Bested the Sony's offering?

Author's Rating:

Pros: Less fussy than the Sony, easier to set up, actually works as advertise!

Cons: Remote buttons are not intuitive. Remote TOO BIG.

The Bottom Line: 
An excellent mainstream DVD player - better than the Sony except in picture quality.

Author's Review
The Sony DVD player I bought did not meet my expectations, and so I checked out other DVD players in the same playing field. The SD3950 stacked up with one advantage: price. It is 50 bucks less than the Sony 725P!

Of course, at $79.99, I figured I could do better, and contemplated on the $99.99 SD4900, Toshiba's other offering. They both offer the same features but with a couple of differences.

The SD3950 offers the ability to play all recorded DVD formats except DVD-RAM, even though it is not advertised (they say it only plays DVD-Rs). It comes with the usual outputs: optical, digital coax audio, composite video out, left, and right. It also has component outs for TVs that accept the higher quality signal. If you want progressive scan quality picture, you have no choice but to use this kind of connection.

The front is adorn with the usual Play, Stop, Pause, Skip FF, and Skip REW. Eject and Power is there, too. It's pretty much standard fare.

The SD4900 adds everything from above and add a Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS decoder (front left, front right, rear left, rear right, center, and LFE channels adorn the rear of the deck). It also have the navigation control on the front of the unit, too - no need for a remote!

Both have the exact same remote, and uses the exact same drive with the exact same rendering engine. Of course, that also means the picture quality is also the same.

Both also offer the ability to play WMA and MP3 files off a recorded CD (CD-R or RW), and can also view JPG picture files. The MP3s and WMA files sounded great - especially through a nice reciever. The JPG pictures look sharp and vibrant. When a jpg does not scale to a 4:3 form factor, it will be filled in with black borders (so no stretching). You can also rotate the picture with the navigation buttons on the remote.

Once setup, the picture (like the Sony 725P) was overly bright. I guess it can't be a coincidence. Must be the way all DVD players come out of the factory. Thankfully, there is a setting for black levels on both the SD3950 and the SD4900. And unlike the Sony, the setting stuck after we turned off the player. Excellent!

I noticed, however, that the picture is not as sharp as the Sony, as there are more subtle artifacts on both the original Matrix and Matrix Reloaded. The artifacts are not very noticable, and require a trained eye (or previous experience with the Sony DVD player) to appear. The nice thing is that it did not skip during the DVD layer change as Sony did. This is very noticeable on both the Matrix movies.

The setup menus are much more friendlier looking than the Sony, with colorful icons and backgrounds. It is also much easier to understand without a manual, since there are less acronyms than the Sony model.

The remote for both machines are the same, and is not as well placed as the Sony 725P. First of all, the navigation buttons are placed on the bottom of the remote, making it hard to reach once the remote is in your hands. Where the navigational buttons should be are the Play, Stop, Rev, and Fwd buttons, forming the + shape that is familar to us. However, they ARE NOT the navigation buttons! The Skip buttons are also located on the bottom of the remote, close to the navigation buttons - very inconvienient. Add to the fact that the remote is way too large (about the size of a Sony reciever's remote), and the remote design is the only thing that drags the SD3950/SD4900.

There is also virtual audio processing that make fake surround sound from 2 speakers, such as the Sony. However, there are only two settings, unlike Sony's four. This is selectable using the button on the remote labeled "E.A.M.".

There is one feature that kept being listed as 3:2 pulldown technology. This is not just the Toshibas, but the Sonys, as well as other brands (Phillips, Pioneer, etc.). I don't know what it does, but I guess I should mention that this particular model has it (as well as the bigger brother SD4900).

All in all, the unit is actually better than the Sony, and is about $50 less than the Sony! ($79.99 vs $129.99) For $20 more ($99.99), you can purchase the SD4900 instead, snagging you a better front panel (navigation buttons on the front), and a Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS decoder. Eithe way, you can't loose. Just don't even think about picking up the Sony's 725P box!