Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player
Exceeds your HD expectations!
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 shipto 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.