I bought a Toshiba 2006 a few days ago based on the preliminary reviews here on the net, and its been great. No dropouts, nice remote (if a little larger than is really necessary), attractive design, simple to use, good on-screen menus, feels solid. It was also the cheapest player available here, and I didn't want to sink too much money into a speculative format.

The Toshiba catalog that came with the player doesn't even mention the 2006, they talk only about the "1006" and the 3006. The 1006 sounds like it was their original take on a low-cost player since the specs talk about LCD display (rather than fluorescent) and some other missing features, but in the end it looks like they took the basic 3006 design and lopped off a couple of outputs to create the 2006 instead and dropped the 1006 (at least in this market). The 2006 feels like a real bargain at 499, given the usual markup of bleeding-edge hardware.

One thing that surprised me about this player (and DVD in general) is how much faster the seek times are when compared to LD. On my Pioneer 702, it seems to take forever if I want to track to, say, the last track on a side when I am at the front of the side, motor changing speeds and all that wonderful noise. On the DVD, it freezes the current frame for maybe a second and then its there. Very convenient.

Only complaints I would have:
- The front flourescent display apparently can't be turned off (ala Cinema mode on my LD)
- The disc plays automatically when inserted. I hate that feature in VCRs and hate it on DVDs as well. I have yet to encounter and LD that does this. Takes "idiot-proof" a bit too far.
- The hacker in me would love to have a unit that actually displayed some of the "gory digital details" about the playback, like current layer, average bandwidth, errors corrected, etc. But I can't see them putting these things on what is obviously a consumer-targeted piece of hardware.
- The player and documentation are a bit vauge about what features you can use when, what what it effects. Like if I change the audio track for a disc, it affects only that disc, but if I do it in stopped mode, it becomes the default. Kinda confusing but I'll get used to that. Sometimes the repeat mode doesn't seem to work, either.
- The Toshiba comes pre-set from the factory for 16:9 television. What's up with that, just trying to get in a plug for their 16:9 projection? Since 99% of us will use this thing on an old 4:3, I can see a lot of people getting a squeeze image as their first taste of DVD until they figure out how to change this.

- Robert Huebner