What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
22 JUN 2007
Toshiba SD-370E
The Tosh is as good-looking as affordable DVD players get, and is so slim we half-expected to see a sticker proclaiming Victoria Beckham’s personal endorsement.
Corners have been cut on the remote control, though, which is a particularly ugly grey number that looks like it belongs to another, much older, piece of equipment.
It’s not just the good looks that spoil any ideas we had of labelling this a budget beast. It wasn’t so long ago that a player capable of upscaling DVDs would set you back 10 times as much as this.
But thanks to Toshiba, it’s available to anyone willing to spend £60, and you can upscale to 720p and 1080i, allowing those on a budget to get more from their HD-Ready flatscreen.
With DVD discs, the effect is remarkable. While there’s no way you will confuse the performance of this player with ‘proper’ HD, the effect is more than good enough to suggest Toshiba might have shot itself in the foot by allowing such an affordable piece of kit to display images this impressive.
Ogle at all that information and detail from the SD370
Detail levels are very high, and the SD-370E is capable of delivering some impressively lucid blacks, populated with plenty of information for you to ogle at with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The colour palette can appear slightly muted compared to many budget machines, but it’s actually very natural, and skintones are lifelike.
There’s also very little in the way of unsightly artefacts or motion blur, two constant problems with budget disc spinners. But even during the scene in Pirates... where the water wheel races down the hill, the Toshiba deals with events with admirable dexterity for such an affordable piece of equipment.
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