Toshiba SD-520E

Picture quality is spot on. Sharpness and contrast is much better than most at the £200 mark. Colour depth not up to standard of more expensive rivals, but still very impressive. Made Shrek and Toy story look fantastic, and picture movement was very crisp. This machine effortlessly copes with fast moving video and audio.

After deliberating over several players around the £200 mark, I finally decided on this Toshiba SD-520E unit, and have been mightily pleased with it.

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The picture quality is crisp on my Sony TV (via Scart-RGB), with vibrant colours and no perceptible MPEG decoding "edges". The 54MHz/10-bit video DAC clearly doing an excellent job.

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The sound quality is good, although I've only tested the analogue stereo output (via Scart), but it's clear enough with good range from the ProLogic decoder in my TV.

I haven't tested the built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder, via the six analogue phono sockets on the back, but I can't see any great plus point for those, since most AV units have a built in DD decoder anyway, and would probably achieve better results from the digital audio out (coaxial and optical available).

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The unit has a 192MHz/24-bit audio DAC as opposed to the standard 96MHz; probably required because it will play DVD-Audio discs, but I can't comment on that because I don't have any. I bought the unit for video.

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I've tested the unit with several Video-CD variations, and the unit has played them with no problems at all. Both VCDs and SVCDs played correctly and both displayed and supported a menu system created with Ahead-Nero (incidentally, the similarly priced Sony DVP-NS705 did not show these menus, but did play the discs).

CD-RW discs work fine; I even tried an 8cm CD-RW with a tiny SVCD menu/movie and the unit played it perfectly; it actually shows up DVD/VCD/SVCD on the front panel display, so support has clearly been built in.

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CDs with mp3s play successfully and sound good, but unfortunately there is no ID3 tag parsing and only short filenames are displayed. The disc I tried had a one-level directory structure and these were displayed under different headings, but still only 8-letter directory names. CDs with JPGs can also be viewed.

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The unit has a very good menu system which shrinks the picture into the centre, and displays tiled icons on the left and right, with all the options clearly displayed. The on-screen menu items can be accessed using both the remote or the front panel. A minor niggle is that although the front panel has a dim function, it does not remember the state when you switch off.

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The remote isn't exactly a pretty thing, but does everything you'd expect. It can be programmed with a manufacturer code so that the volume, channel and video-input-source buttons can operate your TV's respective functions. A "virtual" control can also be displayed on the TV that allows just the direction and select buttons to be used to access the DVDs functions.

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Amongst its features, the unit has a particularly nice zoom feature and various picture modes, and the rear panel has the usual set of output connectors, including component video out.

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All-in-all a thoroughly recommended player, with an excellent picture, good sound and many features.