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Product Review: Page (2) of 2 - 05/12/06

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Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD Player

First-to-market player is a disgrace

Next, I put the HD DVD of Phantom of the Opera into the player. I was chagrined to see that it took exactly 47 seconds between the time I put the HD DVD into the player and the time the picture appeared on the screen. With the disk finally began its playback, my frustration and gnashing of teeth quickly abated, because I saw a magnificent high-definition picture on my screen the likes of which I hadn't seen before. There were very few compression artifacts, the sound was crisp and clear, and the colors were extremely saturated. Here was the nearly-saving grace of the Toshiba HD-A1. The HD DVD format is capable of magnificent playback quality. That factor alone may make this player worth its $500 purchase price.

Now that I've gushed all over this player's quality, let's get back to the realities of this ill-conceived product. Accidentally pushing the stop button on the illogically-arranged remote happened more times than I care to admit, and quite a few times, an error message showed up on the front of the player: "HDMI Error D" The only way to fix it was to unplug the HDMI cables and plug them back in again -- even a restart of the player didn't work. This sort of foolishness is simply unacceptable in a consumer electronics device.

Next, I wanted to test the up-rezzing capability when playing back standard definition DVDs. Yes, there was a slight improvement when using the A1's up-rezzing capability with DVDs, but it's still apparent that the DVDs are in standard definition, with quality that's nowhere near that of high-definition television. Don't kid yourself into thinking that this up-rezzed video will satisfy your cravings for HDTV, because it doesn't even come close. Counterintuitively, it didn't seem to make any difference when I changed the resolution settings when playing back a standard definition DVD, where the enhancement looked the same whether it was set for 480p, 720p, or 1080i.

Inexplicably, after playing a standard definition DVD, it's necessary to set the resolution back to either 720p or 1080i when playing an HD DVD again. With all the technology brought to bear in this HD DVD format, why isn't it possible to automatically sense what sort of disk is in the player, and with the HDMI cables, what sort of display is being addressed? 

Summing up, using the Toshiba HD-A1 was a frustrating experience. Beguiled by its gorgeous high-definition video, I was even more frustrated at its sluggish response to remote commands and crashing performance. Its clumsy remote sets a new low in inept design, configured in a way that reveals that its designers were apparently completely unaware that human beings would be using it. Adding to its long list of shortcomings is the HD-A1's inability to handle that holy grail of the HD DVD format, 1080p.

I can only hope that this is just a rough first effort which was perhaps rushed to market. The Toshiba HD-A1 is unacceptable, even for early adopters. Please, do yourself a favor and don't go through the trouble of buying it, setting it up and being frustrated by it. Wait until this format is more mature, because now, it reminds me of the early days of MS-DOS computing. The only reason I give it more than one star is because of the high quality of its video. Not recommended under any circumstances. 2 out of 10 stars.