Toshiba SD-1700 DVD Player

The Toshiba SD1700 DVD player is a successor to a well-known SD1600. For less than $180 it features ?Parallel Video Output? and DVD-R playback.

Looks

I don?t understand what is wrong with Toshiba, but they continue to produce DVD players that look plain and cheap. If you don?t think so, please do not read the previous sentence. Oh well, at least the looks do not influence performance.

The front-panel design has only buttons for basic functions, everything else is performed through the remote control.

Setup

Setup is quite easy, assisted by Toshiba?s ?First Setup Menu?.

Picture and Sound

Both picture and sound quality are excellent. The picture quality is great, when the player is connected to the TV with an S-Video cable (to avoid Moire patterns). Toshiba claims the player features 500 lines of horizontal resolution. The SD1700 also makes a good CD player.

Video Outs

The player has the composite, S-video outputs and ColorStream component jacks. The best way to connect DVD player to TV is to use component-video outputs (if you have a TV that has this type of input), since this method bypasses both TV?s comb filter and color decoder.

However, difference in quality with S-video connection is negligible, so S-Video is second-best method of connection. It allows you to bypass TV?s comb filter (the device that separates chrominance and luminance from the composite video signal) and avoid rainbow-like Moire effects, which happen when the comb filter mistakes luminance for color information.

The difference between picture quality using composite video connection and S-Video is apparent, especially on TVs with cheap comb filters. And even 3-D comb filters have problems with moving images, so S-Video is much better and allows you to bypass comb filter and feed the separate chrominance and luminance information directly to your TVs color decoder.

The player has a feature called ?parallel video out? that allows you to watch the movie on several TVs/Monitors at once by connecting to them using S-Video, component (ColorStream) and composite outs.

PLUGE allows the player to pass ?blacker-than-black? signals to your TV than needed, eliminating the gray color in places where the black color should be. You can see how ?Black-Level Expansion? works from my review.

Audio Outs

Toshiba invented optical digital audio out, which is why it is sometimes called Toslink. Surprisingly, SD1700 does not have it, but rather features Dolby Digital and Digital Theater Sound (DTS) compatible digital coaxial output. Which provides the same sound quality, easier connection and allows you to use cheaper cable with RCA-type jacks.

Note: with coaxial digital audio out, it is recommended to use a cable that is designed to transfer composite video signal, since the bandwidth used is very similar.

The player also has analog (left and right) audio out (RCA type). To get surround sound you can either connect analog out to Dolby Pro Logic equipment or use coaxial digital out with Dolby Digital or DTS decoder. Or you can either use stereo sound from the analog audio out, using Spatializer feature when appropriate.

The SD1700 features Dialogue Enhancement mode, which boosts the center speaker sound level. The player is also CD-Text compatible.

Features

The player has other ?standard? DVD features: parental control, CD-audio playback, camera angle select, multi-language and multi-subtitle select, Spatializer N-2-2 Virtual Surround Sound. But it also has some advanced features: 4-power zoom, x2 playback, 1/8x, 1/4x and 1/2x slow scan, x2, x8, x30, x100 Forward and Reverse high-speed scan and Time Search, Title Stop.

Remote

The remote is reasonably sized with good button layout - Left/Right and Up/Down buttons are centrally placed, with the Enter button in the middle.

Bottom Line

The SD1700?s looks can be contested, but the performance and features make it a good choice. However, there are better choices in the same price range.