Review on 📀 Toshiba SD-4990 DVD Player with Progressive Scan and Upconverting Features by David Jenkins

I've had this player for about 90 days now and I've also encountered the freezing issue. I called Toshiba for help and they suggested rebooting the device by unplugging it for five minutes or more. Tries. Upon watching five more DVDs to test the machine, the freezes stopped. Can't say it won't come back, but this fix seemed to make a difference as the freeze became more frequent and happened on EVERY DVD until I applied the reset. Now it seems to be working great. For now. Qualitatively, it tends to overwhelm blacks badly, at least when using 720p/1080i over an HDMI-DVI connection. This can be fixed by increasing the player's brightness level for each DVD (usually a setting around 11-14 is enough). Too bad this player doesn't remember the brightness setting, but the workaround works most of the time and the picture quality is decent. Colors are good and the only problem is that if you set the brightness too high you'll squash the whites instead. If you can find the sweet spot, this is a decent player. The sound is as good as any $100 player and I suspect your receiver has more to do with the sound quality than a DVD player. Nibbling: The player requires an initial setup on a component or composite video. It doesn't support DVI natively and will require an adapter cable if you're missing HDMI and want to upconvert. Like most upconverters, it doesn't convert over component video, so skip this player if you don't have DVI or HDMI. The menu is fairly basic but that might be ok. The IR remote seems weak and requires pointing it directly at the device to get a response. The tray-open button seems to require a strong, firm press to register your desire to eject the disc. Good Points: This player handles DVD-R, DVD-RW and other pre-recorded discs like a pro. This is a great DIVX player. JPEG display is decent, even in high-definition modes, which allow you to view uncompressed images. Audio CDs play very well (but the user interface is a bit clumsy). In general a worthwhile purchase. Sony's upconverter is better, but I had a lot of trouble getting it to work with an HDMI-to-DVI adapter (it can't upconvert with anything other than direct HDMI). Given that this was the only player I could find that supports DIVX and HDMI-DVI upconversion, this might be the best choice for some people. In general I'm happy.