Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player
Awesome but be carefull
I did something that I usually do not do; buy a first generation electronic format. I usually have a rule to wait at least a year to  2 years. I do this for two reasons, 1- usually it takes that long for all the bugs to be worked out. 2 -  The quality of first generation releases are usually bare minimal to get a release. Plain ol' DVD's are a FAR cry from what they were at first release. There is a 3rd reason that is specifid to formats that have multiple format releases (HD DVD and Bluray). I waited almost 2 years to buy a progressive scan DVD player that played both SACD and DVD Audio. I knew people that chose a format when it was first released and went out and purchased a universal later on. Knowing all that and throwing years of regiment out the window I went out a got the Toshiba HD-A1 player.<br /><br />The Positive:<br /><br />I picked up 3 films as well and I watched 2 right off the bat: Syriana and Serinity. I hooked the player up to my Sony vpl-vw10ht projecter via the component jacks since my projector does not have an HDMI connector. Actually, that really made for an easy install for me, every review I have read on both Blu-ray and HDDVD players, there is an HDMI compitibility issue that is causing some problems. Right off the bat I can say WOW, what a difference!<br /><br />The picture is crisp and vivid right down to the smallest detail. You can see blemishes on the actors faces and backround detail that was usually blurred with standard DVD. Smooth motion no matter what is going on. There is no motion artifacts! This is incredible! My projector played the movies in 1080i, while not 1080p it is jaw dropping on my 108 inch screen! Here's something, my projector is an LCD and with standard DVDs I would get \\"hot spots\\" from time to time when there would be large patches of brown/tan (like a dessert scene) or red. This didn't happen all of the time, but on occasions and it drove me nuts. There is absolutly no hot spots in Syriana, where 80% of the movie takes place in a dessert or in Serenity. No color bleeding either which happened from time to time with Standard DVD's. My eyes have seen the glory!!<br /><br />The Negatives:<br /><br />Extremly long start up time! You are looking at close to 3 minutes before you can actually press play! It actually makes sence since the Toshiba HD-A1 is basically a PC. It is a Pentium with Linux, so it has to boot and you guys know what that means!?!<br /><br />Also, unless you use the HDMI it will not upsample your older DVD's from 480p to 720p or 1080i. This hurt! I have 650 DVD's and 3 HD DVDs... So, my $500 investment is going to be used minimally or I have to start rebuilding my collection pronto.<br /><br />The remote that comes with the Toshiba HD-A1 is not setup for ease of use that is for sure! They moved the FF and RW buttons to under the play button and put the stop button to the right of the play. Needless to say that I stopped the movie 4 times! This wouldn't be so bad if the player didn't have to go through most of the booting proccess everytime! Also, the remote is not back lit and the lables are hard to read. So in a movie condition (little to no light) you are out of luck until you can memorize the layout. Now I plan to program my universal remote that came with my Sunfire TGIII to operate the player and it is back lit and nice big buttons!<br /><br />The other bad thing is, if you do not use the HDMI cable, you need to use either the coax or optical for the audio output. What that does is, the player had to decode the HD audio signal and recode it (in this case it codes to DTS) to output it. So if the signle is Dolby Digital Plus or HDDD, it is converted to DTS at a lower frequency rate. The good news is, it sounded just as good as everything else I have been listening to so I am not disappointed. As well as my reviever is not setup for that type of higher rate signal anyway.<br /><br />Last, it wieghs 13 pounds! and has a bigger foot print than other HT devidesso it might not fit into the spot that your old DVD player was in.<br /><br />Final Thoughts:<br /><br />For me, the more pristeen video was worth the purchase alone and I will start to get new titles in the HD DVD format and slowly pick and choose what one I will replace from my current DVD collection. Even though I have no plans on replacing my current projector and now with this format, I feel I upgraded for a few hundred bucks instead of 10 grand+ for a new HD projector! I have a renewed excitement for movies now and plan on making some new movie purchases when I am done with this review. I feel I backed the right format with HD DVD, since it is backwards compatible unlike Bluray, but one never knows. I am happy but I would say unless you have a large display and/or you are an AV nut case like me, waiting a year for prices to go down and bugs to be fixed could be the way to go. You will eventually end up here anyway!r old DVD player was in. <br />Final Thoughts: <br />For me, the more pristeen video was worth the purchase alone and I will start to get new titles in the HD DVD format and slowly pick and choose what one I will replace from my current DVD collection. Even though I have no plans on replacing my current projector and now with this format, I feel I upgraded for a few hundred bucks instead of 10 grand+ for a new HD projector! I have a renewed excitement for movies now and plan on making some new movie purchases when I am done with this review. I feel I backed the right format with HD DVD, since it is backwards compatible unlike Bluray, but one never knows. I am happy but I would say unless you have a large display and/or you are an AV nut case like me, waiting a year for prices to go down and bugs to be fixed could be the way to go. You will eventually end up here anyway!