The Toshiba SD3950 DVD Player: A Great Bargain!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good features for the price.

Cons: Difficult menus.

The Bottom Line: 
If you need a good DVD player at a reasonable price, this is the player for you. I highly recommend it.

Author's Review
From reading what others have written about this DVD player, you would think that this is a cheap, low quality player. While it is not top of the line, I believe it is one of the best Toshiba SD3950 is a very good DVD player.

I received this DVD player as a gift for Christmas. As someone who is not an expert when it comes to DVD players, I found the user's manual very useful. It gives clear instructions, good illustrations, and provides plenty of troubleshooting advice. My experience with DVD players caused me to be afraid to set up my DVD player. Other DVD players I have used had unclear instructions and used too much technical jargon. The manual with this Toshiba player, however, quieted my fears about setting up a DVD player.

I feel a word about the included hardware is important here. Like most DVD players sold on the market today, this DVD player only had A/V inputs. It has NO place for a coaxial cable. If your television has no A/V jacks, you will need an adaptor. The cable included has hookups for the video, as well as left AND right audio. According to the manual, if your television only has one audio jack you can ignore the right audio cable and just use the left one. The player also has a place to plug in a CVI cable, but does not include this type of cable. The only other thing included is a remote.

The setup menus for the player were slightly more confusing. After plugging the player in to the TV and the wall, I hit the setup button, just as the user's manual said. Each of the menus in setup are represented by icons, rather than words. It is very unclear what each icon represents. For example, there are two icons that show a TV. One is the display menu, while the other is for the picture menu. It would be much more helpful if the menus were represented by words rather than icons. With the help of the user's manual, I did ultimately figure out the menus. After I did figure out the menus I became much more satisfied with the feature located in them. There are some very useful settings for the surround sound, and it is very easy to change the way the picture is displayed on my TV. The menus are easier to navigate than on other players I have tried, though at first they were confusing. After considering all these facts, the menus were not as bad as they first appeared.

Now I finally could play a DVD in my player. I tried my The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers DVD. I was excited ... but first I had to figure out the controls on the remote. They were actually quite easy to decipher. All the buttons are grouped together nicely, and while the remote is large, it has all the necessary functions right at your fingertips. The buttons on the front of the player are nice.

Finally, I played my DVD. I was excited by the picture quality. It is rare to find such a good picture quality in other DVD players around this price ($75) that I have seen in stores. Although it is not top of the line quality, it is adequate for almost all applications.

The DVD player has been very reliable. I have noticed no skips while playing and have played at least 20 hours on it so far. Loading time for discs has never been very slow, though it is not as fast as more expensive players. I have had no problems with reliability on this DVD player.

As I tried out my player, I was excited to find out about its other uses. It can read DVD-R and RW and reads music CD's along MP3's and Windows Media files. The sound quality in these applications is good. In addition to these features, there is also a convenient "Standby" feature. If you pause your movie for a long time (10 minutes or more), or stop the movie and forget to turn the power off, the standby feature engages. It effectively turns off the player, but returns it to the scene you were playing if you hit the play button on the remote.


In conclusion I do have to say this DVD player is not for everyone. Its price is very nice for a player of this quality. For those who are used to the very best, however, this player will disappoint. I believe this player is best for those needing a middle-of-the-road player, with a reasonable price. As for myself, I am very satisfied with this player, and I would heartily recommend it.