Customer Reviews

Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(59)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I didn't buy this from Amazon, but since reviews of the player are scarce, I thought I'd share some thoughts.

A few short months ago I bought the Xbox add-on to try the HD-DVD waters, and have been nothing but impressed, so when my standard DVD player died (my 7th one in 8 years, I'm a very heavy DVD watcher), I decided to invest in a player that will (hopefully) last (I also purchased a 4 year warranty this time).

The player itself is beautiful, both in appearance and on screen (watching on 1080p Samsung LCD). Picture quality of HD-DVD is, as expected, superb, and DVD upscaling is the best I have ever seen (easily destroying my 1 year old Sony).

A very few negatives. Boot times are still a bit slow, it takes about 40 seconds before the HD-DVD logo appears on screen, with another 20 seconds to load the disc, it's around 60 seconds total from power on to actually start watching the disc. Discs also don't resume play, which is odd as it seems to be a feature. If you don't power off the unit and stop a disc, it will resume where you left off, but if you power off the player, it restarts from the beginning, very odd, but Toshiba could easily fix in a firmware update.

All in all I am very, very pleased, the unit feels sold, looks amazing on your shelf and features some of the best video quality I have ever seen. The few, "problems" don't really bother me, but I wanted to mention them as it could turn off some people. Thanks for reading!

I just watched my first HD DVD, and all I can say is WOW! The picture quality of 1080p/24 is amazing. This player also does a nice job on SD DVD,the upconversion to 1080i looks great too. I have this player connected to a Samsung DLP 1080p TV and an Onkyo receiver, all interconnected via HDMI. This is the finest picture and sound combination I have ever owned. I am looking forward to more releases on HD DVD, Amazon has a great selection at great prices.

I bought this player probably without doing my homework thoroughly; even all the literature says that it passes the new audio formats (True HD, DD+, etc), this player does not pass these formats via the HDMI cable to be decoded by the AVR. It makes its own decoding, and as the Toshiba customer service rep said, it passes "its own version" of the new formats, and only in 5.1
The ONLY player that as of today can pass the new audio formats via the HDMI cable to be decoded by a capable AVR is the HD-A35.

I am returning it and getting the HD-A35.

Other than this, the player works as designed and the picture is absolutely breathtaking.

I have had this player for a few days now, and have the following to say.

1. It takes me 50-52 seconds to load, from on to off. then another 25 seconds to load a disc, so about 1min 15 seconds from off to Menu Screen.

Not very quick, but better then Gen 1 players.

2. My Sony upconverting DVD player seems to do a better job in my tests. Cleaner picture then this player for upconverting, but it was close.

3. HD-A30 does a nice job at 1080p at 24 frames per second output, if your TV is capable of 1080p/24 then this player will work great. Otherwise, the 1080p/60 doesn't look very good. It tends to show a lot of jaggies this way. When I flip to 1080i mode and let the TV handle the processing then the jaggies are gone. If your HDTV does a good 1080i deinterlacing you can set the HD-A30 to 1080i mode, however, this would be a waste of buying the HD-A30 as its full 1080p processor. You would be better off saving $100 and getting the HD-A3

4. For the money, its an OK HD-DVD player, slim, looks nice. No analog outputs (HD-A35 has this) so if you are going Strictly HDMI 1080p, get this player. If your TV is 1080i or 720p, don't bother, the HD-a3 is good enough.

Honestly, I don't know if the differences between the HD-A20 and HD-A30 are worth $100 price diff. Take about the same time to Load, same PQ/AQ for the most part.

I sat on the sidelines for a long while, waiting for the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war to come to some conclusion, but I am extraordinarily happy that I've finally jumped it. With the great price that Amazon had on this player, and the bundled movies that came with it, I couldn't see waiting any longer.

I replaced an Onkyo 6 disc changer with this Toshiba. The Onkyo was connected with component cables, while the Toshiba is connected with HDMI. The picture quality is outstanding with HD-DVDs and at very good with the one normal DVD that I tried. My TV is an older 720p Samsung DLP TV, and the difference is still noticeable. I can't WAIT until I get a 1080p TV.

The only potential negatives: It takes a while to start up. It's about twice as long as my old Onkyo, but there's a lot going on in there.

I've greatly enjoyed Blade Runner, Serenity, Mission Impossible III and The Bourne Identity on HD-DVD so far, as well as Battlestar Galactica on regular DVD. The only thing better than the picture quality is the sound quality. I've paired this with an outstanding Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver, and the sound is good enough to make your jaw drop!

Highly recommended. I see no reason to buy Blu-Ray. I can suffer along with upconverted DVDs for those movies until the world becomes more sane. And Netflix rocks with their support for HD-DVD.

Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player

I own a Toshiba HD-A20 and just purchased a HD-A30 for the following reasons:

I have no plans to purchase Blu-Ray hardware or discs for many years, if ever. In this sense I'm going to sit this round out and wait for the next big thing. Blu-Ray is simply too expensive and will always be too customer unfriendly for me to stomach. If you don't know what I mean by Blu-Ray being "consumer unfriendly" - I can only suggest more research.

I never intended to purchase/repurchase a zillion titles in either Hi-def format. Most titles are just fine when played with an excellent up-scaling player such as the HD-A30. Blu-Ray players also do up-scaling but at twice the price. Not being able to enjoy a handful of (worthy) titles in Hi-def isn't going to ruin my life.

If HD does survive, for me, that will simply be a welcome bonus. Meantime, the HD-A30 is a first-class product from a company with excellent customer support.

One final thought - HD and Blu-Ray are already doomed to replacement. Replacement possibilities include broadband on-demand and very high capacity non-volatile memory media. Movies on memory cards rather than discs - no moving parts, no lasers, just a card/stick slot in the TV. Could be.

***UPDATE FEBRUARY 11, 2008***

NETFLIX is dumping the HD-DVD format according to an email I just received - you may want to reconsider purchasing this player. Here's the email FWIW:

"We're Going Blu-ray

Dear MarkT,

You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.

While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.

Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don't worry, we will contact you before this happens.

You can click here to change your format preferences.

We're sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1 (888) 638-3549.

-The Netflix Team"

..........................................
*Original Review - January 27, 2008*

Great picture, slow loading time, was already updated. It took a little while to configure to my network but after I did it let me know it was running the latest software.

As many others have written, it takes a while to load. The tray won't open while it's loading either, but works normally after 40 seconds.

Upconverting is good as well.

I've had zero issues with the unit so far - considering I'm renting HD DVDs from Netflix and couldn't be happier. This blows away broadcast HDTV.

Considering the price & free movie offers this seems like a great deal - I don't suppose Netflix will nix the HD DVD section any time soon, and many of the movies I like are still coming out.

I'll buy a blu-ray once the prices drop to this range.

This is a great HD DVD player, I have this one along with the external one for the Xbox 360. I also have a Blu ray player with the PS3. I think that the picture looks just the same as the Blu ray if not better. This player also came with the latest updates so I did not have to update anything on this player. The player worked fine right away out of the box no issues at all. The player also came with 10 free HD DVDs you cant beat that. This player is a win, win situation because it also does a great job of upscaling your regular DVDs. Plus at this price it does not matter who wins the HD DVD vs Blu ray war. If HD DVD loses you still have a great upscaling DVD player for less then $200. I dont see either side giving up in the near future so you might as well enjoy hd dvds on this player and upscaling your old ones for the time. I have bought more HD DVDs then Blu ray movies because I feel they look just as good or if not better and they have more features. This player has tons of great features that I am still learning about. I would recommend this player to anyone who has a HD TV. I also bought one of these players for my dad and he loves it as well. I also rent all HD DVDs from netflix, so I have seen just about all of them on this player they look incredible. The one con to this player is the fact that it will be hard for you to watch movies or television that is not in HD.

Overall I'm happy with this unit. There are a few annoyances though that I think Toshiba could have worked out before releasing this third generation player. The biggest inconvenience is that in most cases you can't resume play on an HD DVD disc once you've stopped it. With standard dvd's it works flawlessly but not with HD DVD (and isn't that EXACTLY what we want to watch on it????) It is VERY annoying that every time this happens, you need to start the movie from the opening menu and search for the last chapter/scene you've previously viewed. And as slow as this player is, it WILL take some time.... I just hope that Toshiba will issue a firmware update on this in the near future and fix it. As far as the 1080p processing goes, yes, it does produce some slight jaggies (that is usually only seen on still menus or freeze frames), but nevertheless the picture, colors, resolution and audio are all excellent. The player set to 1080i seem to get rid off the jaggies altogether. With the purchase price/quality/available hd-dvd titles combined, this seems to be a better deal than most any Blue Ray players out there right now.

No expert in HD here (my first high def DVD player), but this seems to be a solid unit. Menu use is very simple, and the slow load times seem to be an issue on all products. The only glitch I've found so far is that, while playing one of the Planet Earth discs, it stopped and displayed an error and continued to do so at the exact same spot. I've yet to try the firmware update, so maybe that will help. The 24fps setting with my 1080p/120Hz Samsung is honestly the best picture I've ever seen and makes all our friends ooh and aah. With the 10 free disc offer Amazon is running, you can't beat it.