Toshiba SD-V280

This Toshiba SD-V280 is a combination DVD & VHS unit which sells at Future Shop  for $398. CDN. I would not recommend this unit because it is too particular about which DVDs it will play.

Likes:

• Colour saturation is just about right or ever so slightly strong & hue (tint) is pretty accurate.
• Handles black detail below 7.5 IRE fine & does not cut it off.
• Seems to cover full raster width.
• Has auto clock.
• VCR has commercial skip.
• VCR has Quasi S-VHS playback.
• S-video & component both work at the same time.
• Can output 111 IRE if DVD encoding is over 235 RGB (white levels aren't clipped).
• 3 position zoom for DVD.
• Seems to output analog stereo audio concurrently with digital output.
• Plays VCDs.
• CD on TV screen shows time elapsed & song length.

Dislikes:

• Doesn't play some slightly bad DVD-R burns very well (fussy DVD player).
• Doesn't play slightly bad authored DVD-Rs (fussy DVD player).
• Won't play some Hollywood entertainment DVDs such as "Bandits" (very serious design flaw when a DVD player is this fussy).
• DVD 100% IRE white comes out 105%.
• VHS output is awful, 100 IRE white comes out at 93 IRE.
• Doesn't play PAL (European) DVDs.
• Manual says it won't play DVD-RWs, although I did get it to read one.
• Has a dynamic range decreaser/increaser, but it uses fixed settings rather than adjustable.
• No S-video cable supplied.
• Will only play the first session of a multi session CD.
• Search doesn't work for MP3 music.
• MP3s use only ISO 9660.
• Can read only 200 MP3s, but should be able to read at least 250 MP3 songs.
• Maximum character display is only 15 letters.
• Very slow to read & catalogue MP3 music titles.
• Doesn't play MP3 music in the proper order that they were recorded.
• Note that the remote control is identical to the Memorex remote control.

By Doug Hembruff.