Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player

• Plays high-def HD DVD discs for sharper, more detailed picture performance than standard DVD discs ; measures 17.7 x 4.3 x 13.4 inches (WxHxD)
• Backwards compatible with current DVD and CD formats; upconverts DVD movie discs to near high-definition
• Ethernet port for upgrades; USB port on front; compatible with MP3, WMA, and JPEG files
• Connections: composite (1 out), S-Video (1 out), component (1 out), HDMI (1 out), USB, Ethernet
• DVD offer Dolby True HD/Dolby Digital/DTS decoding; coaxial and optical digital audio outputs

Being the first to market in the High Definition DVD Player area, with Blu-ray right on its tail, id have to say its one amazing box. I started with last samurai regular dvd popped it in and wow was a standard DVD simply AMAZING, the upconvert in this box is the best ive seen. I then followed up by putting in the HDDVD version of Last Samurai and I was definately more pleased, stuff that was blotchy and pixelated no longer is so, most notable when standing or sitting close to an LCD TV the quality is noticably better. The price is a bit steep, but then again the first DVD Players were quite pricey as well. The prices for the HDDVDs are nice compared to costs for other new media standards such as the UMD Disc in fact about the same price as UMD Disc. The only cons I would have about this player is it takes REALLY LONG startup once turned on and HDDVD can take some time to get going and the thing is HUGE! It wont fit in most setups!

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AND.........i'M GLAD i DID! There has been a lot of reviews out there and all the negatives and positives hold true, BUT most of the reviews, now that I experienced the HD A1, were more like nitpicking. Here's my take:

Bulkiness: yeah this thing is bulky when compared to today's 30-100 dollar cheapo dvd players...but when compared to the more expensive upconverters this thing is not big at all (just look at the denons, pioneers, and other high brand models that can put out the performance that the toshiba does when upconverting) Anyone who is looking to spend this type of money on a this dvd player or any other dvd player in its price bracket will probably deal with this issue.

Remote: yeah its bad....hard to see what button does what and has a bad, uncomfortable feel to it. My harmony 880 had no problem assuming control of the toshiba. Just buy a universal remote. Look into logitech's harmony line, no biggie!

Slow: This is where I scratch my head. I turned it on, pressed the eject button, pop in a dvd, and by the time I go to sit down and get comfortable this thing will start like in 5-10 seconds....everyone needs to go thru this routine to watch their movies! No one pops in a movie and watches it from right there...this slowness issue is a non issue in my book.

Video: SD DVD never looked better to my eyes . I have gone out of my way to look at all the upconverters that I have give thought to(oppo 971, denon 1930 and 2930, and the samsung 860 and 960) with the exception of the 2930 the toshiba IMO was better than the rest. Keep in mind the denon lists for over 800 and only upconverts. When I did HD DVD nothing that I have witnessed Has come even close, not even Blue Ray....so this is where I giggle when I look back and question why the heck I was on the fence about this product to begin with? when you look at the price it is a no brainer, good bargain , and versatile.

Sound: This is where I went crazy! My SD DVD's never sounded better, but then again I wasn't crazy about my cheapo dvd player that I had attached to my Home Theater, but this was the right move. everything sounds louder, theres more bass, vocals are clearer and most importantly the video and audio are top notch and envelop you into whatever you watch thru the Toshiba.

Gen 1 player: yeah gen 1 players are always a risk....anything that's new is always a risk. You become a beta tester for these companies when they first dish out there machines. But that's technology folks and coming from someone who for a living deals with servers and the likes in the IT world.....I'll be the first to say that no technology is perfect. But the fact that Toshiba has made it very clear that they will not neglect the A1 once the A2 comes out is enough for me to pull the trigger on this player which leads me to my next point.

Compatibility: This is a word that in my profession is very important. You don't want to get the biggest and baddest thing just to say that you did and then find out your other stuff doesn't like it. The fact that this gen1 player has analog out and firmwares tells me that: a. this player will stay in tune with most of the technologies (true hd and DD+ in the 2.0 firmware for example) and b. the 5.1 analog will let you keep your current receiver that you probably dished out alot of money for!

I really think the toshiba HD A1 has its bugs and I'm sure future gens will be better, but this format war isn't really going to go anywhere right now so the prices will more or less stay the same for at least another year. So if you're on the fence and want to wait for this thing to be over with, you might wait a while. So why not enjoy this technology now and your current dvd collection as well. You will not be dissappointed.

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I bought this player about a week ago. The picture on standard DVD's is great. The picture on HD-DVD's is awesome! I bought 5 HD movies when I purchased this player. "Perfect Storm","Training Day","Apollo 13","Million Dollar Baby" and "Cinderella Man". The picture on all of these movies is incredible! The sound is also great. My player is hooked up to a 42 inch Panasonic plasma via an HDMI cable. My receiver is a Harman Kardon 240. If you hook up the sound using a fiber optic cable the sound is down converted to DTS. If you use the analog connections the sound comes across in Dolby Digital Plus. I'm using both connections. The sound of the DTS is louder because it's a digital signal, but the Dolby Digital Plus is clearer. It's sounds more like the sounds you'll hear at a real movie theater. Sometimes I watch movies using DTS, other times I'll use the Dolby Digital Plus. Both sound great. I was going to buy a Blu-Ray player but after reading lots of reviews and doing some research, I decided that the price tag on the Samsung Blu-Ray player was just too much. I haven't seen the picture on the Blu-Ray, but I bet that it's nothing like the Toshiba. The only concern I had when purchasing this player was the support of the movie studios. Blu-Ray has the support of most of the major studios. HD-DVD is basically only supported by Warner Brothers and Universal. Hopefully if HD-DVD continues to gain consumer support, more of the studios will switch sides. Nobody knows which format will win out, but even if HD-DVD loses out you'll have a high end DVD player that only cost 499.99 dollars. Buy this player. You won't regret it.

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I've only had this thing for a couple of days, and have been absolutely blown away by the video and audio quality of the two HD-DVD movies I've watched thus far: Sahara and Goodfellas. Both the picture and the sound (when the player is properly connected and properly set up) are far superior to that of DVD when viewed on a high-definition TV.

For video, I set the output to HDMI and the resolution to 1080i (even though my TV is an older 720p model). A supplemental sheet that comes with the manual recommends that, for HD-DVD discs, the resolution be set to the native format of the disc rather than that of the TV. Every HD-DVD I've read about thus far is encoded at 1080-line resolution, so I set the player at 1080i. I haven't yet noticed anything in the manual regarding what to do for regular DVDs, so I experimented a bit and concluded that 1080i is the best setting for DVDs as well. Thus, I set the thing at a resolution of 1080i and plan to leave it there.

I connected the player to my TV's DVI input using an HDMI-to-DVI adapter, then connected the six analog 5.1 audio outputs on the back of the player to the analog 5.1 inputs on my stereo receiver, then calibrated the audio for speaker size and distance using the "Setup" feature. Note: The owner's manual doesn't mention that the "Setup" button is hidden under a sliding panel on the lower end of the remote control.

My only complaint is that the remote control is an un-backlit version of the backlit remote that comes with the more expensive HD-XA1 player offered by Toshiba. The only way I can read it is with a flashlight. Fortunately, once I got things figured out, I found that I really only need to use a few key buttons, the positions of which are easily memorized. Also, there ought to be a label on the sliding panel that hides the setup button.

The menu of an HD-DVD disc can be accessed and operated while the movie is playing. This is much cooler than it sounds. The features that can be operated from the menu are much more sophisticated than those on a regular DVD.

Picture quality is phenomenal, even on my 42" 720p LCD rear-projection TV (a 3-year-old model that's already antiquated). It's obvious that HD-DVD is designed to be optimatlly viewed on a high-quality big-screen 1080-line TV (at least 60") in order to achieve a true home-cinema experience. I calculated that the ideal TV for my living room (viewing distance = 12 feet) would be a 65" screen with 1080-line resolution.

The picture quality is even better than what I get from HD satellite and broadcast channels. I could detect no video-compression artifacts in either of the HD-DVDs that I've watched thus far, even in scenes with lots of complex high-speed motion. In addition to extreme picture clarity, HD-DVD offers a very noticeable improvement in color gamut over DVD. Watch an HD movie, and you'll see real-world colors you've never seen on TV before. Once I switched back to watching a regular DVD, the color seemed a bit phony-looking.

What really caught me by surprise was the quality of the sound when using the Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack. Right now, the only way to listen to the DD+ soundtrack in its pure form is to connect to the analog 5.1 outputs on the back of the player, which involves a bit of extra cabling. It's well worth the trouble, however. DD+ apparently allows the use of a much lower compression ratio than ordinary DD or DTS. The surround effects are much more like those you'll hear in a good theater, and the realism and clarity of the sounds is absolutely electrifying. You can, alternatively, connect to your receiver via digital optical cable, in which case the DD+ track gets converted to ordinary DTS (possibly losing some of its quality in the process).

We're in the midst of the TV Revloution, with a combination of new display technologies, new audio/video formats, and new audio/video media. The biggest problem has been the scarcity of HD material to watch on your HD television, and the lack of pre-recorded HD media (the obscure D-VHS format having been the only option until now). It will probably be quite some time before a sizeable portion of the cable/satellite/broadcast universe converts to HD. Even the local ATSC digital terrestrial broadcasts in my area are still standard definition much of the time, and my HD satellite programming package only provides me with 3 full-time HD channels and 3 channels that are mixed HD/SD.

HD-DVD and BluRay discs could enable people to gain access to a lot of high-quality HD material while we wait for the cable/satellite/broadcast industry to catch up. After that, HD discs will be able to fulfill the same function that DVDs and VHS tapes currently provide, enabling you to own or rent a wide variety of programming for viewing at your convenience. Now that I've watched a couple of HD-DVDs on my HDTV, I may never want to buy or rent a regular DVD again (even though, admittedly, the HD-A1 does a very nice job of playing regular DVDs). Sales of HD players and discs could also drive sales of big-screen 1080-line TVs as well, as this is the only type of TV that would enable the home-theater enthusiast to really take full advantage of what HD-DVD and (theoretically) BluRay have to offer.

Gathering from all the positive reviews in Amazon, I decided to purchase the HD-A1 after mulling it over for the past few months. I originally planned to put off buying it till the holiday season but I couldn't wait much longer. I needed to see with my own eyes what it would do to my existing home theater setup. No longer a stranger to HD progamming as I'm an HD subscriber to Comcast, I eagerly hooked up the HD-A1 to my Panasonic HDTV using HDMI Monster cable; furthermore, I connected the audio via optical cable to my THX 5.1 surround EX sound system. Initially, I played "The Chronicles of Riddick"; I wasn't impressed-I was totally flabbergasted! The opening preview of the movie was pure eye candy-six-times sharper and with an exceedingly brilliant color saturation than a standard DVD. The special effects sequence, particularly in the planet Crematoria looked so real you wouldn't have realized it's computer-generated. Details I haven't noticed before came to life-like intricate patterns of the necromonger's armor and facial blemishes of Vin Diesel. The fight sequences are even further enhanced by the Dolby Digital Plus signal it feeds my THX receiver-my system decodes it as DTS-ES + THX. I was in rapt attention all throughout the movie; "Chronicles of Riddick" for me was one forgettable movie when I watched it in the theater two years ago-watching it now is a completely different experience. I was acutely aware of the nuances in picture and sound; it gave me a renewed appreciation of movies I have long forgotten; Sahara, The Bourne Supremacy, Van Helsing, Serenity-these were movies I just browsed through-not anymore. For the first time, I could see picture clarity and hear high-fidelity sound in a format that not only plays HD DVDs but regular DVDs and CDs as well-and all these for half the price of Bluray. On top of it all, HD DVD boasts more titles in its library than Bluray. Only time will tell when all the major backers of Bluray will jump ship to HD DVD.

Update: 9/11/2006

Two major issues found on the HD-A1 are the slow loading times (45 seconds on the average) and the unwieldy remote control. To cut the load time, I simply hit the "open tray" button right away and push the play button once the disc is in the tray (that way I bypass hitting the "power" button and the "close tray" button). I also have resolved the remote control issue by buying the Sony RM-VL600 universal remote control. I have watched over a dozen HD DVD movies and all of them were in pristine high-def glory. I'm just waiting for the firmware update disc coming from Toshiba (I declined to use the ethernet hookup coz I didn't wanna mess up my HD-A1 if I did things incorrectly). The new 2.0 update should add Dolby TrueHD functionality and resolve some HDMI interface issues. Anyone on the lookout for an upconverting DVD player-do yourself a favor and invest a few hundred dollars more and buy the HD-A1 since it outperforms all other upconverting DVD players in the market today; regular DVDs definitely looked twice as sharp as rendered by the HD-A1.