Toshiba A2 - HD DVD Player

Last year I bought a Vizio 42" Plasma and hooked up Comcast HD DVR. I have since become a video snub and tend to watch only HD channels. When I moved back to Houston last month I again ordered Comcast. However, the amount of content is a lot less. So I decided to buy a Toshiba A2 HD DVD Player.

This is the cheapest of Toshiba's HD DVD line. It outputs up to 1080i. The setup was incredible easy. I just had to remove my upscaling DVD player. Then plug in the A2 to power and my HDMI connection and presto I was ready to play my first HD DVD.

I popped in the movie Aeon Flux and was award with a beautiful image and sound. The picture quality was gorgeous. Also playing regular DVDs look better as well, the A2 has a built-in scaler.

The technical stats:

Media Type : CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD, CD, HD DVD-R, HD DVD, DVD-R DL

Video D/A Converter : 11bit / 216MHz

Audio D/A Converter : 24bit / 192kHz

Built-in Audio Decoders : Dolby Digital, DTS decoder, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD decoder, Dolby TrueHD

Media Load Type : Tray

Picture Modes : Pan and scan, letterbox

DVD Repeat Modes : A-B repeat

Supported Digital Audio Standards : PCM

Output Resolution : 1080i, 720p, 480i, 480p

Connector Type : 1 x HD component output ( RCA phono x 3 ) - rear 1 x composite video output ( RCA phono ) - rear 1 x S-Video output ( 4 pin mini-DIN ) - rear 1 x audio line-out ( RCA phono x 2 ) - rear 1 x HDMI ( 19 pin HDMI Type A ) - rear 1 x digital audio output (optical) ( TOS Link ) - rear 1 x network ( RJ-45 ) - rear 2 x USB - front

One feature that was cool is the built-in Ethernet connection. I hooked up an Ethernet cable. Next I turned on DHCP and DNS. This was a little odd in that by default DHCP is not turned on. In addition DNS being set by DHCP is controlled separately and turned off by default. It would have made more sense to have DHCP turned on with DNS automatically tied to DHCP. Finally I upgraded the firmware of the A2 by going through the update process. After being shown 3 screens of licensing the player went out and picked up the latest build. It took about 20 minutes.

Now you might be wondering why I did not go with BluRay. I thought about it. However with the announcement of Paramount and DreamWorks and the cheaper price of the player it just made sense. Unless Sony comes down in price I think that HD DVD will win. After all the consumer can't really tell the difference between BlueRay and HD DVD so the only thing that matters is price. And if that is not enough Toshiba is giving away 5 HD DVD if you purchase a player by the end of September.

Of course now I have no choice but to buy a Pioneer 50 inch Plasma. So I can have just an amazing picture after all the Vizio 42 inch is only 1024x768 vs the Pioneers 1365x768 (720p) native resolution. OK I just can't see paying $5000 for only slightly better resolution of the Pioneer 50 inch 1080p. Most people cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080i.