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Reviews and guides for all of the best all-in-one home cinema systems in the UK |
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Toshiba SD63HK Review
Well, certainly the feature set looks good even before we take it out of the box. It fully supports the standard three sound encoding formats - Dolby Digital, DTS and Prologic II - and it can play a good range of media including DVD, DVD-R, CD, VCD, CD-R, CD-RW and MP3/WMA. Unfortunately none of the up-and-coming sound formats (SACD and DVD-A) are supported here, but they're not in common use yet and obviously Toshiba thinks they may never be. Toshiba have thought well about the outputs, providing both RGB SCART and S-Video to manage perfect quality output, and there is composite video input and sterio audio input for connecting up other devices. Our biggest gripe with the SD63HK, and it is a big gripe this one, is that it comes sporting magnificent Progressive Scan support, but for NTSC TVs only! NTSC is a television, and if you have a British TV then chances are its PAL, not NTSC. This is a major knockout blow as progressive scan on PAL would have made this a truely impressive feature set indeed, and instead you're left feeling that you're paying extra for a feature you can't use. Getting the Toshiba SD63HK out of the box, lets see how it performs. Setting it up is very easy - there is no hassle here and it can be on your shelf and wired up in a matter of minutes. There is a full test mode that lets you perfect your audio output, including allocating settings for each speaker individually if you require. In performance its great - visuals are superb and very well saturated. Audio is equally clear and well balanced. Toshiba have obviously not shirked on quality technology in this system, and it shows. It has to be one of the best that we've seen, and compares not unfavourably to even the more high level systems currently available. Pros
Cons
Conclusion The Toshiba SD63HK is a really shockingly good system for a good price. Its some-love-some-hate design has certainly been created lovingly and with care regardless of what you think of the end result, and the specification is pretty damn good. Its just a really shame that the Progressive Scan feature is for NTSC TVs only. To make up for that though, it produces wonderful visuals and superb audio worthy of a much higher level system, and users who can find space for it in their living room will not be disappointed by its performance. Resources |
The Toshiba SD63HK is certainly designed, and whether it has the looks for you or not is up to personal preference and the style of your living room. Toshiba have aimed for a retro look and an angular crystal-shaped theme. There are no smooth, rounded edges here - strictly angular hexagon borders and a minimalist layout. Personally, we at Total Home Cinema towers think it looks stunning. But does it perform to match?