Customer Reviews

Toshiba HD-XA2 1080p HD-DVD Player

5 star:		(87)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

First let me say that I have or have had an A1, A2, XA2, 360 HD Drive, and PS3. This is by far the best HD-DVD player out, as well as the best SD player. The Reon's NR is awesome on SD discs, and the edge enhancement agorithm is so refined I have yet to find a reason not to leave it on level ALL the time, even on HD material. I have had experience repairing one of these and can shed some light on a couple of issues.

1 - Does your XA2 power down randomly when playing HD discs? If so it is caused by a bug that only affects some players. If the unit is turned on while its' input is selected (on the receiver or TV) a bug occurs during handshake that causes the shutdown at random. I speculate it is to do with setting the overheat threshold uncommonly low. The unit will only have this problem with HD media, when set to 1080p. Set it to 1080i and it's fine. Play SD discs at 1080p and it's fine.
-The workaround is to select any input other than the XA2's when turning the player on (or leave the TV/receiver off). Turn on the player and wait for it to boot up completely. Once it is finished you may select the player's input and it will play HD discs at 1080p for days on end...no shutdown.

2 - Does your player seem to have a high pitched whine? This is in fact not caused by the fan in the XA2 which is awfully quiet compared to most active CE cooling devices (about 1/5th that of the PS3 during HD playback). It is caused by the transformer on the power supply unit ringing. The only way to fix it is to exchange the unit, or send it to Toshiba for a PSU replacement. For the tech savvy, this unit uses the same PSU as the A2 (which can be gotten on the cheap right now). The service manuals can be found on AVS, and it is a simple job of loosening a few screws and a couple of connectors. If you can change a CPU in a PC you can do this. Otherwise, it should be covered under Toshiba's warranty.

3 - Does your player play SD discs fine, but read "no disc" when you insert HD media? This is caused by a blue laser diode failure in the drive itself. Face it Blue Lasers are still new, and unfortunately the yields are still pretty poor. Some faulty parts slip through after seemingly making the grade at the factory. Again, this requires a repair by Toshiba to replace the drive, but if you're brave and have access to an A2 the drive is the same. The swap is even easier than the PSU. 5 screws and a ribbon cable. If you have a screwdriver handy this should take about 10 minutes. Of course, it is covered by Toshiba under warranty, but why not fix your XA2 yourself and part with the A2 for a while instead (which is much lighter, and thus cheaper to ship as well).

4 - Does your unit hang on the welcome screen? Welp, it could be one of two things. A bad/overheating motherboard or an undervolting PSU. The PSU fix can be done easily if you have access to an A2...then you'll know. If it turns out to be a bad mainboard Toshiba is your only hope. Their procedure is to just send a new player if the mainboard is bad. They only repair the unit if it's a bad PSU or Drive. Either way turn around is about a week.

5 - Did you get stuck with a remote whose backlight doesn't work? It's no joke. the XA2 remote is VERY difficult to read in the dark, but once the backlight lights up it is a sight to behold. It goes from barely usable to "best of the bunch". the lights are extremely bright and very legible. What you may not know though is that you have to press and hold the backlight button for 5 seconds to turn on the feature. There are thousands of people who think they got stuck with a broken remote. trust me, once it lights up you'll love it.

The latest firmware as of this post is 2.7, and that fixes 24p output as well as adding HBR bitstream output. With this update this player is once again the king of all HD players. It sports the best PQ for both HD and SD discs, and offers all of the new features (even those of the A35 which is the inferior player). The bad news is, as of this update these are becoming scarce, and since Toshiba is building these for Onkyo now (list for $899) they have discontinued the XA2. the Onkyo is the exact same player in a new box for more $$$. get an XA2 while you can. Enjoy! I hope I've helped some people get by the initial bad impressions they may have had. No electronics model is without a few lemons. The XA2 has a few, but the above should help some of you avoid a return or exchange. If you did get a lemon, and there is no more stock, consider fixing it yourself by getting an A2 to sacrifice, then send the A2 for repair...or just let Toshiba fix it. once you have a working unit you'll agree...it was worth it. This is any HD TV's best friend!

"Blew me away" is a phrase seen too often in HDTV and A/V equipment reviews, but that is the reaction I had to the Toshiba HD-XA2. And I am talking about DVD upconversion. I have about 1200 DVD's in my collection, and was concerned about obsolescence again. I rememeber giving away or selling my VHS collection, and was not looking forward to repeating the experience with DVD's. With the new Toshiba player, my fears were put to rest. I have a 1080p HDTV (Samsung HL-S5688W) and I set the player's output to 1080p using HDMI. One of my reference discs is the "Vertical Limit" superbit edition. There is a scene where I look at the detail in a glove worn by one of the climbers. I was always amazed to see the threads in the "Marmot" logo. With the new Toshiba player, I can see another level of detail beyond that. DVD's 480p resolution had produced more detail than I thought possible. I put in my "Charade" DVD, which was filmed in 1962. Again, I was amazed at what I had never before seen, like the fine print in Charles Lampert's fake passports. I never saw macroblocking or false contouring, or any other digital artifacts.

I agonized for months over whether a 56 inch widescreen would be too large at my viewing distance of 7-8 feet while watching standard DVD's. With this new player, I am glad I went ahead with the 56 inch instead of 46 or 50. Actually, I now think that hi-def DVD's NEED at least 50 inches of widescreen 1080p to fully appreciate the fine detail, at least at my viewing distance. I checked out a dozen or so DVD's of movies from 1939 to 2006, and they were all improved by this player's upconversion capability. With some of my old favorites, it was like watching the movie again for the first time.

I checked out four HD DVD's to assess quality with 1080p source material;
"King Kong", "Superman Returns", "Apollo 13" and "Seabiscuit". To me, the jump from DVD to HD DVD was not as great as the jump from VHS to DVD. However, certain scenes were stunning. The experience was like watching a super-sharp Superbit DVD, but with moments of jaw dropping clarity. The Saturn V lift-off in Apollo 13 was riveting. And there was detail in the scenes on Skull Island in King Kong which were incredibly clear. The clarity was so striking that there was an unintended effect. Some of the CGI sequences had a more fake appearance than in the DVD version. The divisions between the actors and the bluescreen were almost too sharp. Color fidelity was excellent in HD DVD's, a definite improvement over standard DVD.

The player is a substantial piece, and seems sturdy and well constructed.
My build date is January 2007 and I am running the latest firmware. Load times were not bad, 31 seconds from disc insertion with HD DVD's and 16 seconds with standard DVD's. Others had mentioned juddering, a jerkiness evidenced in panning sequences. Perhaps it has been corrected in firmware, but I did not notice this in the titles I checked out. The remote is actually made of metal, and has a nice heft and finish. The buttons are laid out logically, and I like it that the "play" button has a nice sharp bump so that the layout can be sensed in the dark easily. Like finding middle C on the piano, the rest can be figured out from there by feel.

My intention was to sit out the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war. However, the reviews on this player's upconversion circuitry convinced me to take the plunge. I have seen high end Denon DVD players which cannot equal the output of this Toshiba HD DVD unit, and at the same price. So, I figure I cannot lose, no matter which format wins. I still get a great upconverting DVD player, and the HD DVD discs I buy will still play at 1080p even if Blu-ray "wins". Yes, $800 is a big chunk of change, but considering that I have extended the life of my $$$ DVD collection, it was worth it for me. Plus, the jump to 1080p hi-def discs is substantial. BTW, my buying experience through Amazon and Electronics Expo could not have been better.

This is the best upconverting DVD player out there. I've compared it directly to the Oppo 981HD and SD DVDs played on the XA2 look even better. In fact, ones that are mastered well look almost HD quality. Of course HD-DVDs will always look better and have more visual 'pop' but this player does a great job on SD ones too. In fact, sometimes I forget that I'm even viewing a SD DVD.

Compared to other HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, this one beats them all. HD-DVDs look and sound amazingly stunning and the picture quality exceeds Blu-ray players costing twice as much.

Another benefit of the HD-XA2 is that is has 5.1 direct audio outputs. If you don't have a receiver that can do HDMI, this is the only way you will be able to get the HD audio (either Dolby Digital Plus or TrueHD). Hooking any HD-DVD player via the optical audio only downconverts the audio to either DTS or Dolby Digital. But using the 5.1 direct audio (6 RCA cables) means that the player decodes the DD+ or TrueHD audio track and directly outputs it lossless, to your receiver. That way you can take advantage of the better audio on HD-DVDs. Hooking it up via HDMI will accomplish this as well but only now are HDMI capable receivers starting to hit the market and most people with existing receivers probably don't have HDMI. I'm very happy with my current receiver and don't see myself replacing it with an HDMI capable one any time soon, yet with the 5.1 direct inputs, I can still enjoy the HD audio.

The HD-XA2 is very well built, the case has a nice metal construction and the transport seems very robust. My only complaint with the unit (and why I'm not giving it 5 stars) is that the fan on it is slightly too loud. If it was just a little quieter I think it would be ideal but as is, during very quiet scenes in movies, I can hear it running. That said, I would not let this dissuade you from gaining purchase of this DVD player. And if you have a large collection of SD DVDs, you will not be dissapointed playing them on this player.

1) First This is a great piece of Hi-End electronics ( mainly a computer at heart, with a Pent CPU, a Gig or two of super fast DDRAM, a drive of sorts, and a GPU or Graphics/video procesor chip ,fans, etc ) Thus she isn't blazing in her (boot-up) time , but don't worry it boots up cold in about 30 sec, then when you open the drawer, and pop in a HD DVD it takes about 15 sec to load and be ready to play. if its a SD DVD it takes about 5-8 sec or so and a CD is about 1-3 seconds.
The SD upconversion via a HDMI connection to my HD Pioneer PureVision 50 in. Plasma is unparalleld so far with the the Silicon Optics Reon-VX HQV Chip. Nothing I've seen comes close to making your SD DVD'd as look and sound as good as they possibly can.
Now to the HD DVD performance- Every HD DVD that I own all play with stunning clarity, vivid colors, deep blacks and no problems what-so-ever. They appear almost 3-D in nature, as if you could reach out and touch one of the puppets/people in Corpse Bride. In short the XA2 is a step aboue the earlier HD player models as it does 1080P, and upconverts slightly better, and it is better ( not cheaper tho !) than the Xbox360 HD add-on( $199) for no better reason that it is connected via HDMI (not Component or Composite- both inferior to HDMI)I would say a 15% increase in clarity/ focus/colordepth, and realism from the straight HDMI connection. AS well as the Xbox add-on doesn't exactly decode the s/pdif digital bitstream correctly everytime. It (the xbox HD drive) ALWAYS says it's decoding "Dolby Digital 3/2.1" no matter if the track chosen was a DTS type or DD+, or DTHD or whatever it is!
Now for the sound- The XA2 has both s/pdif connections ( i.e., Digital COAX, and fiber optic connect (Toslink). Either one works perfectly to output the spdif "bitstream" or digital multichannel output to my reciever. There it is either output as regular DD , Dolby D+, DD EX, DTS, DTS EX, or DTS HD, or Dolby True HD. Now here is the tricky part. The only sound formats which I listen to via the 5.1 analog outputs are HD DVD's that have a Dolby true HD track or DD+. These lossless formats are decoded only by the player and output as analog signals to be amplified by my A/V reciever and output to each speaker realtime. This sounds very good in all channels except the Sub channel. But I have an easy fix for now- just go over to your powered subwoofer and reach IN THE BACK AND TURN THE GAIN UP ABOUT 5-6 notches(> Db) over where you normally would have it when choosing to listen to the the Digital (S/PDIF) 5.1 bitstream sound output from the A/V reciever. For some reason the LFE (.1 or sub bass) sounds are set out at a lower level that the other 5 channels when using the 5.1 analog multi direct outputs, thus the reason to bump the SUB gain by several notches-- Just don't forget to turn the sub gain back down when you choose the digital bitstream sound output via the s/pdif( Dig. coax or Toslink (fib. opt.cable). The legecy sound formats ( i.e., DD,DD-EX, DTS, DTS-EX, etc) sound excellent using the digital s/pdif bitstream. When listened through the digital s/pdif outputs, the AX2 downmixes both the DD+ and the Dolby True HD to a new 5.1 Dolby Digital bitstream, but at a much higher fidelity and bitrate that the old standard DD. They sound very good played back this way. DTS or DTS EX is still seen and decoded as a DTS bitstream by the AVamp when using any DTS type track for playback ( And I still prefer to listen to a DTS type soundtrack over anything else just because I feel it has the most sonic impact, i.e,m more clarity, better separation, better sound stage effect and spacial imaging, less noise and better dynamic range.)
Bottom line is --If you have the coins, and can spare the $750- $780, and if you can't wait for the price to go down get this player NOW- it is an excellent piece of hardware and with firmware updates all issues such as the low 5.1 LFE channel level output, should, eventually be solved. Wait 6 months and maybe this player will be about 500 or 600 Who knows? I even got 3 free HD DVD's with mine making it cost just a tad over $700.- NOT to Bad for all you get !

This HD DVD player is simply awesome! Picture quality is just amazing and it's is easy to use with no "boot up" time like the old HD-A1 which I returned within a week. I have the XA2 paired with an InFocus 7205 and it's hard to believe how clear and sharp the picture is. Even up close there is no pixilation on a 133" screen. Everything in this box is quality. Sorry Amazon, had to buy from another source because you did not have them for sale yet. No complaints at all, unpack, plug in and go. You WILL NOT be disapointed. Now we just need more HD titles.

The fact that you're researching the Toshiba XA2 is proof positive that you're serious about Video performance. Well, I'm happy to say that the XA2 will meet the needs of the most demanding videophile.

The solidly built unit (approx. 12 lbs) isn't just another pretty face. There are some serious components lurking under its sleek chassis, including a 297MHz / 12 bit Video DAC with high-quality, 4x oversampling for increased bandwidth for true playback of an HD picture to a video source. The HD-XA2 comes with a picture setting function allowing customers to optimize picture quality with user adjustable settings for color, contrast, brightness, edge enhancement and block noise, among others.

Although this unit plays HD DVDs with jaw-dropping clarity, my main reason for purchasing was its ability to play SD DVDs with outstanding quality (thanks in part to the Silicon Optics ReonVX chip). I'm an off-the-hook movie buff and have thousands of DVDs in my library. I realize many esoteric titles in my collection probably won't be around any time soon on HD DVD or BD (if ever). So I want to be able to enjoy these movies with the best possible quality, and was prepared to spend a bundle for one of the better video processors that would help me achieve this quest. Fortunately, I discovered that I didn't need to go this route after all!

This quote from a member of the AV Science Forum really sums things up: "Bottom line-- there is NO REASON TO BUY AN EXTERNAL VIDEO PROCESSOR if you buy the XA2. Not only did it match in virtually all the tests and visual observations of the Gennum VXP chip in the Crystallio II VP but in some cases the XA2 was VISUALLY SUPERIOR. The Toshiba XA2 is without a doubt the best upscaling SD DVD player that I have ever seen. It certainly leaves me depressed about the money I spent a month ago on the CII."

The XA2 will do a great job playing your CD collection, although I'm sure most audiophiles are now depending on the incredible sounding DAC1 for that task, which makes this a moot issue.

One has to actually see the XA2 in action to fully appreciate its capabilities.
As far as HD DVD or Blu-Ray is concerned, I consider myself format neutral, as I also own a Panasonic Blu-Ray player. My display is a DLP projector with a 120" Firehawk screen.

Good luck with your purchase, I'm sure you'll be pleased to death.

I was one of the people to own this on 01/04/2007, and this is my first HD/BD player. I can say, having owned decent players like Oppo's and Pio Elite, that this is best DVD player to have hit the market ever in terms of PQ. The SD DVD upconversion is jaw dropping good, giving external upconverters a thump in the rear. This is a super high end DVD player at a mid-High price point, plus throw in a HD DVD playback ability. Either SD or HD DVD, you'll enjoy the show. SD upconversion is as close to HD as you can possibly get.

If you own a 1080P TV, even 1080i,and can afford it, do not hesitate in buying this. I was apprehensive at first, but now that I own it I can't seem to turn it off. It does lack a Zoom feature and takes about 30 seconds to start up, but that is much better than previous models.

Here is a good review link comparing it to SDI+Crystallio 2:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=782887

To put it simply, I hadn't realized the full promise of SD (1080p) up-conversion before buying this phenomenal player. Having made a significant investment in SD DVDs, I was looking for something that would allow me to realize the maximum potential of my investment.

After being somewhat disappointed with players like the Oppo 981 (which were pretty good, but had problems with macro blocking issues), I decided to take the plunge and order the XA2.

The picture quality from this player is simply astounding and the depth and vividness of the colors will make you want to watch some Kar Wai Wong movies (2046, In a Mood for Love) over and over again(same is true for some Bollywood films as well). And yes, the HD-DVD playback is superlative too -- I would recommend screening the HD version of "Phantom of the Opera" if you want to blow your friends away.

It's ironic that the combination of my Sony 60A2000 RPTV and this player is truly a match made in heaven -- now, if only they can settle those silly format wars and let us enjoy this great player in peace :). The only real complaint I have is that the load times can be a little slow compared to other DVD players. But then again, would have been this impatient with this player if I didn't know what it delivered

I've owned 9 different DVD players since 1997, and just got the XA2 based on some user reviews in the AVS Forum. All I can say is : WOW. The picture you get from upscaled DVDs is unbelievable. It is even superior to my Denon 5910 that costs 3 times as much. Needless to say, I've already put my Denon for sale.

Just as I thought it couldn't get any better, I played some HD-DVDs, and the picture and sound were brought up to an all new level. For me the choice is clear : I will buy HD-DVDs, or if the title I want is exclusive to Blu-Ray because of the stupid format war, I will buy the standard DVD. No big loss, the upconverted picture on this beast is very very close to HD.

I bought this a few weeks ago and have been putting it through its paces.
The picture is incredible with HD DVD's, and with standard def DVD's is much better than any of my prior 3 DVD players. I like the ability to access menus while the movie is playing.

I have a 1080p TV, and wondered why the player was outputing 1080p. After pouring through the manual, and finding no real answers (although the manual is pretty well written), I e-mailed Toshiba on a Friday night and had a response by Sat am. They were not able to help me by e-mail but gave me an 800 number to call. I was afraid of being on hold forever so did'nt call for a few days but when I did I was shocked that immediately a human being answered the phone (Jim) and immediately answered all my questions. Very nice and very knowledgeable and not on hold for one second. This kind of support helps make paying $600 for a DVD player worthwhile.

He said that a lot of 1080p sets like mine output a 1080p picture but do not accept a 1080p signal directly. So the DVD player knows this and outputs 1080i. Doesn't really matter because my set de-interlaces the signal and I am seeing an absolutely gorgeous 1080p picture.

One other thing that he says is common to all of the current "next generation" DVD players is that the disc will not resume where you left off, but always starts back at the beginning of the HD DVD. This is a minor annoyance but not unique to this player.

Yes (as menioned in previous reviews) the fan is a little loud but I barely notice it.

Be aware that it does take longer for a disc to "load" than on a standard def DVD player, but again I believe this is a common issue to all current "next generation" DVD players.

I also like the ability to connect the player to the internet via ethernet cable, and get firmware updates. Toshiba will also e-maiol

If you, like me, have been trying to wait out the "format war" and are tired of waiting... and have a high def TV you are aching to use...
You will not be disappointed with this player.
Highly recommended.