With the BDX2000, Toshiba has finally got itself in the Blu-ray game. It’s got plenty of catching up to do, though, and we find out just how much in our Toshiba BDX2000 review.
How times have changed. Time was when you couldn’t utter the words “Blu-ray” in Toshiba’s presence without being shown the door. But two years after the HD DVD experiment failed, Tosh’s wounds have healed and it’s trotted out the Toshiba BDX-2000, its debut BD spinner.
It’s quite a smart looker too, with a glossy drop-down front flap running the full width of the player neatly hiding away the disc tray and buttons. It’s certainly an attractive solution, but the flap isn’t motorised and hangs down once you’ve opened it, which is annoying.
Read our Pioneer BDP-320 review now
Connectivity round the back is average and no better. There’s the obvious HDMI port, and it’s joined by component and composite options for video, but audio is less well catered for. Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio support is built in, but you’ll have to hook up to an HDMI-equipped receiver to get multichannel output, as the Toshiba BDX2000 doesn’t offer it.
BD Live support is there, but requires a wired Ethernet connection to your home network around the back, and an SD card slotted into the front to store and access content, as the Toshiba BDX2000 doesn’t have any storage of its own. Rivals sporting Wi-Fi and on-board storage make it look decidedly outdated by comparison.
Performance is impressive, though it takes a while to get there – the Toshiba BDX2000 is one of the slower Blu-ray players we’ve come across in a while. But once you’re up and running, you’re rewarded with pictures as punchy as you’d expect.
DVD performance is inevitably a serious step down, and Toshiba has left its clever XDE upscaling tech off the table. As with so many Blu-ray players, you’d be best planning to hold on to your existing player if DVD playback is to remain a large part of your viewing schedule.
Toshiba is late in getting into the Blu-ray game, and you can tell. The Toshiba BDX2000 is about as good as its rivals’ efforts were 18 months ago, and they’ve moved on a fair bit since. Toshiba will no doubt get better at Blu-ray, and in the real world the Toshiba BDX2000 should set you back significantly less than the £199 RRP, but it remains a frustratingly incomplete effort.
