Toshiba SD-6980 DVD Player
Very Nice,  But A Few Disappointments Too
I bought this DVD player 1/25/06 for the fact that it plays virtually EVERYTHING - especially for the DVD-Audio support (surround audio DVDs). <br /> <br />I hooked it up using the Digital-Optical out and played it through my trusty Sony amplifier. I immediately noticed all my DVDs were playing as PCM 2.0 instead of Dolby Digital or DTS surround despite being selected onto those audio tracks. <br /> <br />I found the Toshiba's Setup defaults the Digital-Optical out to PCM instead of Bitstream, and Dynamic Compression and PCM Downsampling on.  This is very odd, but when I switched it to Bitstream and no Downsample/Compression, everything played BEAUTIFULLY.  So far... <br /> <br />Now I wanted to test out the DVD-Audio which was my main reason for buying this player.  I could not wait to hear the beautiful 5.1 lossless sound! So I break out my INXS DVD-Audio disc and play it.  Again I am treated to downsampling of the disc to PCM 2-channel!  I read further into the manual and find - UGH - YOU CANNOT PLAY DVD-AUDIO THROUGH DIGITAL OPTICAL OUT AT ANYTHING OTHER THAN PCM 2-CHANNEL DOWNSAMPLED! What a mess! You are instead required to use the 5.1 analog outputs to get the true DVD-Audio surround to your amp! <br /> <br />So now I have to add 5 more cables (yuk!) to the back of my DVD player and amp to enjoy true 5.1 DVD-Audio, and bye-bye lossless now?  Dunno... <br /> <br />I was pleased to try out the Digital Card Reader with my Fuji's XD picture card and find it works VERY well with minimum flaws and great navigation/options.  The only trouble was names are limited to 8 characters, and if a duplicate is found it will not display any of those files.  Usually not a problem as the camera uses unique names, but my daughter went and renamed them all and inadvertantly made some dups within the first 8 characters. <br /> <br />The unit has great navigation for DVD-Audio and CD-Audio discs.  It also played (S)VCD discs in PAL or NTSC with no problems.  Also played my few PALDVDs without a hitch.  It also read my DVD+RW and DVD-R DVDs with no issues.  I haven't yet tried my DVD+R DL Dual Layer DVD movies yet, but I expect no issues there either. <br /> <br />It did have trouble with straight mpg video files (on a recorded data DVD) though, not playing the audio for any of them but playing the video just fine. <br /> <br />My only other gripes come with the fact that there was no CD Text support, and everything in raw file navigation was displaying the file names with a max of 8 characters. <br /> <br />Otherwise, the picture quality is fantastic, as is the audio quality via the digital optical out.  Even the downsampled DVD-Audio discs in stereo sounded great, just very disappointing that it was not not surround through the Digital-Optical out.  That is the one and only issue keeping this unit from being 5 stars!