Toshiba BDX2000

Toshiba BDX2000

At first glance, the slim Toshiba BDX2000--the company's first Blu-ray Disc player--seems unexceptional, with limited extras and a boxy remote. But when you pop a Blu-ray disc into it and see what the BDX2000 can do, you'll realize what a bargain it is ($200, as of December 14, 2009). The BDX2000's image quality was fantastic in five of the six Blu-ray titles we tried on it. In chapter 1 of Cars, the color red popped out without looking garish. In a low-contrast, day-for-night scene from The Searchers (chapter 20), John Wayne's suspenders stood out from his shirt with an almost three-dimensional look. And the opening of Good Night and Good Luck demonstrated that the BDX2000 can handle black-and-white beautifully. It was less impressive dealing with the washed-out sunlight and constantly moving camera of Mission: Impossible III (chapter 7). Though we spotted no obvious flaws, colors looked duller and less vivid than in the other tests. The BDX2000 did excellent work upscaling DVDs. It showed incredible detail--by DVD standards --in our Lord of the Rings: Return of the King test (chapter 22). The slim-line unit looks sleek and compact, with fairly large, easy-to-hit buttons--but it's not especially well designed.