Cheap but not great

I bought this for the price, Divx capabilities and that it should play DVD+R. Yes it was cheap for all that but, it jumps on most Divx discs and does definately not play all DVD+ or -R. And yes I have tested all these discs on friends players and they always work there? A bargain if you are willing to pay top price for your discs but do not buy for Divx.

Stunning performance

Had this about a week now, this is a new release from Pioneer and I have to say it doesn't fail to deliver.
When purchasing equipment like this I tend to go for the appliances that are compliant with all formats, which was the same when purchasing this DVD player.
It will play anything.
The USB interface is great for instant multimedia, will show photo's, plays music, etc.
This isn't the great part though, i bought a Samsung LE40M87BD at the same time and the DVD player upscales all DVD's beautifully up to 1080p, the transformation in resolution is fantastic. Its worth it if you have a lot of DVD's that aren't HD or blu-ray yet. I've watched both blu-ray and HD DVD's and i'm serious when i say the difference is un-noticible. I have also connected it to my tv through a gold plated HDMI lead, so haven't skimped on quality, but definately worth it!
The on screen menu is easy to use and you have alot of options to configure it with your tv too, works really well with HDMI connection.
There is no bad points for me yet, have only had it for a week, but its an awesome bit of kit for £150.
Pioneer have delivered a top quality product for an amazing price, its designed to efficiently play all formats & all regions which it easily succeeds, it works exceptionally well for what it is made for.
It is their top model in this series, but worth every penny, I have it in black to go with the tv :) but i'm sure the silver looks just as good.

Good value, all rounder with some very minor snags

The Pioneer RCS LX60D is a good choice if you want an all-rounder which doesn't necessarily excel in any particular area, but it won't break the bank either. There's loads of features which you can read on the pioneer website, but not many user reviews so I'm going to concentrate on stuff I'd like to have known when I bought it.

The system is basically three components - the Pioneer DVRLX60D (can be purchased separately) and a multi channel receiver/subwoofer (SX-LX60D) and speaker system (SSP LX60D) which can't be bought separately. Set up was a bit fiddly with the speaker system comprising 6 cube speakers (Front L, Front R, Centre x2, Rear L, Rear R) which can be positioned in traditional surround around the room or fastened together with the supplied brackets as front surround. Pioneer recommend the front surround, avoiding the need to hide wires and perch speakers around the living room, so that's what I went for. There's a few miles of speaker cabling to hide behind the unit, although you are provided a tiny little bit of spiral wrap to get you started on cable management...

The subwoofer doubles as the digital audio receiver/processor and there's a separate lcd display unit (it's the thing sitting on the HD/DVD in the picture) which is connected to the subwoofer by a 1.5 m cable. I put mine under my Panasonic 32LXD700 and it goes nicely. Once the speakers are set up you can set the EQ, channel balance and optimum surround setting with Pioneers MCACC, and the supplied mic. This works really well in my living room, which is a rectangular shape (TV in the corner) and has patio doors/fire surround/curtains either side - in other words plenty of accoustic variables. The front surround is accurate and sounds excellent at low volume as well as high, with the specific Quiet & Midnight settings on the receiver which alter the balance. You can adjust all the settings manually if you need to. There's a range of audio settings which you can try, but I have always come back to the auto feature which selects the best output depending on whether you are listening to music on the AM-FM radio, a cd or watching a film with DTS, Dolby digital/prologic ii.


Connected with HDMI, the upscaled 1080p picture quality on my TV was spectacular, as expected. Not much more to say - it's up there with the Sony RDRHXD970 and Panasonic DMR-EX87 both with 1080p up-conversion for standard DVDs, although the Panasonic might have been a better choice for the ease of use with Viera link, this system has a host of extras which I thought it worth spending another £300 on, including the surround system and connectability.

This system has 2 remotes - one for the receiver and another for the HDD/DVD (but both have a flip-down bit with some common controls for both). This was a bit annoying and another mark against the system. There's an analogue and freeview DVB tuner, and a CA slot for paychannels. A dual dvb tuner would have been nice, but I haven't seen any systems with this spec and 2 tuners. The Gem Guide EPG is good, easy to use, although it does not show the digital radio channels and takes a while to set up (downloading from the analogue tuner ITV channel). If you have a Sky box or external cable system, you can upload the channels to the EPG on the HDD/DVD recorder via a G-Link infra red link. You can then control the recording of your external devices connected to the DVD recorder. The on screen display is simple and easy to use, record programmes or edit from the menu.

The blurb says you can save your whole CD collection on the 250GB hard drive - but only if you have 999 tracks. This is a bit disappointing, as the sound quality of the surround system when playing back MP3s (or WMAs only without DRM!!) and CDs is very good. I would have liked to upload a few more tracks onto the HDD - although I can connect my MP3 player either via the optical or analogue audio or there's a USB link. You can also only see 999 tracks at a time from a PC or MP3 player (hard drive or flash).

You CAN get a pre-converted Multiregion version of this system - it's worth checking other websites .

Finally, if you can get this system for under £700, you are not going to be disappointed with the quality. This is easily the best sounding complete HD/DVD/Surround system I have tried and that more than makes up for the minor niggles mentioned above.

Good All Round Budget Player

Bought this item as I felt it was the best budget player alround player for the price, based on the reviews. Having bought the unit I am happy with it. The picture quality is good but not excellent you can see some scanlines and at times you can notice slight banding. Picture quality is best with DVD and Divx, playback is good and text is generally sharp. It plays back most DivX films but I have found some it won’t play, but plays majority.

I also bought this Player to hook upto my Gamecube and PS2 as a small monitor. You will need a A/V cable for your console with the standard yellow, red and white phono connectors. You will also need to buy and RCA Phono female to female connector. To connect two AV cables together. Using the player as a monitor for a console is good, generally you can see whats going on without straining and for a screen that size it’s better than expected. Text can be a bit fuzzy though, still perfectly readable but you can tell it should be sharper, this goes for the picture to. Slightly worse than DVD playback.

The unit has a TV tuner the supplied internal ariel is useless, you need to connect an external ariel to get a decent picture and the unit comes with a convertor to connect an exteral ariel.

I bought this item from Seller Chrisun2000 and their service was excellent, ordered Saturday processed Monday, received on Tuesday. I ordered the Orbit 768B but the unit said 768S on the bottom although it looks like picture of the 768B so go figure! The unit came will all the cables you need, but did not come with a case. It also comes with a CD of 8 Bit NES games and a USB joypad to play them on which plugs into the back of the player.

Having had this unit for a while I would say the best thing about is it versatility, it is best at DVD/Divx Playback. But is also a TV, you can also run JPEGs, MP3 and Divx from CD/DVD or from USB Harddrives, Memory Sticks or even USB Card Readers. This little unit is a jack of all trades. Personally though if I was buying again I would go for a slightly bigger screen to use with my consoles (screen size is good for DVD) and I would have paid extra for a slighty superior screen, if they exist!

HD Rules! - or did...

This player is fantastic (considering its the first ever player to play HD format).
Personally I am gutted HD format is a thing of the past now and Blu-Ray has won the battle. Whats going on? I think the people (including myself) who have parted with hundreds if not thousands of pounds to aquire this new format should be refunded there money back by Toshiba. This is wrong to the consumer as now its a dead-end road. No more Discs or players are being made so we are stuck with expensive hardware with nowhere to go! I mean its not the consumers fault is it? -We didnt know this would happen did we? So now we are FORCED to buy a Blu-Ray player to keep with the times. Im sorry but for me I refuse to pay SONY. Deep down this is between the PS3 & the XBOX360. I'l tell you why...
When the XBOX360 was outselling the PS2 by 3-1, Sony decided to install Blu-Ray in there new console (PS3) - leading Microsoft to bring out HD as an add-on for there console - fine, Why isnt Microsoft putting up a fight? Nobody is going to buy that add-on anymore are they? The cheapest Blu-Ray player around is the PS3 and SONY knows it. They assume people will buy it as you get the console too! -NOT ME. I want my money back.
I personally thought HD format would be the obvious choice to millions because of the name HD. Blu-Ray just confuses people who dont (and rightly so) have the knowledge. Its all WRONG. Sorry for going on, and on but i feel totally ROBBED.

Fab

From a girly point of view.......it's fab! Very easy to use - can record whatever I want when I want. Easy to use remote - point and press for immediate recording. Really is the dogs b.........ks of DVD recorders! We bought one off Amazon and it was missing the Panasonic logo which really wouldn't do but they took it back and there was no problem with the second one. Can't recommend the DVD enough or Amazon. Buy with confidence (no - I don't work for Amazon ... honest).

also for Mac users

missing information in the product description:

this cd/ dvd burner is ALSO compatible with Macintosh / Apple computers ! -( the cheaper Freecom burner NOT)

Fab!

Not being a great technocrat, I needn't have been worried. Connected to cable and TV set, plugged it in and it did the rest. Really easy to use and very clear instructions. A great buy.

Great machine

Initially I bought a HDD dvd recorder (not Samsung) to replace my old Samsung model.
After endless trouble trying to set up I shipped it back and bought this, the updated version of my old dvd. No set up problems with this. Easy to use and much quicker to load and process the discs.
It's quieter as well.
If you don't need a dvd with a hard drive, and on reflection, I don't think I did! Then this piece of hardware comes highly recommended, and with a great price tag!

Stunning quality pictures

OK, so the major drawback is that this is a profile 1.0 player but the sheer quality of the picture makes up for that. Vibrant colours and three dimensional pictures sealed it for me. If you're not bothered about the picture in picture extras that profile 1.1 provides, this is an excellent choice.

No surround sound on some disks

Superb pictures, and sound, on my 52" Sharp LCD and professional sound system, but I struggled for ages trying to get anything out of the rear speakers before realising that the BD disk I was using (Pink Floyd at the Albert Hall) has only PCM stereo plus True-HD surround - no Dolby 5.1 track. What a disapointment that this player doesn't do True-HD! Other disks, do work fine, with 5.1 surround. I had assumed that I did not need True-HD because I was quite happy with Dolby 5.1, never suspecting that disks with the lossless True-HD do not carry other surround formats - presumably because there is no bandwidth left for them. Two other things are a great disappointment. The startup time is far too long. I want to play a music track at will, not a whole movie, and two minutes or so waiting is just ridiculous. The fast startup option only seems to speed up the initialising when you connect the mains, not the actual time from inserting the disk and at the expense of increasing power consumption on standby to 18Watts, which I consider to be totally unacceptable in the present climate where future legislation is likely to limit standby power to 1W. Finally, while my music concerts are fine, most movies seem to be in letterbox format. I find the grey bars top and bottom very distracting, and did not pay for all those pixels in order to watch films that use only two thirds of them, with a picture on my 52 inch screen not much higher than I was watching back in the 70's on CRT televisions! I undertand that movie fans want to see the original as it was shot, but it's time all this was sorted out. Why did we opt for 16:9 if that isn't the best format, why not 2.3 to one. Actually, I think 16:9 is best, and Imax doesn't use a wide format but chooses height to fill the field of view and create an illusion of reality. I only hope that future films, shot on 4k (twice 2k which is 2000x1080) will sacrifice a litte each side in the transfer to Blu-ray, to give us a full screen. In the meantime, lets have pan and scan blu-ray disks please, or the option to choose either format.

Crude design and build quality - a disappointing product

I bought this to upgrade from a smaller, analogue Daewoo DVD recorder (I wanted more memory and a DVB tuner), so this is the comparison which informs this review. It seemed a bargain (I was offered it at a reduced price not from amazon). With the exception of the two features mentioned above, together with HDMI connection, a much quieter fan, and the shiny black fascia, this machine is simply inferior in almost every way.

The first disappointment is the look of it in operation. On-screen menus look and are crude. The machine is slow and unwieldy in operation throughout. The Electronic Programme Guide is clunky and equally crude looking, and the timer function is counter-intuitive in operation and unreliable (I've gone back to more regular use of my elderly Sharp VHS as a backup). Editing facilities are crude and unresponsive. With this, the remote control is particularly unhelpful - both poorly organised and poorly labelled (I can barely read it in artificial light - this could be a personal vision issue, but I've no such problems with any other remote I have - even the tiny remote for my clock radio!).

I have some problem with the ability to tune in to DVB stations, but this lack of sensitivity may be partly due to the poor reception in my building/area - although other tuners I have seem to cope well enough. This is always difficult to assess, but if you live in a simlarly reception challenged area, it might be worth knowing.

The infamous"timeslip" function is also pretty useless - a poor alternative to any well constructed PVR - but many other amazon reviews of similar products have addressed this one.

Particularly irritating - and avoidable - are the multiple aerial sockets (you have to use a SEPARATE EXTERNAL coaxial cable to use both the analogue and digital tuner, yet the onscreen setup menus assume both as a default).

I've posted this because I looked very carefully for reviews of this object before I bought, it but found nothing much, so I resorted to some residual faith in Toshiba as a brand. In spite of my past experiences with Toshiba being as positive as they were (or was I just lucky?) I don't have that kind of faith any more, I'm afraid. As ever, best to try before you buy, if you can. One look at the menus would have been enough!

Poor product from Sony, Plasma users beware

Owned this for 5 months. Pros: excellent build quality, good picture quality but all this is significantly outweighed by the cons: noisy hard drive/fan (you can often hear this when watching); unit does not power down once you switch it off until after 20 mins and powers up 11 minutes before starting to record on a timer and the noise is disturbing; goes into indefinite Pause mode when it reaches the end of a programme (Plasma users ensure you do not fall asleep when watching a programme!); menus are clumsy; remote is not the most responsive; and to top it all the unit has suddenly started switching itself off in the middle of watching programs (did it once during dubbing). I would never buy this again.