems to break on most DVD players. I was pretty frustrated.

Then I got the Toshiba. For [money], all I wanted was good, smooth, colorful images on DVD and a decent audio output level. And I got that... this produces the brightest, clearest DVD picture I've ever seen. The remote buttons are too dang small but then they're ALL too dang small. And it plays American Beauty without a hiccough.

I didn't want Video CD, SVCD, CD audio, or MP3, and I didn't even care about the DVD changer; they were all gravy for 100 bucks. I *did*, however, like the changer when watching _24_ on DVD!

If you have a cheap DVD player that you hate, throw it away or put it in the kid's room and buy yourself one of these. You won't be sorry.

This Toshiba unit has more tricks up its sleeve than most users will ever need, and many you're likely to ever know about unless you study the manual closely. Suffice it to say it will play virtually any format CD or North American DVD you throw at it with considerable aplomb. While I have not found any real need for a DVD changer just yet, its CD changer makes this unit great for handling all the music at your next party. Its DVD features zoom magnification of any point in any image, and its digital processing allows for nearly perfect freeze frame or zoom. Audio outputs are plentiful, as are video hook up options.
The remote is fairly well laid out and the menus are logical. This is a great all-purpose player at a great price.

Great unit for the money. The changer area offers loading of multiple discs even while the unit is playing. It also allows for random play when loaded with 5 CDs..This is nice. The unit has component video outputs so you can totally utilize your televisions picture quality. If you are into Audio/Video, the unit has the following features and all have been flawless thus far for me. DVD-Video, CD/VideoCD/MP3/DVD-R/CD-R and CD-RW.

I used to be a Toshiba fanatic, but this is the third disappointing Toshiba product I've purchased over the past 3 years. I'm not buying any more.

Overall, this is a good DVD player. It plays DVDs, DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW, JPEG (pictures), and MP3. However, it will not play MP3s from CD-RW, and there is NO - I repeat, NO - random playback feature for MP3s. Imagine that, folks. Oh, also, you can only put 199 MP3s or JPEGs on a disk; the player simply won't recognize more than that.

So, with 5 disc slots, that's about 1000 songs you can put into this player at once (on MP3), but you cannot play them back in random order. This quite literally defeats the entire purpose of having MP3s to begin with. Don't even bother converting anything to MP3, because you'll never listen to more than a few hours at once, which means that you'll never hear most of your songs unless you manually start playback at random places.

This is simply [wrong].

The remote is typical Toshiba fare, which means it looks as if it were designed and built in North Korea.

Connectivity is good. Optical digital audio out, digital coax out, component video out, and S-video out are all present.

If you never plan to play MP3s, and you have the fingers of an 8-year-old child and don't mind the remote, then this is a very good DVD player. If you have normal fingers and play MP3s, don't even think about it. What a disappointment.