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Slim is in
Small DVD give big performance
By Michael Jones
February 2002
Slim
is in - that's what the new Toshiba SD-1300 is saying. The new Toshie
is only 225mm deep, fully 80mm less that the previous SD-1200 model.
While the other dimensions are fairly normal (width is the standard 430mm while height is 81mm) the reduced depth does make the 1300 appear greatly smaller than normal. The low 2.3kg weight adds to this impression.
But within this small piece of real estate is a player packed with features. It plays everything bar the new high-res audio formats. So the 1300 can cope with CDs (of course) CD-Rs, CD-RW and even MP3 playback. With the numbers of CD writes around these days, I find it very difficult to recommend a player that can't cope with CD-R discs.
Toshiba also say that the 1300 also plays DVD-R discs. How this player will cope with the various incompatible DVD recordable standards is something I have not explored in this review.
As with just about every DVD player sold in New Zealand, the Toshiba SD-1300 gleefully ignores Hollywood's attempts to control which DVD discs we can view and will play DVDs from all zones.
The video outputs conform to what is now the Japanese standard:
one composite, one s-video and one set of component video connections.
Straight two-channel audio is catered for by a pair of analog outputs,
while both a coaxial and optical digital output are offered for connection
to an AV receiver.
There is one feature on the 1300 that many people will find useful: a usable zoom feature. While I'm a bit of a purist and want to see the movie as the director intended, I know that many people get extremely annoyed with the "black bars" on their TV when viewing widescreen movies. Most DVD players don't help at all, sometimes offering a zoom function of 4x, totally useless for solving the "black bars" problem.
The Toshiba 1300 offers a number of zoom options, designed to boost the height of a movie to fill the screen. Of course, you do lose the sides of the movie and the picture quality suffers, but if you passionately hate the black bars of a widescreen movie you need to suffer in another way!
Performance
The extraordinary thing about affordable DVD players like this Toshiba
is just how good they are. DVD players start with a very good picture
quality and go up from there.
Compared to some more expensive players, the 1300 lacks a little shadow detail, which can make the overall picture a little dark. For example, in both the opening dark forest scenes of Gladiator and some scenes in U-571, the darker areas turned to black.
But overall the picture quality of the 1300 would rate as a "good". Both colour and the overall picture is fine.
Most DVD players are pretty uninspiring when playing music CDs, with a blandness that doesn't suggest any human passion behind the music.
Much to my surprise, the Toshiba was the best affordable DVD player I've come across for playing music. Through the 1300 my music had some life and some semblance that there were human beings behind the sound. Great stuff.
It's not as good as a stand-alone CD player of course, but then this is an area where DVD players always fall down. The (more expensive at $749) NAD 521 CD player, for example, was a noticeable step up as a CD spinner.
Conclusion
The Toshiba 1300 is a best buy in DVD players. It gives a good performance
on DVD and a very good performance on CDs, all at an extraordinary low
price. Highly recommended.
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