Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba SD330E Multi-region DVD Player

At £80 for a high quality, highly featured, top branded multi-region player this must be the bargain of the year. Snap this up while you can.

I'm not going to repeat the other reviewers by saying that the sound and picture quality is simply superb. In addition you get to play MP3, WMA, JPEG, DTS (acronym overload).

The only minor downside to this excellent player is the JPEG picture view facility. Its a bonus to have this useful feature at such a price range BUT...
Firstly the JPEGs can only be viewed in 4:3 format, so if you have a widescreen TV you'll have to adjust your set accordingly or view the pictures stretched horizontally.
Secondly the JPEG pictures look too soft no matter how big or detailed the original JPEG file is. Sometimes the images suffer from interlacing (I'm going to get technical but it gives a shimmering effect). Its more than adequate for showing your your holiday snaps using the slideshow facility.

All in all I'm extemely pleased with the Toshiba SD330.

I had previously read all the reviews for this product, and decided after long deliberation, that this is the DVD for me to own. The DVD came with 5 days of ordering, and after buying another SCART cable (gold terminals). I plugged in the DVD player and switched on. There was nothing to set up, and since then I have thrown all types of CD's at the unit including MP3's both on CDR and CDRW (which is not recommended) and everything has played perfectly. I have not had a chance to watch other region DVD's but feel that this will be just as painless.

I have no hesitation in recommending this to others.

I bought this player as a replacement for an old Alba model which I loved to death. I own a Panasonic and while its a nicer player it doesnt have the versatility of the Alba. I was looking primarily for a budget player that could handle my collection of vcd, svcd, region 3 dvd and RCE dvd's all with ease. Being Christmas I didnt have much luck so I decided to try this little Toshiba. Boy was that a good decision. I got the best of both my other players.

The picture quality is everything you would ask for from a brand name like Toshiba, everything I've played on it looked really good (or as good as the transfer on the dvd allowed).
The options are great, the sound superb and its a slinky little thing that takes up very little room.

It's played everything I've thrown at it without complaining - and quickly and quietly unlike my old Alba. VCD, SVCD, DVD-R, Region 1,2,3,4,6,0 including RCE. Budget dvd media and cd media (including coloured bottoms) right through to ritek dvd media, even Region 3 Hong Kong dvd's that cost me around £1.50 to buy.

I'm not sure about macrovision, if thats important to you (it isn't to me) you'll need to check, but if multi region and all sorts of mpeg media is what your looking for and you can spare a few extra notes this does everything the budget players will but with a little more style. 5 stars.

This arrived today and I hooked it up to my Toshiba rear proj TV via component video leads. I am now watching Region 1 & 2 and have never seen such clarity and, moreover, gorgeous fine detail in the colouration. I am scratching my head as to why you need to spend more than the £** this unit cost, for any reason.

The picture is tweakable, with presents already prgrammed into the unit; "movie 2" is my favourite giving a balanced contrast and brightness for low room lighting, without flared or over-black areas in the picture.

If you want a DVD player this is the one.

I had a Toshiba SD110E DVD player for the last few years and found it to be an excellent value-for-money player, as many reviews from many sources will confirm. Last week it burned out but I was planning to upgrade anyway, so I did a lot of online research before deciding on the new SD330. My findings so far:

Picture:
It boasts the same wonderful picture quality as the other Toshiba models -- blacks are truly black (not various shades of dark grey as can be found with some DVD players), colours are bright and saturated, almost creating a 3D atmosphere as you feel immersed in the picture.

Sound:
I haven't hooked it up to my surround system yet but the sound quality is reported in other reviews to be very good for Dolby digital and DTS.

Connectors:
It has loads of connectors at the back, something for everyone --SCART socket, S-video, composite, digital coaxial audio out, digital optical audio out, 2-channel stereo audio out, and (amazingly for the price) component out connectors.

Ergonomics:
The player is very slim and shallow so it won't take up much room wherever you're planning to put it. Styling is very modern -- rounded buttons on an uncluttered fascia. Even if you lose the remote you could do everything from the front panel.
The drive mechanism is a muted hum which can be heard a few feet away but is much quieter than on my old player. I'm not able to compare it to any other makes of players though.

Features:
I'm really impressed with the MP3 playability. I tried an old CD-R which I burned almost 10 years ago containing a mixture of MP3 songs, programs and data files, and it quickly picked out all 117 of the MP3s to play. Sound quality was excellent, even through the stereo of my cheapie Matsui 21" TV. One thing that other reviewers had griped about with Toshiba DVD players was that the MP3 listings only show the first 7 or 8 characters of the MP3 titles, but Toshiba must have listened to this -- the song list on the SD330 shows me the first 31 characters of each title in a neat display. Features such as memory presets, random track play, etc., all work with the MP3 playback.
I haven't had a chance to try the JPEG photo viewing feature but according to the manual you can view photos in slideshow mode or via thumbnail index pages.

One thing to note is that many "region-free" Toshibas will not be able to play Region 1 RCE ("Region Code Enhancement" -- a new region enforcement scheme) DVDs without doing a hack via the remote control each time, unless the reseller's multi-region hardware fix can specifically handle RCE encoding. I bought my player at another online store for £20 more because I'm not sure if the players from Amazon are "RCE-friendly". But keep in mind that there are very few RCE-encoded DVD titles available right now so if this doesn't bother you (and especially if you don't buy Region 1 DVDs) then you might as well go for Amazon's cheap offering; I rate them very highly for the purchasing of goods.