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

The Toshiba SD330 is this reviewer’s third DVD Player. Ironically as this review will show, this latest purchase has proven itself easily the best whilst also being the cheapest – technology moves on! DVD Players can now be bought as cheap as £49 but this can be false economy, the extra money buys a good solid brand name, features, flexibility, quality and consequently a much more pleasurable viewing and listening experience.

On receipt of this player from Amazon, was immediately impressed by this player’ classy appearance. The Toshiba SD330 is slim, sleek, with a solid ‘feel’ and oozing quality. It’s the little touches that make the difference, such as the way the CD draw operates, to the scrolling display on the unit. On connection to a challenging system (44 inch rear projection TV and H-Fi Separates for Dolby Surround sound) this reviewer was immediately impressed by the effortless detailed audio and visual presentation. The picture quality from playing a good retail DVD is faultlessly clear, sharp with solid colour saturation. This is matched by a sterling full-range HiFi Dolby surround sound performance without annoying background artefacts (buzz’s, hiss etc) experienced with some other DVD players. What was most impressive was the ability of the Toshiba to make the most from less than perfect disk sources. These included difficult DVDs which skipped in other DVD players, poor quality VCDs and DVD-RW. The Toshiba has the uncanny ability to play just about anything that is on a five inch disk, including MP3s and JPEGs.

This DVD player possesses abundance of features, and thanks to a clearly laid out remote control, superb on screen graphics and comprehensive buttons/snazzy scrolling display on the unit themselves the features are easy to access. There really are too many features to list in this short review, but some personal favourites include: - comprehensive zoom with ‘pan and scan’ ability; an efficient function to resume viewing following a ‘stop break’; and a useful audio ‘dialogue button’ which cuts downs sound effects, music etc for late night viewing.

In summary cannot fault this DVD player. When you consider its build quality, classy looks, ergonomics, viewing and audio performance, this is an outstanding bargain for the money. Highly recommended.

I bought this to upgrade from a Toshiba SB210. Generally everything is really good, but one of the things I wanted particularily was the JPG viewer. If this is one of your requirements - be forewarned. It only works (or so it says) on 74 minute (650Mb) CD-Rs. I don't know about anyone elses experience, but in bricks and mortar retailers in south west UK they do not exist anymore. Everything is 800Mb or 900Mb.I can verify that it doesn't recognise 800Mb or 650Mb CD-RW's and am looking round for 650Mb CD-Rs now.

I bought this player a few months ago. So it has been tried and tested. At first I had a problem with lip sync on SVCD play back, but a quick call to Toshiba fixed that problem. the MP3 play back in this player is one of the best I have seen; easy to navigate and displays long file names in a PC DIR type format. The Playback in all modes is to a very high standard. The speech mode for Dolby play back is great and Multiregion works a treat.

as my old machine was starting to die,i needed to get something quick.after reading previous reviews i decided to take the plunge.what a nice surprise i had.first of all its a nice slimline machine.secondly the picture & colour is beautiful.thirdly it plays everything ive put in(including all the discs i had trouble with).fourthly it played my vcds clearer.manual is easy to follow & of cause its multi regional.please nb* the machine has a recording blocker on it.apart from that this is a bargain at £80.

No problems with this player but someone is being cheeky here. The reason people are having a problem with manuals is that these are not UK spec players. I got an English manual included but it is a photocopy! Also if you take a close look at the plug you will see it is a european round two pin screwed into a UK one which adapts it. Don't get me wrong it still works fine but you should be aware this is what you are being sold