NEW HD-DVD owners: Please post your reviews here for members considering purchase!

Ronald Epstein · 07-26-2006, 05:04 PM

For those of you that just purchased a new Toshiba HD-A1/AX1 or
RCA HDV-5000, Welcome to the club!

We really need you to post your experiences, good or bad, so
that other members considering a purchase can get an honest
viewpoint of what to expect.

Please be sure to talk about where you bought the player, your
experience with hooking it up, and finally, what you think!

Look forward to your reviews!

wallyJar · 07-26-2006, 05:50 PM

Bought Toshiba HD-1 Friday July 21. Bought HD Serenity at the same time. Enrolled for free one month of Netflix Sat and they shipped my first HD_DVD Tuesday. I was able to find about 25 titles in HD that I put in my queue. All but two or three say avail now or short wait.

Unit was June 06 build with Firmware rev 1.3.

Saturday I watched Serenity through my Yamaha HTR 5860 component in to Infocus SP 4805. I was totally impressed with PQ and sound quality. Had no issues or problems with Serenity.

I also watched 4 more movies SD DVD on Sat. and Sun. with an obvious improvement in PQ and SQ. I have an upconverting Sanyo player and watched parts of several SD DVDs on the A1 and the Sanyo. I am getting rid of the Sanyo immediately. A1 was that much better.

Yamaha does not have HDMI or DVI so I am waiting on a cable to output HDMI to the DVI input of the SP4805.

Tuesday I hooked up router and did upgrade to revision 1.4. Only watched one SD movie since the upgrade but have seen no problems.

$500 is not a whole lot of money for even a good upconverting player. Add the HD capability and note avail movies to rent and this was an easy decision for me.

Wont speculate who will win the "war" but until war is over I will be enjoying great PQ on both HD and SD DVDs

Elayna Rainwater · 07-28-2006, 12:32 PM

We've had ours for about a month now. We only have a few titles but we LOVE the detail, depth, and overall film look. Can't wait for some bigger titles to come out later this year. (batman begins, superman!)

RaymondSteiner · 08-01-2006, 07:41 PM

Hey wallyJar, just the review i need!. I also have an Infocus 4805, the differences between SD and HD are good enough to justify the purchase.

Could you please detail them ?

Adam_ME · 08-02-2006, 12:46 AM

I received my HD-A1 player in the mail today. It only cost me 393 bucks and change thanks to the Continental OnePass deal(it would've been even less if I didn't live in TX where they charge tax).

Taking it out of the box and hooking it up took only about 20 minutes. I've got it hooked up to a Samsung LN-S3251D 32" LCD TV in my bedroom. I've got a 55" Mitsubishi HDTV in the living room, but it only has component inputs.

I tried out Serenity, The Bourne Supremacy, and Lethal Weapon, along with a bunch of SD-DVDs to test the upscaling capabilities of the player. Lethal Weapon was the weakest looking HD-DVD of the 3, and it still put the Director's Cut DVD to shame. Serenity and The Bourne Supremacy looked and sounded absolutely sick. I've gotta be honest. It's gonna be really hard buying SD-DVDs from here on out after what I saw and heard tonight.

**HTF Ads**

Stan Rozenfeld · 08-02-2006, 03:24 AM

I don't know if I qualify as a new owner, but here goes:

I preorderd my hd a1 player from Value Electronics and received it on April 21 or thereabouts. From the very beginning I had misgivings. I only had a 720p 61 inch Samsung DLP set. I was determined that if there were no significant improvement in the picture quality, I would either return it or ebay it.

From the very beginning, it became evident that the picture quality improvements even on a 720p set are dramatic! My wife who is not a videophile, when I popped in Phantom of the Opera for the first time, just kept on saying "Wow!" She was just blown away. When my mother, who is also not a videophile, visited me, we watched a lot of movies. I did mention that hd dvd would be an improvement, but I didn't do a lot of armwaving. At some point I popped in 16 blocks, a film neither of us wound up liking. Half way through the movie, my mother said out loud out of nowhere "this hd dvd is really good!".

What I found most impressive is that the images from hd dvd seem to burn into my mind, far more than regular dvd. The impression seems to me far more lasting. I also found that the best way to evaluate hd dvd is not to watch isolated scenes, but to watch the whole movie, only then does the impact of hd dvd quality sink in.

Even though I had one of the first hd dvd players with firmware 1.0, I never experienced a single glitch. When time came to do my ISF calibration, I downloaded firmware 1.2 and that's where it stayed. One incident did occur that demonstrated for me the need for ISF calibration. My ISF tech found that on my hdmi input the signal was significantly being clipped (real info, not just below black). It turned out to be service menu settings on my TV, which he had to change. If I didn't do ISF calibration, I would still be watching sub-par picture.

Regarding start-up times, I found it to be a non-issue. By the time, I turn on my tv, close the curtains and settle in, the hd dvd player is ready to go. Load times do require a bit of a patience, but I am not the type to swap many discs, so it's something I easily got used to.

Despite many predictions to the contrary, I found that hd a1 is an excellent upscaler, over all more satisfying than Denon 3910 or Sony NS9100ES, even though both players are more than double its price. However, I find regular dvds to be less and less tolerable. I have pretty much limited my regular dvd watching to TV shows.

To summarize, HD A1 has exceeded my expectations on all counts. Earlier this year, I wanted to find a way to get immediate exposure to high definition movies on disc, and yet not risk too much money. HD A1 turned out to be a perfect vehicle for me to ride out the format war while still enjoying high def content. This will be my first and last player until the format war situation becomes significantly more clear. I stongly recommend this player to anyone who wants to experience movies as they were meant to be.

willyTass · 08-02-2006, 10:45 AM

hd-xa1 imported from Japan via pricejapan.com

Stupendous picture quality. (running thru component to a Sony CRT super fine pitch tv (36 inch))

Haven't used it for a month though as I don't think much of the movies they keep releasing!

WIll

Hayes Preston · 08-03-2006, 04:32 PM

Exactly the opposite of a new owner.

Got my player about two weeks after the initial release. I was on the fence (barely) and based on opinions I trust both here and at HTT, I ordered a player from Tweeter. The initial shipment in my area was completely gone.

The Toshiba replaced an Oppo up-converting player, feeding it’s image via HDMI to a 50” Sony SXRD.

The first couple of titles I watched were Apollo 13 and the Last Samurai. I can’t tell you my opinion without repeating what many others here have written, I was floored, shocked, words like beautiful, pristine, completely film-like come to mind. I love the film Apollo 13 and really like the Last Samurai, and the movie watching experience was like nothing I had seen in my HT. It was significantly better than SD DVD and broadcast (cable) HD, I had seen both movies in HD via cable. In my opinion, even movies that got less than stellar feedback on the forums (Lethal Weapon, Fugitive and Full Metal Jacket) look great to me, not like a pristine new film like Million Dollar Baby mind you, but like a good recreation of film.

Since the first week, it’s only gotten better, more movies in hand (a combination of purchases and netflix,) many more on the way, firmware upgrades resulting in a more stable player. I did have a couple of minor glitches early on, one lockup and two discs with several hiccups, both issues corrected by firmware 1.2.

I watched Sky Captain last night and was again, floored over the improvement from the SD DVD.

Tonight it’s Sleepy Hollow.

Very much looking forward to Batman Begins, Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Battlestar Galactica, Matrix, Harry Potter… and many others

With regards to how my buying habits have changed, my SD DVD buying frequency was slowing before HD DVD, now it’s pretty much stopped completely (however, I will be getting Simpson’s 8 next week) and I haven’t been buying a lot of HD DVD’s with netflix renting them. I am buying HD DVDs that I feel have “rewatchability.” I will buy all the HD DVDs mentioned above.

Andy Bell · 08-05-2006, 07:06 PM

Well after reading how happy Ron was with the HD-A1 on his older CRT with component cables ( I know he has since bought a new 1080P set with HDMI input) I was dying to try one on my 6 year old, ISF calibrated Pioneer PRO-510HD CRT RPTV. Well I finally bought a Toshiba HD-D1(all black model) after I found out my local Wal-Mart was already going to discontinue selling them and were selling them at a price I just could not refuse!
Had to go to BB and get a couple of movies since all the HD DVD movies I had seen previously at this Wal-Mart had been pulled from the shelves. I bought U-571 and Serenity and just added We were Soldiers today.
All I can say is I am very happy with the picture the player puts on my old CRT.
I am really enjoying the DD+ soundtracks. I have always been more of audiophile than videophile. I have a Lexicon MC-12 and am sending the 5.1A output of the Toshiba to the Lex and redigitizing the input so I can use the better bass management of the Lex and use Logic 7. I am thrilled with the audio and am not having any issues with the LFE channel levels being too low as some have mentioned in other threads and forums.
As mentioned everywhere, yes the player has its quirks and the remote is horrible, (need to take some time to set up my Pronto) but I can deal with them.
My first Sony non progressive DVD player in 1999 cost me almost $500, so to me this player is well worth the cost to get into HD DVD. Blue Ray will have to really improve over what the Samsung player is putting out right now and come down in price before I "bite" on that format.

Andy

wallyJar · 08-06-2006, 03:34 PM

Raymond. PQ of A1 on 4805 through DVI is better than off air HD content. SD DVDs are real close to off air HD PQ. If I remember my specs 4805 is actually closer to ED than HD.

I have not played A1 over my 1080i rear projection yet-just too big to move. I am going to move a smaller DLP TV to theater room and try side by side with my 4805. Right now with 106 " screen at 14" viewing distance I am truely pleased and dont regret buying decision at all.

I can only assume with a true HD projector that picture would be even better.
I don't know why but I have had no glitches or freezes or audio sinc issues of any kind before or after upgrade to 1.4.

I will be upgrading projecter in the next 6 months and am only looking forward to even more movie enjoyment.

Hope this helps