Toshiba SD-K860 DVD Player

Gone are the days for $200 budget dvd players. $200 dvd players are considered top of the line and $500 players are in the range of HD-DVD players. With so much content still available in the standard dvd format, standard dvd players are still selling extremely well. So what can you expect from a budge dvd player that costs under $100? I decided to take that dive and purchase one from Costco and see if I can replace my beloved Panasonic RP-56 with the highly regarded Faroudja deinterlacer chip.

You really get what you pay for.

My current setup
Receiver – Denon AVR 3801
TV – Mitsubishi Diamond Plus WS-65411
Speakers – M&K LCR 750 MK II THX Select
Subwoofer – SVS PB2-ISD

Specs on Toshiba
Upconverting via HDMI to 720p/1080i
Divx Home Theater Certified
HD JPEG
3:2 Pulldown
Dolby Digital and DTS outputs
WMA and MP3 compatible
Outputs: 1 Digital Audio, 1 Coaxial Audio, 1 HDMI, 1 Component, 1 L-R Audio, 1 RCA-Video
Weight: 3.74 lbs
Footprint: 16.93" x 1.65" x 8.11"

I have the setup hooked up using a digital audio cable since those cables these days are dirt cheap. I have noted the connector that holds the digital audio is a big loose. If I nudge my system just a little bit the cable will fall out. I have a Microsoft Xbox sitting on top of the dvd player and there will be times I nudge my xbox from plugging in controllers or just inserting games. Normally it won't move but it's annoying that the digital plus is not as snug as all the other connections in my system.

HD JPEG is a new feature that I don't use since I'm hooked up using component since my TV doesn't have a HDMI port. HD JPEG is touted to have a specialized chipset for MPEG decoding and scaling which enhances the resolution of pictures versus the traditional viewers that compress the image over component. I've played some picture over the dvd player and they look fine. I've shooting a lot of picture with my Nikon D70 digital SLR and I can't really complain too much about picture quality considering the projected size and cheap cost of the DVD to TV combination.

I primarily listen when I can to DTS on all my movie tracks. Both DTS and Dolby Digital sound fine and I can't hear the difference from this budget dvd player to my more expensive one.

Front interface on this budge system needs some serious work. I have yet to see a dvd player that doesn't display the Chapter and Time for a dvd. Well, this is the first DVD that doesn't show the time. It is so inconvenient to only know the chapter I'm watching but not the exact time. There will be times I can't watch a whole movie so I would need to make a mental note to where I was watching. Other instances I'll be in the living room watching but then I'll get kicked off the big tv and have to go to the smaller tv and dvd player but I won't know the time marker. So instead I just have the chapter marker. That just seems a bit cheap to exclude a standard time marker on the front.

If you think loading a dvd is slow, wait till you stick a dvd in this bad boy. I wouldn't exactly say loading a dvd in this player is like watching pain dry but for a mass market dvd player that is supposed to appeal to many types of home theater families this dvd player crawls. There is no reason why it should take as long as it does to load a dvd. Maybe my unit is defective or something but it just takes longer then normal to boot up and read a dvd.

Operations of this dvd player are pretty basic and the menus are standard stuff. The major gripe I have with this system is that is so slow. When you power on the unit it literally takes more then 3-5 seconds to have any indication it's on. Generally when you press power for any electronic equipment a light will go on and displays will start showing up to indicate the unit is powering in. This dvd player just sits quietly showing no signs of booting up. I have multiple times pressed the power only to realize it takes forever to boot up. The remote is pretty standard stuff and nothing you won't be able to use easily.

Now we come to video output. The deinterlacer maker is Zoran and the deinterlacer model is Vaddis 888. From the multiple reviews on the error differences from doing component to HDMI comparisons is funny how there are more artifacts in the HDMI setting. HometheaterHifi.com is a leader in dvd video playback testing and they do a barrage of video tests for hundreds of dvd players every year. I used this as a starting point to determine my basis of video quality compared to my older Panasonic RP-56 and my newer Oppo Digital OPDV971H player.

Both systems will fail in:
3-2 Cadence, and incorrect progressive flags

The HDMI will also fail in the video levels and blacker then black tests. Overall what this means is that the player will fail certain tests but unless you're a professional looking for them you probably won't find the errors. On average most dvds will fail a lot more then you would expect. To see that this budget dvd player pass so many test yet still be under $100 is amazing. The component output seemed to not be cropping anything from my viewing and from a straight video quality standpoint it is good. It's not earth shattering but the picture quality should be the same or better then any mass market dvd player you would have had in the past. You shouldn't expect a decrease in quality unless you're used to the higher end dvd players. From my point of view, the quality was good enough as a replacement for dead Panasonic player. I wasn't expecting much but I came away pleasantly surprised that the video quality didn't drop as much as I would have thought. For straight DVD disc playback this unit passes with flying colors for the price.

Divx playback should be better then what is advertised. If this unit really is certified by Divx, then Divx really needs a better certification. I would say 50% of all divx material I throw at the machine wouldn't' play. It wouldn't even get me to the menu screen to see what the file names were. I would get some error and I would have to eject it and play it on my oppo digital player which played them flawlessly. So I know it's not my divx discs since my oppo ditial and my laptop can play them easily. If you are looking to use this machine for a lot of divx viewing I would strongly recommend against it. The shows that do work I was getting some lip sync issues and the problem got worse if you wanted to fast forward or rewind.

Overall I would say this is an excellent budget dvd player that shouldn't be turned down for any reason. It's so cheap yet can produce pretty good images and has enough playback options for different types of media. It's pretty slim and doesn't feel too cheap. The footprint really depends on your entertainment setup but it was much wider then I would have hoped.