Toshiba SD290EKB

05. Feb, 2010 0 Comments

We got our hands on a Toshiba SD290EKB as we had heard some good things about this low budget model. Toshiba are renound for their quality products so we were exciting to give this DVD player a test run.

The Good

Pulling the SD290EKB out of the box we were pleased to see it was a proper full size unit, unlike some of the others at the low budget end of the market which are dinky little boxes. One of the first things we noticed was the USB connector on the front which allows connection of an external hard drive or memory stick, which when combined with the SD290EKB’s built in Divx playback capabilities allows you to transfer divx movies from your computer onto your memory stick and play them directly without the need to burn any discs at all, very nifty for a DVD player in this price range in our opinion!

It played every single recordable disc we threw at it without any problems, DVDR/W +/- CDR/W. The SD290EKB also has the ability to play MP3 and JPEG files, while we don’t particularly use these features very much there are probably many that do and it’s nice to have as a free extra. Dolby digital support is also included as well DTS.

Picture quality is excellent, it even blew our Sony PS3 out of the water in terms of clarity on divx playback. It also supports multi region playback, if you want to make the SD290EKB fully region free we managed to find the following way to unlock it:

“First of all turn on the dvd player, open the disc tray and then enter 98790. It will now change to region 0 making it able to watch all regions.”

The Bad

More of a little gripe really but there is no HDMI connector on this model, even though there are some stores quoting that there is, so if that’s your only option for hooking the unit up to your telly then the SD290EKB isn’t much use to you.

Conclusion

The Toshiba SD290EKB is almost perfect for the amount of money it costs, very simple to use and supports pretty much everything as long as you don’t need a HDMI connection. It has a multitude of features that a lot of the more expensive models have at a fraction of the price. An absolute bargain.