- HD DVD playback
- Up-Conversion for all Standard DVD Titles
- Multi Format Compatibility
- Preprogramed remote with glow print
1. Ease of installation. HDMI cable (not supplied) and the digital audio (not included) I had the audio and bought the HDMI for this player. The installation took about 10 minutes from start to set up to playing dvds. Awesome. On HDMI.. don't waste money (unless you are money bags) on expensive cables. A nice 20 dollar HDMI cable will do fine. Digital is Digital. Only the quality of the connector is in question and if you get a reliable cable, no need for the big money scams.
2. Upgrades. Easily done by lan connection or by ordering the disk from Toshiba for free. Nice.
3. Startup time is about 30 seconds. It has to load up the operating system. After that, it's just the same as any other DVD player. Don't let the nay sayers bug you on this topic. The start up time is just when you first turn it on. Not for each DVD insertion.
4. The upscaling on this is very good. I have a Sony Grand Wega and the normal DVDs now look better to my experienced eye than they did previously on my very nice Sony DVD player.
5. HD-DVD. Get the BBS HD version of the BBS series Planet Earth. Let this be your first HD you watch and let your mind be washed over in beauty. On movies.. I would research before you buy. From what I have seen.. I have a big DVD collection (over 1000) and I double dipped to get a couple HD versions right away. (meaning HD copies of dvds I already had) and there was not much if any difference. What I have found is that the greedy companies are just porting/copying movies from regular dvd over to the HD format. Like any other scanning.. it just depends on how it was done. HD doesn't mean it's really going to be better. Check out DVD reviews first before spending the extra money. I actually have one HD dvd that doesn't look as good as the regular DVD version. I was pretty stunned at having payed 25 bucks for the HD version and if I remember correctly.. 9 bucks for the DVD version. Oh well.
6. Overall impression of the Toshiba player is awesome for me. It's sleek looking in my rack and very easy to intall and to use.
Buy Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player Now
If you are still trying to sort out what HD or Blu-ray player to buy I think this review will assist you tremendously. I am somewhat of a tech geek and I own both the Toshiba HD-A2 and the Phillips BDP 9000 Blu-Ray Players. I am not a SONY hater as I own a 50 inch SONY TV and love it.The Toshiba HD-A2 is simply the best HD or Blu-Ray player available today when you factor in price, picture, sound and appearance. To begin with ignore the 1 or 2 star ratings for this player. Those usually are from people who are upset because the do not have an HDMI ready TV and can't produce the proper HD picture. If you do not have a TV that accepts an HDMI connection (or DVI connection) you should not buy any HD or Blu-Ray player.
That said let's get to the review of this player. The HD picture is the best I have seen on any player. The colors are crisp and the sharpness is almost 3-D like. As far as start up time, so what if the player takes 30-40 seconds to load. Are any of us really going to be affected by this? Someone tell me what any of us would do with the extra 15 or 20 seconds if it loaded a little quicker? The menu is very easy to use and the remote control is very user friendly as well. As far as the sound, it is unreal if you have a good home theater system. The fact that it plays Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital, DTS and DTS-HD gives it a bid advantage over most Blu-Ray players. When you are watching a movie in HD sound does matter. The design is very nice and will blend into you current home entertainment set-up. Have you seen some of the Blu-Ray players out there like the new SONY player. They are huge and unappealing. The SONY player won't even play music disks. My Phillips is a nice player but does not have DTS-HD or CDolby TrueHD but is a good unit however it is still more expensive than the Toshiba HD-A2.
For those of you that are not videophiles you should understand that HD DVD uses a technology called vc-1 and most bLu-Ray disks use an inferior technology. That is why HD DVD simple has a better picture. I have watched movies on several Blu-Ray players including the one in the SONY Playstation 3 and they just do not have a s good a picture as this Toshiba unit. One last thing about this player, it does upconvert regular DVDs and although they do not look as good as the HD-DVDs they do look much better than normal.
Last thing to think about is this: No one really know where this HD-Blu-Ray war is headed. People who are afraid to get either unit because they don't know where this is heading are really missing a great entertainment experience regardless of it being HD DVD or Blu-ray. This may not get sorted our for years. In the meantime to be able to get the HD-A2 for $400.00 is a great buy. In the worse case scenario Blu-Ray wins out (which is by no means guaranteed) and you then are able to buy HD DVD's for 1/3 the price because Blu-Ray is the winner. So you keep you player have a great library of movies and switch to a Blu Ray player later when they are under $300.00.
If you have an HDMI capable HDTV you will ove this player.
Read Best Reviews of Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player Here
Toshiba HD-A2 is excellent DVD player, one of the best I've ever seen. It upconverts regular DVDs better than almost every other DVD player I've seen and I have used Toshiba's SD-5000 (too dark) and the Oppo DV-970HD (close but not quite as sharp). This DVD player makes DVDs look very close to high def DVDs. One feature this DVD player has that is not talked about a lot is a Dialog Enhancement. It makes sure that the dialog doesn't get lost in music or sound fxs and it really works. You can play movies at a lower volume and still hear what's being said.The design of HD-A2 is spot-on and much better than the A1 series. They fit in perfectly with today's slick glossy black flat-panel TVs. It's a tad bigger than I expected but it looks fantastic so that doesn't bother me at all and you can stack on it easily unlike game consoles. The HD-A2 is extremely quiet as well. You would never know it's on. Seriously!
The unit comes with an ethernet port (broadband connection) built-in on the back that allows it to update the software running the unit. The updates are totally optional but I would recommend getting them. They already made the unit load up faster through one of the updates which is amazing for a DVD player.
Now here's some things about this player not everyone knows about. HD-DVD format is region-free, unlike both DVD and Blu-ray. This means that if a movie comes in say Europe or Japan and you want to buy it, you can buy it and play it without worrying about whether it will work on your player.
It's also a little know fact that even though this player's max resolution support is 1080i, almost all TVs that support 1080p output will upconvert the picture to 1080p anyway. Most 1080p TV only display at 1080p anyway so there's not much of a need for a 1080p player although there's suppose to be an extra 24fps update for the 1080p players.
Why did I choose to give a HD-DVD player a shot? Why not? I got mines for under $300 and with 5 HD-DVD movies to boot so it's like I paid a little over $200 for it. It's pretty cheap and is one of the best DVD players you can get. There are some things HD-DVD has going for that the other format doesn't have to going for too. I love the fact that it's region free. I'm also weary of Blu-ray because Sony is charge of it. After the DRM encryption thing they put on their music CDs (with spyware and limiting use) that resulted in them having to give customers money-back or replacing the disc with regular versions I really don't want to buy into their next format unless I have to.
The last reason why I currently like HD-DVD a little better than Blu-ray right now is because the disc seems to be getting more bonus material on the disc. If you compare the bonus features for a lot of Warner releases including 300 which is coming out very soon you'll see that they have more behind the scene material and I generally like things about the way HD-DVD interface works better than Blu-ray at this time. The ethernet port in all HD-DVD player will also allow you to get even more bonuses for the movie in the future, which is pretty cool. As far as picture and sound quality they're about dead even these days.
Want Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player Discount?
Just got mine about a week ago and have it hooked up via HDMI to a Sanyo PLV-Z5 720P projecting on a 110" white screen in a dedicated theater room hooked up to a Marantz A/V 5.1 receiver.Picture quality is very nice, especially when playing HD DVDs even on a 110" screen, the picture quality looks film-like, or at least as good as the source is Batman Begins (HD), for example, looks absolutely incredible. I imagine with a 1080P projector/TV that deinterlaces well, it'd be even more spectacular. My wife and I did discover that the upscaling of my projector is slightly nicer than the Toshiba's (at least to our eyes) so for standard DVDs I actually output at 480i (this may draw fire from some other reviews) and let the projector do the upscaling/de-interlacing (I haven't tried 480P yet maybe tonight). I'm sure the Toshiba has a fine upscaler, just not as good IMHO. I don't have an OPPO player but I'd love to hear about a comparison between the two in this regard (upscaling standard DVDs to 720P). I tried outputting at 1080i but it looked horrible a fault of my 720P projector which cannot deinterlace a 1080i input I'm only mentioning this to say that I can't comment on how good it might potentially look at 1080i. My only gripe in the video regard is that this player does tend to push reds a tad (especially with component video connections) and I haven't seen an advanced menu that allows me to adjust/correct colors, gamma, etc., with the player. This coupled with the fact that my projector also pushes reds (yes, the player pushes them a tad further, it's not just my projector), means that I have some bright reds to deal with.
Audio seems great, but I'm no audiophile. I have it hooked up to my receiver via optical and it successfully plays dolby digital, DD+, True HD, etc. (the latter format downscaled, I assume). No lip-sink issues or other problems that I can think of. I have had a few of the often-cited lip-sink issues with my XBox 360 HD player, as a side-note. I haven't really done an apples-to-apples comparison between the 360 HD player and this but I think they're comparable in video quality, perhaps the Toshiba has a slight edge (my 360 player is hooked up via component) but the 360 is a clunky way to play movies (IMHO) and only has analog video output options (component or VGA).
Player load-time is acceptable. I don't have the latest firmware (maybe that speeds it up a bit?) but my startup times from loading the DVD/HD-DVD to playback are ~28 seconds a tad slower than I'd like but you only do it once per movie, so... This is one area where I think my 360 player is better/faster.
The remote control is okay but no back-lighting in a dark theater room is a pain. Needless to say, I plan on switching to a back-lit universal remote. The 360 player has a backlit remote, but I hate the look of the remote.
The player itself looks very sharp, has a sleek profile, is still somewhat deep (reminiscent of early DVD players), doesn't run hot, doesn't make noise, etc. In otherwords great aesthetics unlike the 360 player (I shouldn't rip the 360 player if someone already owns a 360, like me, it's an under $200 way to play HD content while waiting for the regular players to drop in price).
I would have given this Toshiba player four stars due to the load-time, ho-hum remote, etc., but for under $400 this represents an incredible deal, IMHO, and I can live with a cheap remote (or willing to replace it, at least) and the load-time is par for the course with early generation players so how can I really complain? My biggest concern at this point (no fault of the player, of course) seems to be the HD-DVD/Blu-ray pendulum swinging into Sony's favor as of late, but IMHO, better to gamble with less than $400 on this player than gamble with $600-1500 on the competition if you lose, and I'm still frustrated about the fact that Blu-ray movies tend to cost more and include much less (I'll still probably buy one if/when they come down to the ~$400 range). I wish all the studios would simply support both formats and let the consumer choose, then I'd be in HD nirvana (thank you Paramount and Warner! curse you other studios!).
My bold-printed, big-lettered breaker above is a little sensationalistic, but, as far as movies are concerned, this is basically true. Here's why. Movies (and most TV shows) are shot at 24 frames per second (either on film or on 24-frame-per-second HD cameras). Every TV sold in the United States has a refresh rate of 60 hertz. This means that the screen refreshes 60 times per second. In order to display 24-frame-per-second content on a display that essentially shows 60 frames per second, you need to make up or create new frames. This is accomplished by a method called 3:2 pulldown (or, more accurately, 2:3 pulldown). It doubles the first frame of film, triples the second frame, doubles the third frame, and so on, creating a 2-3-2-3-2-3 sequence. (Check out Figure 1 for a more colorful depiction.) So, the new frames don't have new information; they are just duplicates of the original film frames. This process converts 24-frame-per-second film to be displayed on a 60-Hz display.
It's Deinterlacing, Not Scaling
HD DVD and Blu-ray content is 1080p/24. If your player outputs a 60-Hz signal (that is, one that your TV can display), the player is adding (creating) the 3:2 sequence. So, whether you output 1080i or 1080p, it is still inherently the same information. The only difference is in whether the player interlaces it and your TV deinterlaces it, or if the player just sends out the 1080p signal directly. If the TV correctly deinterlaces 1080i, then there should be no visible difference between deinterlaced 1080i and direct 1080p (even with that extra step). There is no new information--nor is there more resolution, as some people think. This is because, as you can see in Figure 1, there is no new information with the progressive signal. It's all based on the same original 24 frames per second.
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