Toshiba SD-1200 DVD Player
Great player (quality and features) at great price: get it!
I got this player just a week ago and love it already. My father already had the older Toshiba SD2109 (the previous model- the SD1200 is the breand new replacement), and it seemed good, so I followed those reviews; see  those for more detail if you want, just note the improvements in this  model.<br />The SD1200 has the same good points as the SD2109, but adds  VideoCD and CD/Video Text capabilities. I was even able to play some old  VCD2.0 tour videos from China, they worked great, no glitches! Played  Matrix fine.<br />Video quality is superb, both on S-Video output and of  course component- SV had a little less color saturation than component.  Dolby Digital sounded great!<br />Note that this player has some important  features vs others: let alone the low price and quality! <br />! + the price-  only $230-250 for ALL the features you'd want in DVD!  Don't pay more!<br />+  outputs both Dolby Digital and DTS- compatible w/ all movies then. (does  not decode, but no biggie- put that in your receiver, not dvd!)<br /> * Note  it only has coax digital audio out, not toslink optical. Make sure your  reciever is compatible (my JVC RX888 is great.) Will output dolby digital,  dts, PCM digital audio out. Has regular RCA analog also. You can select  options &amp; which to output via remote.<br />+ has all video outs:  component, S-Video, and composite. Note some others like Sony SVP330 do NOT  have component out, only svideo!<br />+ plays videoCDs (unlike SD2109).<br />+  has slow play mode (1/2, 1/4, 1/8) as well as fast fwd/rvs scan. (doesn't  seem to have reverse slow.)  Other players only have  &quot;pause/step&quot;, what's the point of having a random-access disk w/  great slow/freeze frame picture, if you can't play slow to see big  explosions in detail? :-&gt;<br />+ has a nice interface, eg onscreen- good,  unobtrusive, usable menus overlaid on the video. Can also change most  options on-the-fly w/ buttons on the remote, eg subtitles, audio select,  etc. with minimal text on the screen- good for changing specific things  quickly w/o distracting from the movie.<br />All menu options are easy to  understand, eg no &quot;cool looking&quot; but unusable interface (JVC555  was kind of hard to use in that respect.)<br />- Remote buttons are a bit  small, and play/pause etc. are not &quot;highlighted&quot; or bigger, so  you have to look at the remote (no backlight.)<br />+ dimmable display on the  player, if you don't like distracting time counter etc. in your stereo  rack.<br />+ resume-from-stop mode, eg stop, then optionally resume from where  you were. You can also input exact HHMMSS to go to, and zips there  immediately.<br />+ screen saver for long pause, to not burn out your new  big-screen projection tv :-)<br />otherwise all the comments for SD2109 also  apply. I haven't noticed too much noise (disk tray/rotate) playing disks,  seems quiet. Nice build eg tray is solid opening/closing. Small and light,  but heavy on features and performance!<br />I've heard this and SD2109 are not  compatible w/ CD-Rs, though, I've played some &quot;mix&quot; discs a  friend made for me, and seems to work fine. Not sure if they are CDR or  CDRW or what, but they do work.<br />Highly recommend this player. Get it.