Toshiba HD-A1 - HD DVD Player

[jtoolman2000]

Just picked one of these up at my local Best Buy plus a copy of The Phantom of the Opera in HD-DVD format. Connected to my Toshiba 52" DLP and let me just say that it looks incredible.
I also have a Sony ( i forget the model ) standard def DVD player connected via component that plays even my slightly compressed backups excellently, till you see the output of the Toshiba. No comparizon!!!. The Toshiba DLP uses a proprietary upscaler namedTalen. Edges are very well defined and smooth. No jaggies anywhere. FIlm based trasfer are very clean and one can actually clearly dicern film grain. Still, the Toshiba HD player actually outperforms my Sony's playback of SD DVDs.

Right now there aren't too many titles available on HD DVD but that will change. Some of the movies available were crappy to begin with so I don't see the logic. Hopefully all the Pixar productions will be available in the near future.

My 1st movie cost me about $25 which I guess is not too bad. Netflix also carries several of them for rental. Great way to see in they are worth buying

[Baldrick]

[jtoolman2000]

Is that little guy dying or simply drooling in jealousy as he should be

[lenti_75]

we'll get it someday....

[Edmund Blackadder]

My 1st movie cost me about $25 which I guess is not too bad. Netflix also carries several of them for rental. Great way to see in they are worth buying

Walmart has "The Phantom Of The Opera" HD-DVD for $19.99. So that's pretty much in SD DVD range. I bought the HD-DVD version out of curiosity (even though I already have the SD DVD version of "The Phantom Of The Opera"). I don't have an HD-DVD player to play it on yet. I will buy one only once there are good blue laser burners and software for me to author my own Hi-Def content. I have a Sony HVR-Z1U 3CCD Hi-Def camera and it would be great to put its great looking 1080i footage onto blue laser disc format.

Also, what I really like about HD-DVD, vs Blu-Ray, is that HD-DVD doesn't use any regional coding! Blu-Ray unfortunately still separates the world into 3 regions, where USA and Japan is in one, Europe is in the other and Eastern Europe and the rest of the world in third. And I'm sure that with all the HDCP stuff it's going to be really difficult to hack a player to be multi-regional. So HD-DVD has an edge at least in that regard.

[FulciLives]

I won't have money for a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player anytime soon (maybe Christmas 2006 if I am lucky) but I did see the Toshiba in action at BEST BUY just the other day and I was impressed.

It was hooked up to a LG 50" 16x9 WS PLASMA HDTV (I have a 51" 16x9 WS CRT RP HDTV myself) and the quality was very good.

There was a demo disc playing with some movie clips and trailers.

Peter Jackson's KING KONG looked stunning!

There were a few other clips that also looked amazingly good ... one was BATMAN BEGINS but it was hard to see since it is such a dark movie and the BEST BUY store was SO bright. Overall though the image quality was stunning! I could even read the extremely small "IN SELECTED THEATRES" text under the larger DOLBY DIGITAL text (or was it a logo I forget now). I mean we are talking TINY text ("IN SELECTED THEATRES") and yet it was crisp and clear. Of course I was sitting about 3 feet away LOL

A couple of things I noticed though ... all the clips seemed very detailed but had a lot of "grain" ... film grain? ... I don't know.

Also I did notice several times some "artifact" that looked like "static" or "sparkling" of some sort. I don't know if that was a compression artifact or a bad cable connection or what.

Also I have no idea what mode anything was running in ... don't know if this was 1080P or 1080i or what.

Also I think I saw a HDMI light on the front screen of the Toshiba so I guess it was hooked up via HDMI.

Anyways I am impressed and will look forward to getting either this or Blu-Ray or who knows ... maybe both!

I have to admit I am leaning towards HD-DVD for various reasons (see HERE for one reason) but I must admit I really want a Sony PS3 for the games although I am no fast adoptor of new game systems so might be a while before I get something like that (I think $700 was what I heard for the more "deluxe" model PS3).

Will be interesting to see if a "clear" winner of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war emerges.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Bob W]

Look on the player screen and it will show a readout for hdmi and 1080i output. I have the player and after viewing eight HD DVD movies I can't stand watching a standard DVD.

[discguy001]

I just bought an HD-A1 today. I really like it too, and contrary to what reports on the internet say-it is NOT noisy (at all), and it is NOT slow to play discs-no more so than a cheap DVD player. I didn't buy an HD movie yet, but the Standard Def looks pretty damm good upconverted. I look forward to getting an HD burner for the PC-then I'll have a reason to get that HD video camera

[jtoolman2000]

I will to Tweeters, a Larger screes and osund store near me. I basically went to see this Player hooked up to a very large 73 DLP. I have mine on a 52 DLP. They were plaaying the deomo disk and yes, even at that size it was pretty stunning. With blew ray at about $1000 and HD DVD at about $500 at the present time and already about dozen movies available now and many for a wait. I can't see why anyone woould go with the blue ray. As was mentioned HD DVD is region free and will play anything else I through at it. I must say though that some of the titles I've seen on Netflix and at stores really never deserved to be re done in HD. They are crap at aany resolution if you ask me.

Just this morning I was watching one of my SD dvds and it really does look stunning. The DVD Toshiba HD DVD player + the same brand DLP with "Talen" really performs "Magic" even on a
regular DVD. I am very happy with it.