Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba SD520E Multi-region DVD Player

I bought my first DVD player back in 1998 when it was an emerging format and software was in short supply.

So, it was high time to replace my ageing Sony machine with a new model. For sometime I have been an advocate of R2 discs, but the wealth of releases in the US (R1) overshadows Europe, and a multi-region machine was the way to go. If you factor-in the ease of importing DVDs, it becomes a truly compelling proposition!

After extensive research - Toshiba's range of players offered the best value in terms of performance and price. I recently purchased a Sony Plasma HDTV and read that the SD-520E supports progressive scan output via the component connection. Roughly translated; DVDs containing this encoding will output a high resolution image on a HDTV. Most of my R1 discs support this. And I can testify, from first hand experience, that once you've viewed a genuine HDTV source you will not want to go back to SDTV! I bought a second Toshiba player, the SD-220E, for my parents.

Kudos to Toshiba for releasing an outstanding collection of players. Anyone serious about extracting consummate audio visual performance from their home cinema systems need look no further!

A very clever machine, that plays and catalogues MP3's effortlessly. Apart from a good performance as a DVD player, it plays DVD Audio, and has a Digital Picture facility. This allows you to copy digital images onto a CD-R, which then plays in the DVD player either as a Slide Show or Photo Album. Very good software provided - the only minor criticism is the time that the machine takes to 'fire up' and recognise the format of the disc. Overall, a very good buy.

I like most other people around the UK felt it was time to upgrade my four year old DVD system, to something a little newer and hopefully a little more impressive. I trialled several different manafacters of systems like Sony and Cambridge. But was most impressed by the crystal clear picture quality and the clarity of sound being displayed by the Toshiba SD520E. Although the remote is somewhat big, it is clear and simple to navigate and the on screen system menu displayed an ease of use. The instruction manual was also incredibly easy to read and understand.The fact that it also has an inbuilt decoder for Dobly 5.1,became an advantage when i wanted to add a home cinema system to it, due to the fact that you don`t need a separate amp.
If you want ease of use and fantastic picture quality, this is the machine for you.

I have to say I was pretty dissatisfied with this player.

The fascia design is poor, with tiny, identical buttons and hard-to-read labels. On the other hand the remote is a huge, ugly white monster. The on-screen menus are also surprisingly ugly and primitive.

Although the picture quality was fine, the biggest flaw is that transport mechanism is so noisy that you can hear the disks whirring and rattling all the time even from several metres away. It's very distracting and unacceptable for what is supposed to be hi-fi equipment. Trying different disks, and weighing down the machine with a heavy amplifier didn't solve the problem.

I bought this player under the pretence that it would be a high quality player in terms of both physical build and quality and superior audio and video reproduction at a budget price. None of these requirements were fulfilled except for the budget price.

The build quality is suspect at the very least and has that almost home made feel, i certainly would not want to rest anything on top of it (which i did with my previous DVD player which had lasted for three years and the only reason for replacing that was i wanted to be able to play DVD audio on a budget)let alone place my amplifier on it near it for fear of bending the very thin casing or scratching the poorly coated silver paint. The second and biggest critiscism is with the drive mechanism,which is appaulingly loud and means watching films or listening to audio at low levels is near impossible.

Another major compliant is the ability to play CD's..... It can't at least not without skipping, i thought it was my CD collection to start with but even trying nearly twenty brand new shop bought CD's it still maintained the same problem.

Finally the quality of the sound reproduction is terrible, i don't know whether it is the D/A converters that are of a low quality or some other reason that i cannot fathom but low frequencies are hardly audible or are quiet and the high frequencies sounding less that crisp is being generous.

The only part of this player that is of fairly decent quality (at that i mean passable at a basic level) is the video reproduction. The blacks are very crisp and edges are clear other that that not much else can be said.

Quite simply this player is filled with functions that are completley useless and that is it's main selling point. I was duped and now i would like to exchange it but i can't as the seller from whom i bought it won't take it back because it is not actually faulty, i think Ebay is my next stop.