Toshiba SD-1700 DVD Player

Ordinarily, Mrs. Sloucho and I do an awful lot of research before buying appliances/electronic equipment. We don't like stuff that breaks; we don't like to overpay; and we don't want to miss out on really cool features that we could have had for just a few dollars more. But as likely as we are to spend hours reading about a refrigerator or a computer before buying it, we tend to be pretty lax when it comes to television-related components. The way we see it, it's all right for us to blunder when it comes to purchasing a VCR or a DVD player because if the unit turns out not to be very good, we can always take it upstairs to the bedroom and get something better for the television in the living room.

So when we finally decided that it was time for us to move from videocasettes to DVDs, we drove to Circuit City to make our purchase without having done any real research. Since we didn't really know enough about DVD players to feel comfortable splurging for the high-end models with all sorts of bells and whistles that we weren't even sure we would be able to use, we tended to stick to the less expensive models, but we found endless variation on the DVD theme even within the $169-$229 price range.

Things Worth Considering
('+' means the Toshiba SD-1700 has it; '-' means it doesn't)

1) All units (obviously) play DVDs and CDs (+)
2) Some units play CD-ROMs, MP3s (-)
3) Some units have zoom-in/zoom-out capability (+)
4) Some units have angle-changing capability (+)
5) Some units can be loaded with more than one DVD at a time (-)

As we looked around, we discovered that most of the low-end models that offered zoom-in/zoom-out capability did not allow for angle-changing. The angle-changing ability was very important to Mrs. Sloucho because she thought it sounded very cool. But in all honesty, we're yet to use the feature. Most DVDs don't even allow for it anyway (and the ones that do seem to be more appropriate for the bedroom). If we overestimated the importance of changing angles, we underestimated the importance of being able to load at least 2 DVDs into the machine at a time. What we didn't know at the time of our purchase is that it isn't uncommon for DVDs to come on two discs (usually featuring bonus material, such as interviews and behind-the-scenes reportage) on the second disc. When you feel like studying a film, you might want to go back and forth between what the director had to say about a particular sequence (on disc 2) and the sequence itself (on disc 1). Obviously, such comparisons will go much more smoothly if you can have both discs in the DVD player at the same time. But under ordinary circumstances, there's nothing wrong with having room for only one disc.

Like many people, I have a CD player hooked into the sound system that I use in conjunction with my television set. And since I can play CDs (whether storebought or computer-generated) on that player, there was absolutely no reason to pay extra for a DVD player that could handle MP3s on CD-ROM.

Allow me to pretend to understand technical stuff

Although the resolution of the Toshiba SD-1700 is apparently inferior to that of the model that it replaces in the Toshiba line-up, Mrs. Sloucho and I both think that the picture we get is extremely sharp.

In any case, the standard features of the DVD are extremely intuitive and manageable. With each press of the rewind or fast forward buttons (up to a maximum of four presses), the speed of rewinding or fast forwarding increases. We had heard that some DVD players don't do a good job of pausing--that if paused for extended periods, they lose track of where the viewer was in the movie. Our Toshiba has no such problem. When we pause, it freezes on the image at the time of the pause for a short while. Then the screen goes blank, but once you press a button, a message appears to inform you that you need only press play twice in order to resume from the point at which you left off.

The Toshiba SD1700 comes with some ports and some cables, all of which doubtless have names and functions. We used the ones that looked like they would work in conjunction with our television, and they did work. It's entirely possible that the proper configuration of the proper cables in the proper ports could raise an undead army capable of wiping that geographical blight known as Canada from the face of the earth, but that would almost certainly involve something more complicated than putting the red plug in the red port and pressing 'ON.'

The remote control that comes with the unit is disappointing in many ways. Instead of featuring big puffy keys that light up and sing happy little songs, it offers a straightforward (read unmemorable) keypad that is so non-descript as to be inherently turn-aroundable (a technical term for the process of pointing the remote control the wrong way in the dark, which won't do you any good unless your couch is made of mirrors).

Another disappointment about the remote was that it couldn't learn the key function that it needed to learn in order to be used with our television set, the ability to move from TV to AUX (which we have to do in order to get the DVD picture). We ended up replacing it with a universal remote (a story unto itself involving a drooling zombie in a blue vest at a retail chain that shall go unnamed).

The Moral of the Story

We're very pleased to have made the move to DVDs. Movies are just more fun to watch when they're letterboxed and when the images are crisp. We bought the Toshiba SD1700 thinking we would only use it in the living room for a few months, getting to know what DVD players were really capable of doing before buying a fancy-schmancy model and taking the Toshiba upstairs. But we're so happy with the unit that it may be a year or more before we upgrade. I don't think we could have done better for $179. It certainly isn't the best DVD player on the market, but it may very well be the best for the price.