Performance

The HD-A2’s video performance makes you forget all about the lack of features and other negative points. Once it’s all set up, the HD-A2 provides the best video I’ve ever seen on my television. It easily bests some of the great HDTV broadcasts I get with my Comcast cable service. If this is due inferior video hardware, poor feeds or streaming issues from Comcast, I am not sure. I just know that the Toshiba just looks much better.

Images were much more vivid and present than with comcast’s HDTV broadcasts. I’d seen “Batman Begins” replayed in high-def on HBO-HD a dozen times, but the HD-DVD version still proved to be a revelation. It’s just plain perfect.

I’m also pleased to report that the Toshiba breathes new life into your existing DVDs.

The Toshiba upsamples conventional 480p DVDs to 1080i, and it does a great job. Nice quality DVDs like the remastered Empire Strikes Back look better than I’ve ever seen. The picture was very clean and allowed colors to stand out in a way that I had never seen before. The Toshiba’s upsampling easily beat my trusty old Denon DVD-2200, which was a fine video player in its day, but limited to 480p component output.

Despite the great improvements to standard DVDs, the picture still suffered from and ever so slight layer of fuzz, and a slight smearing effect during quick movement and panning. These are two of the consistent elements that distinguish and HD disc from a 480p disc.

The decent DVDs in your collection just might look good enough via upsampling for you to forget about upgrading them. At the very least, they can keep you happy until you decide you want to upgrade them. This is one area where a new format isn’t so horrible. Your current DVDs are totally obsolete like your VHS tapes were, because you can still play old discs in you new player, and get some new life out of them.

My current home theater set up limited my ability to test out audio performance. The HD-A2 supports the new uncompressed surround sound formats – Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD, but my receiver is not capable of decoding them.

The Verdict?

I am very excited about the performance that this player offers, but I am inclined to say that you should wait to buy this or any other next generation player. The picture is amazing, but I'm not sure that this is something that you would want to live with in the long term. In six months to a year, enormous progress will be made. Players will be smaller, more attractive, cheaper, and 1080P won’t be a premium feature. There is a very good chance that this player and the entire HD-DVD format will be obsolete. There will undoubtedly be more dual format players on the market. But in the meantime, if you do decide to pull the trigger, my goodness, the picture is awesome!

-Eric LoBue

Toshiba HD-A2
$499
HD-A2 page on Toshiba's Website
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