Javier

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
3 Months to 1 year

Visitors rate this review
4.00 of 5, 1.00 votes

Price Paid:  $449.00 from best buy

Summary:
well here I go, having an SXRD set from sony (60in) and very few options to HD i decided to jump early on the HD DVD camp mostly because it was cheaper, the sammy blue-ray player was already available at the time.
After 8 months with the player and with aprox, 20 HD DVD titles i just can say that i,m waiting for the releases to be made so i can watch them at home instead of the theather, the PQ is simple stunning , king kong, superman return departed are superb
Also the upscalig abilities of the player are great movies like revenge of the sith or invincibles ( PIxar) are almost seen like a HD DVD.
My pionner elite 47xa1 was left on the dust ( regarding video quality)
The sound when using movies encoded in True HD is amazing given a better sense of " the you are there" than in regular dolby digital.
For audio only purposes is just a regular player being kind of brigth even harsh.

Strengths:
Stunning PQ

Weaknesses:
Painfully slow.
After firmware update got better but not much.
Don´t press buttons more than once because you can frezze the hard drive .
Will rate as four stars just because of this problems

Similar Products Used:
Playstation 3

Price Paid:  $500.00 from Crutchfield

Summary:
I've had this HD-DVD player for about 2 months now. When I first bought it, I had trouble finding HD-DVDs to play in it. So I just played regular DVDs. As a standard DVD player it is flawless. Excellent upconversion to 1080i through the HDMI connection. Excellent 480p picture with component video cables. And very good sound quality with both DVDs and CDs through the analog 5.1 outputs. I tried hooking the player to my receiver with both the analog outputs and the coaxial digital output. I prefer the sound of the analog outputs. As a CD player, it has better sound quality than any I've ever owned. I hear things in my CDs that I never heard before. I have about 15 HD-DVDs now. The picture quality with HD-DVDs is awesome. However, I have had problems with the picture occasionally freezing. When this happens I have to unplug it because it doesn't respond to remote commands. Toshiba claims there is a firmware update to address this and some other minor issues, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm still waiting for them to send me an update disc. Some other problems: the resume play function doesn't work with HD-DVDs, it works fine with DVDs. The directional buttons on the remote are touchy, especially the down button. Sometimes I have to press the down button two or three times before the cursor actually moves down. And the HD-A1 takes a long time to boot up. About the same amount of time as a computer. But overall I'm happy with it. And hopefully the firmware update will fix these problems.

Strengths:
-Excellent build quality
-Excellent DVD upconversion to 1080i
-Excellent sound quality
-Excellent picture quality with HD-DVD and DVD
-Full 1080i output on component video cables with HD-DVD
-Updateable firmware through ethernet connection to high speed internet or with
update CD from Toshiba
-Price

Weaknesses:
-Clunky remote
-Occasional picture freezing with HD-DVDs (firmware version 1.2 installed)
-Slow startup
-Resume Play function doesn't work with HD-DVD

Similar Products Used:
Toshiba, Harman Kardon, Denon, Panasonic, and Sony DVD Players.
Sony, Harman Kardon, Carver, and NAD CD players

Price Paid:  $500.00 from BEST BUY

Summary:
What can you say, toshiba has come out of the gate with all guns firing. When i first bought the hd-a1 and hooked it up the first thing i had noticed is the extremely long load time, i thought the player was broken because of the evil blue screen that my television was showing but after about 40-45 sec it finally booted up and here came hd bliss. hd-dvd is definetly the future of dvd because of the larger capacity discs, improved sound, over dd+ and dolby true hd. But the main reason you are buying this player is for the picture, and let me tell you , you will see a huge improvement in pq compared to a sd-dvd. But back to the player this thing is big, like tank big you can tell a lot went into the construction of this player because the build is tremendous for $500.00. there are a ton of hook up options which include hdmi, component, and analog for the video side and optical, coax, analog 5.1 and 2 channel analog for the audio ide. to receive full dd+ of tru hd you must hook up to your audio device through analog 5.1 which didn't bother me because i had my sacd player hooked up that anyways. My only major gripe is that 720 p looks terrible through this player because it downconverts at 720p, so when you get this player set it up at 1080i. also when you hook it up through the audio side, f you hook it up through toslink or coax your processor will read dts no matter what material is coming through because that is the way the player is designed so don't freak out about it there is nothing wrong with your player or sound processor. so if you want true hd bliss buy this player you wont regret it

Strengths:
believe it or not price was a huge strength, at $500 this player is a steal and all of you guys shaking your heads just remember how much dvd players cost when they were first released, plus blu ray is twice as expensive and they are still using mpeg 2. upgradeability i have had this player 2 1/2 months now and 3 firmware updates have become available to fix the glitches, now thats what i call customer service. picture quality is top notch. the menues on the discs are very clever.

Weaknesses:
slow load time, i mean really slow
remote sucks
players with version 1.0 firmware but like i said above you can upgrade that for free at toshibas website
picture with 720p out it looks so grainey