Hooked up and played with a Toshiba HD-A1 HDDVD Player

[MoreTorque99]

I hooked up the brand new Toshiba HD-A1 HDDVD Player tonight (4-15-06) to a 62" Mitsubishi 1080p DLP.  

I used HD-DVD version of Serenity as a test.  It is the best HD source material I have ever seen.  Nothing revolutionary, but very pleasing to see a consistent, HD quality picture.  Definetly an improvement over what we have now.

The best part of the player is the upconversion quality.  The upconvert quality is VERY close to the quality of the true HD movie.  If anything, it makes the $500 price more justifiable.

On the downside, it takes a VERY long time to load an HD DVD disc.  Forwarding between chapters is also very slow on the HD DVD discs.  The remote is really frickin huge for a DVD remote and requires four AAA batteries.

Overall, for $500, it is a great upconvert player and the first to display true HD movies.  I am not that much of a movie watcher, but the increased quality definetly has my interest.  I think i'll wait for the price to come down, but hey... for $500 at least it comes with an HDMI cable

On a side note, the movie boxes for HD DVDs are a completely different size and shape.  Pretty cool actually.

[Bebop]

Too bad the sub $1K players can't output 1080P.

Did you get it from Bestbuy? I saw the ad in the Sunday flyer.

There is also a $25 rebate: http://capturethebeast.com/dl/GWP.pdf

[klwillis45]

http://reviews.cnet.com/Toshiba_HD_A1/4505-6463_7-31736203.html?tag=cnetfd.sd

[gb4fan92]

IThe best part of the player is the upconversion quality.  The upconvert quality is VERY close to the quality of the true HD movie.  If anything, it makes the $500 price more justifiable.

 Does the upconversion work with component cables?? (fingers crossed!!).

[Gregg Lengling]

Does the upconversion work with component cables?? (fingers crossed!!).

Toshiba only does upconversion via HDMI.