Upgrade Two for the week - Toshiba SD-350E

Last night the lack of a DVD player was rectified at one of the big pre-Christmas sales. The decision basically came down to where I wanted Picture quality or Sound Quality in Multichannel audio. As I don't listen to any Multichannel music the clear choice was the Toshiba. With the minimal amount of bargaining I secured a unit for $235.

This is a run down of the player:-
The setup when I got home was fairly easy, I simply removed all the cables from the Onkyo and plugged in the Toshiba, the first thing I noticed was the lack of an S-Video socket on the back of the unit. I guess with the inclusion of the HDMI it's assumed that no one will be using this player less than Component Quality.

The other connector that is missing is an optical audio connector, not too much of an issue for me as I already had IXOS XHD-608-100 co-axial interconnect carrying the audio for the Onkyo, bit of a pain if your amp only had a few (or no) co-axial inputs.

This brings me to the second point, included as an addendum to the manual is a sheet of paper indicating that the system is configured for composite video only and will need to be setup in the menu to accept Component video. A strange point considering the lack of connectors. The setup process for that was also straight forward.

After the configuration for the video output there were some extra steps which basically setup the player for region free. The box is clearly mark "This Player is Region 4 only" yet the manual states (and is correct) that this player is setup for Region 2. The instructions included on the sheet however do make it region free. Again a bit of an annoyance as this could have been easily changed at the factory before they shipped.

Once the player was setup though the images were just gorgeous, I spun up The Incredibles and the images were just crystal clear with vibrant colours. Every scene just jumped off the screen with a realism that I hadn't previously seen with this movie. The level of detail of the chase through the island was just astonoshing.

We also had a run of an old favourite Sleepy Hollow which showed exactly how much detail this player could produce even from an old disc. Some of the close up shots on Christina Ricci showed just how much white makeup had been plastered on.

The sound was also surprisingly good with a noticeable amount of bass weight that I hadn't heard from the discs before. There wasn't too much judging to be done on the surround steering as I still don't have a full surround setup mounted.

My only real gripe with the player is the blue light that illuminates the drive slot when the disk is inserted. There is no way I can find (as yet) to turn it off which makes it a bit annoying in the front of my cabinet.

I couldn't be happier with the picture, it is definitely a step above the Onkyo and that's before using the HDMI or upscaling. If you're looking for a DVD player upgrade and you have a display with HDMI it's definitely worth looking into.