Toshiba BDX2700 Blu-ray player review
One of the best things the HD DVD camp had going for it during the format war was great hardware from Toshiba. And after the war was over many assumed Toshiba would just ignore the Blu-ray player market entirely and focus on other areas. Of course that wasn't the case and the idea of a Blu-ray player from Toshiba has always intrigued us, which is why we jumped at the chance to review one. Sadly, the BDX2700 reviewed on the next page doesn't share much with its red counterparts, but it isn't all bad.
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The good
SD card slot up front.
Multi-channel discrete analog audio out.
Only draws 15 watts of power draw while playing blu-ray, 10 at menu.
Netflix, Vudu, Blockbuster.
WiFi
No fan, so it is perfectly quite.
The bad
No built in BD Live storage -- really what does 1GB of flash memory cost these days?
Can't dim the Blu-ray logo like the rest of the display, but you can turn everything off completely.
Vudu movie current time doesn't show up on display, just "Net."
No discrete IR for on or off.
No control via IP -- like an iPhone remote or something.
Not many extras for adjusting lip sync, or video etc.
No DLNA.
The ugly
It is painfully slow, takes 14 seconds just to eject the tray from off and a minute to start a BD Live title like Ratatouille.
Ugly user interface
Conclusion
Although we didn't run into any problems with the BDX2700, it didn't exactly knock our socks off. At $200 the competition offers more features, is faster, and looks better on the shelf and on the screen (when discs aren't playing). Speaking of the user interface, it is pretty painful to look at, the graphics are very basic and down right ugly -- more like what you'd expect from a $50 DVD player and no where near what we'd come to expect after playing with Toshiba's HD DVD players. Vudu and Netflix streaming are appreciated and work as expected, but even they aren't well integrated because while other players can actually display the current time of the movie, the BDX2700 just displays "net." Overall if this player would've been released a few years ago we would have appreciated the feature set and the performance, but today, there is just so much more we expect out of a $200 Blu-ray player than what the BDX2700 provides.
