Well, good luck with it Rod. The Toshiba has performed like a champ for 2 years here. Sounds like
those two reviewers (out of how many units sold? -- people never take the time to say nice things,
which is why I rarely trust "user opinions" on things) got bad units, maybe gray goods or the like.
I have an older (5+ years) Toshiba DVD/CD player that gets used daily at work and has never had
trouble.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rod Stephens" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Longevity
> Hi All,
>
> Thanks to Phillip and Tom for input on the units below. I've done some follow up research on
> Epinions and came up with these evaluations on both units.
>
> Tom Fine wrote:
>
>> Hi Rod:
>>
>> Toshiba used to make an incredible little unit. I think they got out of the SACD business. The
>> Toshiba I have, model #SD-4960, plays SACD quite well (not quite as well as my Marantz player,
>> but this thing cost less than 1/3 as much), DVD's very well and audio CD surprisingly well (ie
>> they didn't cheap out on the D-A converter or the analog stage after it). I bought it after
>> reading a very good review somewhere. I think it cost $120 on sale, perhaps on sale because it
>> was being phased out.
>
> Tom, I'm sure that this was a good unit for you, but it seems to have laid an egg for some who
> have purchased it more recently:
> http://www.epinions.com/pr-Toshiba_SD-4960_DVD/display_~full_specs
>
> I appreciated your general comments below on SACDs in general, but it looks like the Panasonic
> that Phillip recommended seems to currently win out on both cost an user appreciation:
> http://www.epinions.com/pr-Pioneer_Pioneer_DV-578A-S_Silver_Single_Disc_DVD_Player_Single-disc_DVD_Players_DVD/display_~reviews
>
> However, I'm still checking out the competition.
>
> Thanks again to both of you for your input.
>
> Rod Stephens
>
>> I am not 100% on this, but the impression I got is that SACD laid an egg in the mass market and
>> thus lower-end multi-format players are not including in this latest year or last year's models.
>>
>> My own opinion is that some SACD discs sound really wonderful, and some multi-channel mixes are
>> worthwhile but overall it's not worth a lot of extra expense (particularly since it's a
>> submerging format) and there wouldn't even have been a window of opportunity if there were better
>> CD mastering and remastering engineers out there. And, since the same guys also do SACD, the same
>> percentage of SACD releases are really excellent (ie small percentage).
>>
>> One man's opinion, etc.
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>>
> <snip>
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