Introduction

Inexpensive up converting HDMI DVD players are about a dime a dozen these days and just about every manufacturer offers one at the under $150 price point. The Toshiba SD-K860 is the least expensive HDMI DVD player I have encountered to date priced at just $79.99. But wait, it gets better. The SD-K860 includes a 1-1/2 meter HDMI cable valued at about $30! If the SD-K860 performs even at a moderate level, this would be a killer value. I will put this little DVD player under the microscope to see if its worthy of the Average Joe’s bargain hunting time and effort.

Description

Calling the SD-K860 small and compact is an understatement. The DVD player stands less than 1-1/2-inches tall, and weighs a mere 3.5 lbs. The SD-K860’s chassis color is silver with a charcoal band at the lower front face plate. The DVD player has the usual open/close, play, stop, skip and power On/Off buttons installed on the front face plate. Taking a look at the back of the SD-K860, I was fairly surprised to see a full complement of video and audio outputs. The DVD player obviously has HDMI output, but it also offers component video, S-VHS and composite video outputs. The SD-K860 has both optical and digital coax outputs, as well as, an analog L/R output. Having this many different type of output options makes this little DVD player very flexible. As previously stated, I was fairly surprised to see this level of connection flexibility on a DVD player priced this low.

Control Freak

The remote control that is included with the SD-K860 is actually a little bit better than what I expected at this price point. The remote has all the basic function buttons as well as all the set up buttons. The buttons are smartly laid out, but are placed very close together. People with large fingers may double push the buttons due to there close proximity. The remote control has no back lighting and really I did not expect to see this feature on a remote packaged with a DVD player that costs so little. The remote operation was a bit spotty and sporadic depending on the angle and distance it is used from the player. Although the remote is useable, I recommend programming the DVD functions into a good universal remote with back lighting for ease of use. The 1-1/2 meter HDMI cable included with the DVD player is, as expected, not the highest quality. That being said, I had no trouble with the cable syncing images up to 720p resolution and experienced no signal degradation. The shielding on the included cable is minimal, so be sure to route it away from power cords.

It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts

I wanted to get a peak at the inner workings of the DVD player. Removing the top cover revealed that the SD-K860 uses Zoran’s new Vaddis 888 MPEG decoder and processor chip. Zoran processors are found in many lower and mid priced DVD players but this is one of their newest combination processor chips. As expected, the Toshiba DVD player incorporates a lightweight open DVD drive that is not vibration shielded. The main power supply is located on an independent board and is relatively small. But, hey both the drive and the power supply get the job done and that’s all that is really important! Overall I would have to say that the SD-K860’s build quality is a little better than I was expecting considering its really low price.

Setting up the SD-K860

If you are shopping for an HDMI player chances are you already have an HDTV with HDMI inputs. The HDMI connection provides both high resolution video and digital audio with one connection. You can connect the HDMI cable directly to your HDTV or if you have an HDMI A/V receiver or pre-amp you can use it to switch HDMI sources. For the purposes of this evaluation, I connected both HDMI and component cables directly to my Panasonic PT44-LCX55 LCD HDTV because I wanted to test both connections. Selecting the “setup” button on the remote initializes the on-screen menu. Starting with the main menu page, there are    five   categories   from   which   to  choose.

Language allows the user to select the language for the setup menu. Video contains all settings stored for video setup. Audio has the audio setup. Rating allows users to set up a password for blocking DVD’s according to their content. Default sets the player back to the factory default settings. For this review, I will concentrate on the Video and Audio sections of the setup menu starting with the HDMI connection. If you are using the HDMI connection, your display has an aspect ratio of 16:9 therefore you need to change the TV shape from  factory default 4:3 to 16:9 for correct aspect ratio. The video output needs to be set to HD to activate the HDMI connection. My Panasonic has a native resolution of 1280 x 720p and I selected the 720p for HD Resolution. setting The SD-K860 also has a 1080i and 480p setting. Don’t be confused with the term “HD Resolution”; you are not getting HD resolution with the use of this player. Basically all the player is doing in the “HD Resolution” setting is up converting standard definition DVD content to the native resolution of your display. Standard definition DVD’s are native 480p resolution and you are not going to increase the standard resolution with any up converting player. HD-DVD and Bluray DVD players have recently been introduced in conjunction with high resolution software that can provide high resolution DVD playback.  The two competing formats are in the early stages of development and cost significantly more than standard definition technology. Getting back to the setup, the last item you need to set is the audio settings. As previously stated, you have several options when it comes to connecting the SD-K860 for audio. You can connect the HDMI cable directly to your display device and then use a toslink or coax cable connected to your A/V receiver or you can connect the HDMI cable to a HDMI switching receiver. If your A/V receiver is Dolby Digital and DTS capable, the correct setting for the digital output would be bit stream. If you only have a 2-channel receiver then use PCM; this will correctly output the sound to the left and right channels. Night Mode should normally be left off unless you want to compress the dynamic range, which reduces the variations between loud and soft in the audio output.

Evaluation and Testing

Averagejoeavreviews uses the Silicon Opix HQV Benchmark DVD to evaluate standard definition DVD players. The DVD is designed as a virtual torture test. It tests the DVD player’s video signal processing. For more information about the HQV Benchmark scoring please visit www.hqv.com 

About HQV

The HQV Benchmark DVD is a most powerful image quality testing tool for your next Plasma, LCD, RPTV or Front Projector HDTV.  It’s designed to put your HDTV, monitor, video scaler, or DVD Player through a grueling video obstacle course, one that will reveal much about the quality of video signal processing in these components. While it’s true that the transition from analog to digital HDTV’s is well underway, a great deal of video that we watch is still delivered and played back in analog composite (NTSC), S-video (Y/C), and component (YPbPr) video formats.  The picture scanning system is interlaced in all three formats resulting in artifacts appearing on your HDTV display.

The video clips and test patterns on this DVD have been specifically designed to evaluate a variety of interlaced video signal processing tasks including: decoding, de-interlacing, motion correction, noise reduction, film cadence detection, and detail enhancement.  The ultimate quality of the images you watch is limited by any, and all of these steps.  It’s a rare video processor inside an HDTV that can handle all of these tasks well!

Ten test patterns are provided on this DVD for a thorough workout for your video processor, including: color bars, two “jaggies” patterns, a waving flag, a static detailed image, a saturated color image to check for noise reduction, a roller coaster sequence for motion adaptive noise reduction, a test for film detail, a series of tests for film and animation cadences, and a title crawl that mixes film and video elements.

Evaluation HDMI @ 720p

Starting with the HDMI connection, I loaded the HQV Benchmark DVD into the player. The loading time was average at about 10 seconds from the time I pushed the open/close button on the front panel. I am not going to overemphasize the actual raw scoring data; rather I will tell you that the SD-K860 did well on some areas of the test and poorly on others. With the HDMI connection the SD-K860 scored perfectly in the color bar/detail test. The color hue and saturation were near perfect, and the vertical resolutions were also fully preserved. The SD-K860 had very good picture detail, objects were crisp and well defined and I detected no ringing or excessive sharpening. The Toshiba SD-K860 had just average noise reduction capabilities. The image often looked grainy and blotchy in very bright and dark scenes. Overall the SD-K860 was below average when it came to de-interlacing.  More often than not, smooth moving edges showed significant jaggies and diagonal line structure suffered from the jaggies as well. The Toshiba DVD player failed the 3:2 detection tests. The picture was reasonably sharp but there was significant moiré in the pattern and the player took too long to lock onto the film mode. The SD-K860 did a fairly good job with the cadence tests. The Toshiba DVD player passed the two most important cadences: The 30fps video cadence was flawless and 3:2 pull down was borderline, but passed. The SD-K860 passed the mixed 3:2 film with added video horizontal and vertical text crawl and text scroll tests. There was one difference between the HDMI and component output testing. The Flag test with HDMI passed with a score of 5; however, with the component output there was significantly more noise in the image and it failed the test.

The Bottom Line

The Toshiba SD-K860 is the least expensive DVD player I have evaluated to date. Considering you receive an HDMI cable with the DVD player, should make it a very compelling purchase upon first glance. After putting the SD-K860 though testing and evaluation, I can only recommend this DVD player for those that really want an HDMI player but are on a very strict budget. If you are looking for an inexpensive DVD player and can afford to spend a little more you should consider the Oppo Digital DV-970 HD that sells for about $149. The Toshiba SD-K860 functioned fairly well and had very good color and detail but its de-interlacing performance is very poor and ultimately sunk it for an overall recommendation. If you intend to use the SD-K860 on a smaller HDTV or in a bedroom system the performance related issues become less important.