Toshiba SD-4900 Progressive Scan DVD Player

Product Review

CONSUMER ALERT: This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after February 17, 2009 to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the U.S.'s transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322), or visit the commission's digital-television Web site at: htttp://www.dtv.gov.

Amazon.com Product Review

Get the most from DVDs and CDs with Toshiba's SD-4900 single-disc DVD player, whose ultimate progressive-scan Super ColorStream Pro component-video outputs produce seamless, flicker-free images with high-definition and HD-ready TVs. This is every bit as much an audio player as a video player, with DVD-Audio compatibility and MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) decoding from CD-R/CD-RW. You can also watch customized digital-picture slideshows using recordable CDs filled with JPEG image files.

Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the SD-4900 stands ready to deliver the full potential of DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.

The SD-4900 also performs 3:2 pulldown. DVD mastering introduces a common distortion when adjusting 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video; 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this distortion. Conventional composite- and S-video outputs bring compatibility with nearly any television. The "expanded" mode in the player's black-level setting produces richer, deeper black tones in every image. PLUGE (Picture Line Up Generation Equipment) delivers black as well as below-black signals to a television.

DVD-Audio offers super high-fidelity (192 kHz/24-bit) sound. DVD-Audio discs provide multichannel and stereo sound, incredible storage capacity, and unique bonus materials not available on regular audio CDs. Because the DVD-Audio signal is too high-resolution for the digital-to-analog converters in current surround receivers (and also as an anti-piracy measure), the SD-4900 performs its own decoding of DVD-Audio signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital, audio to your surround receiver. This means you'll need an audio/video receiver with multichannel analog-audio inputs to appreciate this feature.

A set of left/right analog-audio outputs channel audio to Dolby Pro Logic receivers and stereo televisions. Both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround-sound signals can be routed through the player's digital-audio outputs (one each coaxial and optical) for direct connection to a digital AV receiver, and with these formats the choice is yours: route the surround signal digitally or use the same analog outputs you use for the DVD-Audio signal.

Playback options include 3-D DNR (digital noise reduction, which reduces random noise in DVD images by comparing each frame of information to the previous and succeeding frames), bookmarks, a powerful 16x picture zoom, and parental lock.

EAM (Enhanced Audio Mode) offers three audio-enhancements: "normal" mode equalizes regular digital-audio signals; "3-D" provides virtual surround sound through Spatializer N-2-2 circuitry; and "Dialogue" enhances the center-channel frequencies when you're playing Dolby Digital-encoded discs via the D-R1's analog audio outputs.

What's in the Box
DVD player, remote control, remote batteries, a user's manual, and a stereo analog audio interconnect/composite-video cable.

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