Toshiba SDP93S

We just returned from a 2000+ mile road trip with young children, and the Toshiba SD-P93S was a life saver. Here are our impressions: Pros: * High-resolution 800x400 matte-finish screen is beautiful… compared to the lower-resolution 320x240 screens of other players we looked at. Screen color and sharpness is excellent when viewed from either side, or from the top looking down at the player. When viewed from the bottom looking up, colors washed out considerably, so we avoided mounting the player where you would need to look upwards at it. Sun glare off the matte-finish screen was not an issue. We noticed that the built-in menu system of the player was designed for a lower-resolution screen, but it was still readable and navigation was easy with the on-player buttons or remote. * Speakers are mounted on either side of the screen, directing sound toward the audience. We don't let the kids wear headphones, so it was good that the speakers were plenty loud enough to overcome road noise. Some sound crackling from the tiny built-in speakers was evident at high volumes. Another nice thing we discovered about rear-firing speakers was that the sound coming to the front of the vehicle was muted, and not distracting. * The IR signal was probably just bouncing off the rear window, but we were able to control the player from the front seat just by pointing the remote toward the rear. No turning around and leaning over the seats to operate the player. * DIVX playback was flawless, and played from either burned DVD+RW disks or an SD memory card. Multiple movies can be burned on a disk, and the player's menu system is used to navigate through them. * Anti-skip is not an advertised feature, but we had no issues with the player skipping except for one section of very rough road. We had to stop the movie and resume playing to get it working correctly again. Cons: * According to the manual, you cannot have the removable battery attached to the unit when operating off of the cigarette lighter power adapter. Therefore, the battery cannot be charged from your vehicle. Power to the cigarette lighter in our vehicle cuts off when the ignition key is turned off, so pulling into the gas station and turning off the engine also turned off the player. We eventually learned that if you STOP the movie and turn the player OFF, then turn the vehicle off, the movie will resume from the same spot once the player is turned on again. * Some ghosting of the image was visible during high-action film sequences, similar to older LCD TVs. Neutral: * It requires firm pressure to correctly snap the disk into place. More than once we did not have the disk mounted correctly, and the player would make a loud whining noise and not play. * No case for the player or vehicle mount is included. We made a wooden bracket with wrap-around velcro straps to suspend the player between the front bucket seats, which worked great. Summary: We purchased this player instead of the highly-rated Sony's because of the added DIVX support, and were not disappointed. This has brought a whole new level of comfort when traveling with children.

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I purchased this hoping it would be a little step up from the cheap, no name models I have bought in the past. I was hoping the machine would run smoother and last a little longer. I found that the… machine runs very noisy and it seems to skip and stall easily and regularly, even with brand new discs and no disruption to the player. I found the player to be very frustating, especially when watching a film with mostly dialog (very hard to hear in a car going down the freeway mixed with the loud whiring of the player). I often like Toshiba products, but I am very dissapointed in this DVD player.

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