Toshiba SD-4960 Universal Disc DVD Player with CD/DVD-Audio/SACD/MP3 Playback
This is actually a universal music player, not a DVD player
I purchased the 4960 to replace a broken Toshiba SD-4700. What a disappointment! This unit is a huge step back from the 4700.    The PICTURE IS SO BAD, that I could not believe my eyes. I have a 55\\" HDTV, 3:4, made by Toshiba (don't they test their players on their TVs?) I am using the component inputs in progressive mode. What is so bad with the picture: Everything. First, it is not sharp enough, actually, this is an understatement. Second, the colors are washed away, grayish, dull. Out of the box, it is too bright. I tried all corrections possible on my TV, boosted the contrast (not that I am a big fan of high contrast), lowered the brightness, the picture was still bad. I am not too picky about the video and I am more concerned with the sound quality but this unit makes you want to throw your TV away. Nothing changes if I switch to interlaced mode.    The AUDIO section is excellent. There are some reports that the DACs are Blurr-Brown. I did not open it to verify this but they certainly sound like this. Very smooth, yet detailed, perhaps not as much as other high quality DACs but very listenable. The bass is somewhat soft and some may find the highs a bit muted but I am really being too picky here. It pushes the limits of my system (Marantz SR-7000 receiver, Definitive Technology BP-10 speakers).  People with better equipment would not consider this player as a CD player anyway. The DVD-audio is excellent, too but not as satisfying as 2 channel DVD-audio that really shines. It is noticeably better that the DVD-audio on the SD-4700. I cannot say much about the SACD play - I own only one title - The Dark Side of the Moon, and it does not sound as good as I expected. The bass is a bit boomy, the sound is somewhat dark. Well, it is a 30+ years old recording. I read somewhere that the SACD is processed by a different DAC made by Phillips.     A big annoyance is that the LFE levels on DVD-audio and 2 channel stereo/SACD are very different - about 15 dB or more. The player does not have the ability to adjust the LFE or any other channel level. The bass management redirects the bass from the L, R, etc. speakers to the sub, if needed. It seems to work on DD, (on DVD-Audio maybe) but not on 2 channel stereo.     The REMOTE is terrible, the unit responds very slowly to it, sometimes never does, many controls are unintuitive. For example, the play button sometimes has to be pressed once, shortly, as usual but sometimes you need to hold it for a second or so if there is a menu on the screen (pressing it for a short time acts as an OK button). The problem is that when listening to CDs you do not watch the TV screen and never know whether Stop, Pause, Play buttons have to be hold or not. Most of the time, you have to hold them. Very annoying. The telephone rings, you press Pause, nothing happens. Then you remember that you have to press and hold. Meanwhile, the phone stops ringing. Another annoying thing is that the OK button is not in the center of the Up, Down, Left, Right ones.    I decided to keep this player as a universal music player and to look for another one for movies. I had to hook it up through the S-video inputs in order to free the component ones for another player. Then the big surprise came. The picture through the S-video inputs was excellent! If I did not know that it was coming from the S-video input, I would be very happy with my purchase. It was much sharper than before, better colors, better everything. I tried the composite input - still very good picture with visible loss of detail as can be expected.     A nice surprise is the pan-scan feature - it really works. It zooms anamorphic wide-screen movies so that they fit perfectly on a 4:3 screen with loss of some information on the sides, of course. The pan-scan on the 4700 never made any difference.    It does not play my DVD+R's. Actually, it does but the motion is very jittery. Toshiba said that they do not support DVD+R because they are in the DVD-R camp. Makesyou feel happy.    I managed to fix the old SD-4700 and hooked it up again. The difference is striking - the SD-4700 has a way better picture than the 4960. They both use Zoran chips of different generations, I guess, so I cannot understand what went wrong with the 4960. I also tried Harman Kardon DVD-22 (excellent video but it has other problems) . The 4700 comes close after it, while the 4960 does not compare to those two at all, it is just terrible.    1 star for video, 5 for audio. Since this is a DVD player after all, my overall rating is 2 stars. One more than it really deserves because people with non HD TVs might be actually satisfied. It is a good value however, for the sound.    Update:    After 6-7 months, the player refused to play DVD-Audio. Toshiba replaced it with a new unit. Meanwhile, I discovered that the bass management is completely messed up. In SACD mode, it would not output any bass to the sub, if  some speakers are set to large, others to small. If all are set to small, the bass is too strong and boomy. If all are set to large, the bass  form the .1 channel is about 20 dB or so weaker than normal. This makes me believe that in \\"small\\" mode, the .1 channel is practically lost because the bass from the other channels dominates it.