Toshiba BDX5300

At this point, there's a glut of Wi-Fi-equipped, 3D-capable Blu-ray players available for around $150. As a result, the otherwise solid Toshiba BDX5300 is lost in the crowd. This $139.99 (direct) Blu-ray player is affordable and full-featured, but its few outputs and cheap-feeling remote leave it behind similarly priced competitors.

Design
The BDX5300 is attractive, if simply designed. At 1.4 by 17.2 by 7.4 inches (HWD) and just 2.4 pounds, it's one of the slimmest Blu-ray players we've seen yet. The front has a black rectangular faceplate with a silver triangular "chin" under it, which makes it look slightly more interesting than the plain black front panels other Blu-ray players have. There are Eject, Stop, Play, and Power touch-sensitive buttons and a four-character alphanumeric LED display, all of which glow blue. A USB port sits on the right edge of the faceplate, and the disc tray itself is a slim rectangle that's barely larger than a Blu-ray-sized slot.

Besides the power cable, the only connections on the back of the player are an HDMI output, a coaxial audio output, and an Ethernet port. The lack of composite video and analog audio outputs is surprising, even if HDMI is the preferred connection choice. The one front USB port means if you want to watch BD-Live special features, which require external storage since the player doesn't have any onboard, you'll need to keep a USB flash drive sticking out of the front of the device.

The 7.5-inch remote is cheap and simple. The buttons are oblong and circular rubber nubs clustered around a small directional pad. The remote is not illuminated. A dedicated Netflix button lets you access the service through the Blu-ray player quickly. Otherwise, you get the standard red, green, yellow, and blue color buttons with context sensitive functions, along with Subtitle, Audio, Second Audio, Angle, A-B, Repeat, Display, and Connected buttons that cue up other playback and online features.

The BDX5300 accesses online services over Wi-Fi or through an Ethernet connection. The different services are arranged in Music, Video, Photo, and Other categories. They include Pandora (currently the only service in the Music category), Picasa (currently the only service in the Photo category), Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu, YouTube, CinemaNow, and Vudu Apps (currently the only service in the Other category, but including a wide selection of apps through the service).

Performance
The player is relatively fast, but in a strange way. Typically, Blu-ray discs without BD-Live features load much faster than discs with BD-Live features. It's the other way around for the BDX5300. Our non-BD-Live test disc, Ralph Bakshi's Wizards 35th Anniversary Edition, loaded in an average of 30.1 seconds. Our BD-Live test disc, The Sitter, loaded in an average of 23.6 seconds, over six seconds faster. Our Editors' Choice LG BP620 ($149.99, 4 stars), by contrast, loaded a non-BD-Live test disc (Robocop) in an average of 21.2 seconds and a BD-Live test disc (The Big Lebowski) in an average of 32.9 seconds. The Panasonic DMP-BDT110 ($134.99, 4 stars) remains the resident speed demon, loading a non-BD-Live test disc in 12.6 seconds and a BD-Live test disc (again, Robocop and The Big Lebowski) in 19.7 seconds. The BDX5300 is speedy for BD-Live discs, but it's just too sluggish for discs that don't have online features. And even though the discs loaded relatively quickly, the overall interface of the BDX5300 felt sluggish to begin with, with tasks like ejecting discs and navigating menus taking just a second too long.

We test video processing with the HQV Blu-ray disc. The BDX5300 handled all motion tasks very well, showing excellent motion tracking at both 30 frames per second video and 24 frames per second film footage. Horizontal motion showed some slight tearing, but it was negligible compared to other Blu-ray players we've tested.

DVD upconversion looks solid but otherwise unremarkable on the BDX5300. In the DVR version of The Sitter, the 20th Century Fox logo appeared relatively crisp and clear. When the actual movie started, noticeable noise in dark scenes appeared and edges looked predictably soft, but the movie remained very watchable. Since you're dealing with 480p resolution source material on DVDs, you can only improve the footage so much, and it simply won't look as good as Blu-ray or other high definition media.

The Toshiba BDX5300 is a solid, relatively fast Blu-ray player, but it does nothing to stand out against other, similarly-priced players. Its remote feels cheap and its few connections limit your options in connecting it to your home theater, and it doesn't offer quite the performance and options of the LG BP620, either. If you can find the BDX5300 on sale, it's a worthy choice, but otherwise you should consider other options.

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