Toshiba SD-5970 DVD Player with HDMI
Solution to these non working HDMI dvd players !
The Toshiba is a slim, nice looking DVD player. But that's where it ends. If you need a dvd with an HDMI connection with an upconverted signal, there are not too many choices out there right now. What happened when I connected the Toshiba DVD player to my 50 Sony LCD projection TV was annoying. About every 15 minutes of watching a dvd movie, the screen would turn solid blue for about 5 seconds, then continue. It seems that the Toshiba needs to flush a software buffer (used for upconversion) every so often and connot do it seamlessly. So this pause happens about 8 times during a 2 hr movie. And the manual says this pause is normal!??! Also the picture would sometimes 'pixelate', or show up in large distorted checkered blocks. The manual says to turn down the TV's sharpness to stop the 'pixelation', but that didn't help.<br /><br />The Sony DVD with HDMI connections and upconversion isn't much better. All of the reviews state that the unit stops playing after a few days! And who wants to pay $300 for the Sony DVD, when it doesn't even come with an HDMI cable.<br /><br />One solution to the problem is as follows. My brother has a Samsung DVD player with upconversion that uses a DVI connector, and it performs beautifully! So what I did was purchase the Samsung DVD player with upconversion that comes with a DVI cable for $179. I then purchased a converter plug for $29 at Best Buy that converts one end of the DVI cable into an HDMI male format. That allowed me to plug the DVI side into the DVD player and the converter plug HDMI side into the Sony LCD television. This causes the TV to get only the video signal from the DVD play. But thats OK. Why would you want the digital sound sent from the DVD to the TV anyways? Most TV don't know what to do with the digital sound signal. The Digital Sound signal needs to go to the Surround Receiver. So I connected the DVD digital optical out to the Surround Receiver's digital optical in with a seperate optical cable, and the theatre system never sounded better! And the upconverted picture quality from the Samsung at 1080i is perfect! Problem solved !sounded better! And the upconverted picture quality from the Samsung at 1080i is perfect! Problem solved !