Write a review of the Toshiba SD-6980! Please share your experiences to help other people choose the product that's best for them. This is a review site, not a forum, so please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear words or offensive language, and please, no advertising! Reviewed by Mark Joy on 11-29-2007
The SD-6980 is the Toshiba flagship, except for the fact that it upconverts only to 1080i, instead of 1080p. Tosh has a unit that upconverts to the 1080p, but it lags the 6980 in many other features. That aside, the 6980 is a fairly nice player, short of its video being true Hi Def. The SACD/DVD-A/DTS/5.1 format audio capabilities make it a slam dunk for music and audio buffs in general. The only "negatives" are only menu related. The worse I encountered is probably due to the fact that I must run my audio from the unit over a fiber optic cable, (I have an older Denon 1802 amp that has no HDMI bus) but run my video over the HDMI cable. This causes me to either turn off the "screen messages" function or put up with annoying periodic screen messages that say, "HDMI audio not supported". If I turn the messages off in the display menu section, It's fine until the next power off/on cycle. Then I have to do it again. The message shows up at the begining of movies - sometimes in the middle it flashes on momentarily at a scene change. The overall menu system is sort of cheesy looking and not very smart. Not as good as my former Tosh cinema series. It is, however, enough to adequately get the job done. The SD6980 evidently uses the exact same menu software as its Samsung counterpart. A friend of mine has the Sammy model and its menus are identical. (I don't know if his suffers the message dilema - he has HDMI cables carrying everything in his system). The remote is OK, but honestly, I cannot actually remember using it, since I use a Harmony 659 universal remote to run my entire system. To wrap it up, the overall functionality and reproduction capabilities of the Tosh unit are stellar. The discrete channel audio formats are pure enough to leave you in awe -IF you have good quality components in the rest of your system AND IF you can find your favorite music titles in DVD-Audio or SACD formats. Sad that these hi-fi formats are not that popular and likely to become extinct. The staging, dynamic range, SNR, and overall fidelity of these re-mastered audio formats far exceeds anything done before - even the originally mixed recordings. The remastered Eagles' "Hotel California" work is unbelievable on my 5.1 system. The DVD unit's discrete output channel cables carry the 6 separate channels to my Denon receiver amp, which decodes and amplifies them for each one of my JBL Northridge and 250 watt sub speakers for translation into a 90 db bone chilling experience, placing the listener literally in the midst of the band's performance. The Tosh SD6980 video is clean and brilliant on my 56" Tosh DLP 56MX HDTV, with much of the thanks going to the upconversion feature. All in all, (unless you go to an HD DVD) it is about the best DVD video player on the market. If you want to hook up a bunch of test equipment, you might be able to produce a valid argument for another model. But not by using mere trained eyes and sharp ears. Unfortunately, current HD DVD players do not decode the audio formats handled by this unit. I guess the licensing and format battles will have to be settled before the consumer can benifit. It is the main reason why I do not yet have a HD DVD unit in my system.
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