Toshiba HD-A35 1080p HD DVD Player by Toshiba
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List Price: Our Price: $239.00 You Save: $60.99 (20%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Toshiba HD-A35 1080p HD DVD Player
Digital camera Review: Excellent player/picture and sound quality!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have 2 of these, one a backup and one I use in our bedroom with a 50" Panasonic Plasma and Onkyo sound. Although some discs had trouble with this player,and I had to outsmart it with a few tricks (yes the old scum remover with dishwashing liquid, because the laser supposedly was more sensitive to any kind of residue left on discs by production process), I've been very happy with its performance. Upscaling is satisfactory. It does a better job than my 80GB PS3, and my Panasonic BD30K used in the livingroom. I paid under $300 for each player, and they were some of the best investments I've made in entertainment hardware. Firmware updates are easy and I receive discs when they are needed (signed up when I registered the player). Great product!Digital camera Review: Excellent upconversion, superior picture quality, superb on-board features!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had an A3 for a short period of time (~3-4 weeks) and since I was very impressed by the overall picture quality of HD DVD movies and subsequently bought a new 24p-capable 1080p plasma I decided to step up, get all the lossless audio codec support etc.
Originally I was eyeballing the XA2 for its (supposedly) superior upconversion of regular SD DVDs - due to my job I'm a big fan of Silicon Optix' Teranex/HQV technology - but after extensive research including countless visits to my local (NYC) stores I concluded that if there's any difference in scaling quality between XA2's HQV and A35's ABT chip then it must be very subtle or rather marginal because I couldn't really spot anything. Also A35's HD picture quality was reportedly a tad sharper though I could only see it in very few cases. The often touted "build quality" slogan never made any sense to me; I wanted a desktop optical disc player for home entertainment purposes, not a ruggedized military-grade mobile player - there's no sandstorm in our living room and it's a well-built brownstone so by the time a serious earthquake would knock my player to the floor half the city would be destroyed, taking US and world economy with it... long story short I could not justify the extra $150-200 the XA2's backlit remote control would cost - A35's remote lacks the backlight - so after I sold my barely used A3 for my friend I finally made the call and ordered this unit.
Shipping was quick and got it just in time to have everything in place for Christmas. First I upgraded the firmware - despite the network connection I burned it to a CD, better safe than sorry - then paired with my new TV and boy, we were impressed even beyond A3's level when we started watching the new Blade Runner HD DVD!
Excellent picture quality, excellent sound quality, right out of the box and despite I've never been the type of "watch all the extra including deleted scenes" guy with regular SD DVDs I think HD DVD's interactive features are really great.
We also love the region-free nature of HD DVD, the fact that imported movies - from EU and Asia - all play fine over here: studios should not be able to control what, where, how or when I watch as long as I pay for it, plain and simple.
Upconversion quality is really great and so far even those notoriously problematic Netflix discs played fine: I only recall one HD DVD playback problem but even then cleaning fingerprints off the disc fixed it.
There isn't any straight-out negative thing I can say but I have encountered few small annoyances and one bigger:
- I still think 30+ seconds for boot-up and another 10s to play is long,
- I'm a bit perplexed by this 1080p24 vs regular DVDs problem (there should be an automatic switch),
- I don't understand why this player cannot play movies from the network (it's wired, not a spotty wireless connection!) nor off the USB port, say VC1/264 first then Xvid/Divx later (PS3, anyone?).
And here's my only major annoyance: the return playback system or rather the lack thereof. What monkey-brained executive figured it will be a good idea to replace the well.-working standard DVD 'return' feature, I don't know but surely he is so clueless about this market he should be fired immediately...
Currently HD DVD doesn't offer any kind of classic DVD-style return after stopping playback - if you just hit Stop then you are screwed, period. Your movie will start from the beginning next time and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead first you have to make a bookmark by pressing button B then you can press Stop so you may return to it from the Bookmarks menu upon restart... really counter-intuitive, flies against the conventional DVD feature (which, of course, still works fine with regular DVD!) and makes no sense whatsoever: in most cases you stop a movie when someone or something unexpected interrupts you so there's very little chance you will follow this stupid procedure. I really would like to see a this return function fixed ie. stopping playback would automatically add a bookmark so at least you have a chance to return manually although wading through those non-skippable logos and intros to get to the bookmarks list would still ruin the feeling, the movie experience...
4.5 stars but there's no half star I give 5 stars because it's closer to 5 in my eyes with room to make it more perfect.
Here's note for anybody who got confused or scared by the recent news about Warner's upcoming 'defection' from HD DVD's camp: how much a high quality upconverting DVD player would cost today?
Right, around $200-300 or more (ie upcoming king of the hill Oppo 983HD).
How much this unit cost right now with added HD DVD playback etc?
That's right, $269 as of today... and we're talking about the highly unlikely worst case scenario here, if Toshiba would drop HD DVD tomorrow - with over 1M unit sold it won't happen anytime soon, I think.
Best value out there as of today (mid-January 2008), period.
Digital camera Review: Excellent!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This player is just awesome. The deal is even better: 7 free HD-DVD movies + free shipping. Hooked it up to my Sammy HT-S5087W 1080P DLP and my jaw dropped. Switched the output to 1080p/60 and what a picture. It is unreal. Upconvert looks almost like a true HD, very hard to see the difference (watched Riddick).
Pros: Everything. HD picture is unbeatable. Upconvert also. Lots of features. It is future-proof. Looks awesome (if that matters), etc., etc.
Cons: Remote controler doesn't have a back-lit, although it glows in the dark.
Summa Summarium, if you need to buy an HD-DVD player, buy this device and you will not be sorry.
Digital camera Review: For once it's true
Summary: 5 Stars
My HD-A35 is hooked up to a 50" widescreen plasma in 1080p. Short and sweet, as the owner I can tell the diference between an HD video and a regular DVD, none of my friends can. I am so pleased I'm not considering Blu-ray till their prices drop. I have far too many regular DVD's. No matter how the format war turns out you cannot go wrong with this HD player.Digital camera Review: Full of features and an experience un-matched by Blu-Ray
Summary: 5 Stars
As far as audio and video quality most 1080p HD players (including Blu-ray) produce exceptional results. This player does indeed produce a spectacular picture (the SD upconversion is pretty amazing) and wonderful sounding audio. However, this player, and HD DVD in general, has many capabilities that are unmatched by Blu-ray and HD DVD players are less expensive to own! The SD DVD upconversion on this player is pretty remarkable and is an improvement over the other HD DVD players and all Blu-ray players, especially over the latest Samsung HD DVD/Blu-ray player.... aweful HD upconversion. In addition, this player has PIP capabilities, dynamic menus, web-enabled ability and is easilly upgradeable. That's something that you can't say about a single Blu-ray player.... and it's a fraction of the cost. It also supports deep color , CEC and direct digital audio output so your DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD receiver can do the audio decoding. This is the most feature rich player on the market and it's cheaper than any less capable Blu-ray player.
Make a smart decision and buy this player or the HD-A30 (if you don't need direct digital audio). Blu-ray has 20GB's of extra storage on a disc... big deal you can always put additional bonus features on another disc. It's much harder to enable Blu-ray players to have the interactive menus, web-enabled features and upgradability that all HD DVD players have and have had since they were first released. With Blu-ray you pay more and get less.