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

Had been looking about for a replacement DVD player after the laser in my old multi-region player gave up the ghost. On recomendations of a work colleague I had a look at this little beauty.

Its slim, sexy and does exactly as it says on the tin. Instruction manual is a bit on the sparse side but its an easy player to setup. Remote is strange to start with as the batteries go at the top, guess I'm just used to remotes with the weight at the bottom.

One really good thing (which I recall someone else wrote in their review here) is the different sound settings. Its really handy being able to bring the dialogue to "the front" specially if an actor/actress is mumbling their lines a bit.

One thing to note is that if you are planning to watch an disks from other regions e.g. R1 then your TV will need to be able to handle an NTSC because if it doesnt then you'll be watching the movie in black and white.

All in all I'm very pleased with the player. With all the features (to many to list) its great value for money!

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.

Ergonomics:
The player is very slim and shallow, thereby not taking up much room wherever you choose to put it. The styling is modern, with small round buttons on an uncluttered fascia. Even if you lose the remote control you can still access all functions via the front panel.
The drive mechanism emits a muted hum which can be heard a few feet away. It is much quieter than my old SD110 but I haven't heard any other makes or models of DVD player to compare it to.

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.

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.

This is the third DVD player I've purchased, the first two being from the Wharfdale range of players, the 750 and the M5. Both players were at the initial time of their release considered to be budget players, but this was at the time a budget player would still set you back £180. The 750 was a great machine, but it suffered from poor handling of certain bright colours, in particular reds. The M5 solved this problem, but unfortunately, it had a tendency to play up MPEG artefacts on some discs. Both were also very bulky machines by today's standards. I had therefore been looking at the possibility of buying a new player recently, and I'd seen a few budget players on the market at around the £50 mark that were tempting. I was almost set on ordering another player from Amazon at just under £70, but then I was pointed to this Toshiba machine. Apparently it has just been reviewed in a DVD magazine who are claiming it gives many high end players a run for their money, and I have to say I agree with them. The player has multi-region functionality straight out of the box, there is no need to scour the internet for handset hacks with this machine. I have approaching 600 discs in my collection, from various regions and the first thing I did was to try a selection of discs which I thought might cause problems. I had a few older discs which were skipping occassionally on one of my players, but this machine handled them perfectly. RCE discs present no problems either. The colours are sharp and solid, there is no difficulty with even the brightest red. The player has a number of enhanced lighting modes, which give subtle differences to the display, without having to continually fiddle with your contrast and brightness settings on the TV. The player has all the requisite outputs so connecting to your amplifier is no problem, and it supports DTS, a must have these days. The player has a nice slimline design, and takes up little space. One nice feature is the dimmer on the players display, useful if you're watching in a dark room, the display can even be turned off completely. Nice onscreen graphics make it an easy player to use, and very intuitive. Playback of discs is perfect, I've noticed very little artefacting, even on a VCD disc, or some of the US TV releases from several years ago, such as Star Trek TNG, early episodes of Buffy etc, which are renowned for artefacting and grain due to the quality of the film stock used. Sure, it's not eliminated, but it's handled better than the other players I've used. New films look as crisp and sharp as ever, I've tested titles like Attack of the Clones and Die Another Day and they look incredible. Finally, one particularly nice feature is the ability to read photo CD's and display them on the TV. This isn't specially prepared photo CD's either, but any CD containing JPEG image files. Very useful in this age of digital photography. At just shy of £100 this is a bargain, and it's definitely worth considering over some of the bargain DVD's at £50 - £60 which are appearing on the market at the moment.

I took the plunge after scouring all the review sites and magazines for a decent, cheap fully specified DVD player.
I bought this and have not been disappointed.
The picture is so clear you can really tell the difference in quality between NTSC and PAL discs!
The virtual surround sound is a little disappointing, but only a little!.
Otherwise 10/10 (or 5/5 in this case!)

This machine does everything (apart from DTS - which requires a decoder... but who really wants DTS?!), it will play R2 DVDs no problem, and also R4 - and R1 including RCE discs. (I'm guessing it will play all other regions also!)

It's packed with so many features that you'd expect on a machine three or four times the price!! There are several sound options (normal/3D/dialogue), forget 3D-it's a gimmick, you'll never manage it from 2 speakers, but dialogue is amazing! If you've ever had the problem of not hearing the voices in a movie (who hasn't?!) then this is the option for you! It boosts the voice right up, making it nice and clear!! There are also 5 screen options, which change the contrast/brigtness, etc. slightly, however I would imagine that is an option that won't be used much.

The remote control - which is always a worry on a budget player - is one of the best I've seen in a long time. Big enough, sturdy enough and the buttons have been layed out that very soon it becomes second nature.

Don't be fooled by the price, this machine really is the best budget player on the market today - and with Amazon's multi-region feature it's even better!!