Above average portable DVD player

After browsing different brand names like Sony, Zenith, Philips I come up with the Toshiba SD-1900 for $169 at Best Buy. Since I pay a bit steep, I’ll be more critical on quality and features.

- First look: this unit looks neat, compact. The black acrylic top makes the unit look more “pro” (I feel the silver plastic that most other brands use looks cheap). The size is 9.5x6.7 inch, and about more than an inch thick. The unit seems little heavy to me.

- Image:
The image is average to me. I think resolution 480x234 for a 9 inch screen is a bit low. However, when I was in Best Buy and compared it with nearby competitors from Sony Philips and LG, I didn't see much different though. The aspect ratio of the player is 16:9 which is used by all new movies(some old movies use TV aspect ratio of 12:9, widescreen movies use 14:9). The colors are good, although not spectacular. Contrast is good (the contrast ratio is 350:1) and LCD response is average at 30msec. In fast-action movies I don't see trailing traces. Overall I think the picture quality is not up to my expectation at this price range.

- Sound: The stereo sound can come from 2 tiny speakers, or from a headphone. The sound from the speakers is not clear, which is understandable. The audio from the earphone is better, but just above average to me. However, it really depends on the quality of the headphone. On Sony MDR-V150 headphone ($20 at Walmart) for example the sound is quite impressive, the bass is much more pronounced. The unit come with 2 headphone outputs as most other players do, so nothing is special here.

- Battery:
The specs say the rechargeable lithium ion battery lasts 5 hours. I tried it myself and found it lasted only a little over 4 hours. However, this is much more than I expected. A 9-inch screen consumes a lot of energy. Most other DVD players advertise only 2.5 or 3 hr. Everyone knows that after a certain period the battery won’t hold charge as long any more. Having a 4-hr charge when the battery is brand new is a very good insurance. Even if it drops to half of its initial power you can still finish a 2-hr movie. So I give Toshiba a big plus in this department. Also, the battery charging time seems to be short.

The unit comes with an AC adapter. It also comes with a car adapter, which is great. Cheaper models don’t offer car adapter and this may cost you $20 to $30 extra.

- Input/output:
This player has video/audio input, which allows you to use its screen to display output of another DVD player or output of you camcorder. Why do you need to display the output from another DVD player, after all can’t you play the movie right on the unit itself? The answer is: when you record from your camcorder to a DVD player you probably need a monitor the recording image from the DVD recorder and this video input comes in handy.
The video/audio input can be switched to become video/audio output. This allows you to view your movie on a big screen. More importantly, this allows you to view a jpeg picture on a big screen. I find this very convenient since the unit is portable. I can bring it to a party and plug it to a big screen TV and display all the jpeg pictures.
For those who cares about audio this player has an optical audio output, which allows you to record the music from the CD in digital format (of course your recorder must have optical input).

- Playing format:
Playing format is important especially if you want to play discs other than the ones bought from stores such as DVD recorded by yourself, discs recorded by your friends etc... In this area Toshiba SD-P1900 is below average since it can play most popular video formats but not DVD+R. Format +R is quite popular, almost the same as –R. If you buy this player make sure to buy DVD-R for recordings. On the other hand this player can play other formats such as MP3 and JPEG and DivX. Those who download DivX movies from the Web may find this format a must. (DivX technology, not to be confused with the Circuit City's DIVX rental system that died years ago, uses Mpeg4 to create movies with small sizes. You can download pre-recorded DivX videos and view them on computers, or you can record them on DVD . Also , DivX format allow you to convert about 3 regular movies into one DivX disc). If you have a large collection of DVD recorded by yourself beware of a fact that this player sometimes doesn’t play. I tried movies bought from the stores and found that it always work. With my own recordings sometimes it doesn’t work, some other times it takes a long time to load before it plays, although most of the times it works.

- Remote control:
The remote control is just average, not better nor worse than any remote control I have. You probably think you do not need the remote control since the unit is portable. However if you connect it to a big screen TV you have to leave it near the TV and the remote control is a must. Also if you want to adjust picture and sound parameters you need the remote control. Do not lose the remote control since any change of the parameters requires the remote control.

- Conclusion: In the portable world the battery life is the key point. The battery of this player is excellent although the picture and the audio are just average. However, since the picture and audio qualities of other players are not better, not to mention some are sold at the same price and the screen is just 8 inch (Sony, Insignia), I do recommend this player.
- Updated 12/20/2007: Best Buy now matches the price of Circuit City and is selling this DVD player for $159 (if asked to match)
- Updated 3/24/2008: the battery hold is now only 3.5hr for a full charge