Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba HD-A20 1080p HD DVD Player

Do not buy any Toshiba HD DVD players. Press releases state that they are no longer in the HD DVD business. They have quit making them.

Look I'm pro-hd dvd over blu-ray, have always liked Toshiba, and wanted a hd dvd to play netflix hd rentals to augment my Dish HD DVR. I really wanted to like this thing. But it's garbage and I'm convinced now that both hd dvd and blu ray are stupid ideas being used to make a quick (300+) buck while they can and before the public catches on to the better technology.
I first got the a2, immediately downloaded and upgraded it and watched Planet Earth. I saw a lot of pixelation and mosquito netting (or window screening, whichever is the correct metaphor this week.) Shadows and ghosts too. So I figured my 1080p hdtv had spoiled me and swapped for an a20. Mistake!
I downloaded and installed the update immediately and put Planet Earth in it. Same pixelation and netting. So I went to setup where it told me it was on 1080i and I changed it to 1080p at 24hz, the whole point of the upgrade, right? Big mistake! Now all the set does is make loud bump noises every minute or so, and keeps recycling through a tm on led screen, with never any picture. Can't even get a setup screen to show. I tried putting the upgrade disc back in, I've rebooted 20 times, if you liked the windows 3.0 experience you'll love the software on this unstable baby. Now I read that the 1080p processor in it is nowhere near as good as the 1080p processor in most hdtv's and that it's best to leave it on 1080i and let your hdtv's processor do the deinterlacing and processing. (As I type this the little bastard is going bump every minute in the next room.) Can't phone Toshiba till in the morning and they are lucky as hell they're on the opposite coast. AND- I don't want to hear it about how if I go into the bios and reset the parameters of the inverse dimensions parallel to the quantum pixelation while standing on one foot I may be able to get to step two. This is a fr*ging dvd player- not the manhattan project. Not even a good dvd player, both have had pixelation and shadows. And it won't play mp3 or wma cds or handle mpeg 4, just the outdated mpeg 2. For those unfortunate ones who haven't gotten this $300 experience yet, let me remind you that every reboot (that is turning the damn thing on) takes at least a minute, updates take an hour to download and a half hour to install, there is no fast scan (3x tops) and most important almost nothing to rent or buy- only the half the top 10 movies as blu ray gets the rest and mostly mediocre big-box-office trash, no foreign, no independents, etc. Sony has always shot itself in the foot with it's proprietary Sony brand formats and add ons but Microsoft has always been smart enough to give windows free on every computer sold, even if it's drm add ons in video are a mess ( especially with HD). I know chinese hd dvd players (1080i) are coming out at Wal Mart soon- $150 list, $99 store, so I'm sure Microsoft will win this format fiasco- but who cares? hd discs are ridiculous ideas, slightly behind 8 tracks, audio cassettes and video tapes. The reason they give you 5 discs by mail (in exactly 12 weeks I hear)- is because you have to send the original upc code and guess what- no retailer will give a refund if the upc code is removed!!!
ON THE OTHER HAND- I love my Dish HD-DVR. I pay $5 a month for it and get an additional free one every 12 months. Fifty wonderful channels of HD cost me $20/month. It's HD picture is superb- I hear because it's mpeg 4 and has good flags that tell the hdtv how to deinterlace the 1080i signal to 1080p. There are thousands of great movies in super HD and dozens of stunning HD channels. I can record in real time as many as I want and keep them on the internal hard drive or external hard drive or device forever and copy them and take with me with no drm. The cost of the external hard drive per hd movie is less than $1. I'm sure the hd dvr's from Direct TV, TiVo, and cable are the same. And they work flawlessly with a stunning picture! They're sooo smart and simple to use, even have 300x scan and commercial skip. No way any HD disc format is going to compete. I feel like someone who already had Dolby 5.1 digital sound and was suckered into buying a very expensive 8 track player.

1) it is not dual voltage , it only works in the US _ what if........
2) it does not play many dvd-s created with computer programs it does not play PAL dvd-s
in outher words if you stay put buy what they sell you (and wth the price want to subsidize the fossilized recording and film industry) and have to buy one , buy it
3) for me it only worked with s-video with most lcd and plazma screens i tried.

First off, I've been waiting to buy this 1080p Toshiba when I heard during the winter it was going to be released this Spring. I have a 3 month old Samsung 61" 1080p HDTV and one of the reasons I only give it a 3 is because I also own a PS3 on which I play Blu-ray discs and the Blue-ray blows this thing away. Yes, I'm using Monster HDMI cables on both and Yes I've set the player to 1080p and Yes I aam using an HDMI receiver for the sound system. But the sound is not the issue. It's the picuture. There is absolutely NO COMPARISON between the picture quality of my Blu-ray movies and the Hd-dvd movies I've been playing on this 1080p Toshiba. I do have duplicate movies and the definition, sharpness and wow-factor of the Blu-ray movies makes watching movies on this Toshiba HD-DVD player quite disappointing. I did so much research regarding Blu-ray and Hd-dvd. Well-respected electronics websites, as well as many consumers, claim there is no difference between the picture of Hd-dvd and Blu-ray. Trust me - there's a big difference. And my second complaint about this player is the supposed "Upconversion." Try to "upconvert" a regular DVD to 1080p on a 1080p TV and you can actually see that the player is trying to "upconvert" the picture. The resolution goes to 4dpi and if you look hard you will see the screen get clear, then blurry, clear then blurry, as the player tries UNSUCESSFULLY to "upconvert." It is ridiculous. The only thing it will do is make you throw up. I can pop the regular dvd back into my $50 Wal-mart dvd player and the picture is so much better. So what I have to do in this Toshiba is set the resolution to 480p or 480i every time I want to watch regular DVDs on it so that the player doesn't try to "upconvert" them. Then the picture's nice and clear as it is on a regular DVD player.

My last issue is that the player is slow, not too bad, but slower than a regular DVD player. I've heard that it's faster than Toshiba's first Hd-dvd players, but it still loads fairly slow and takes my TV about 10-15 seconds to recognize that the player is on has an Hd-dvd in it.

If you have a 1080p TV like I do, I recommend you pay the extra money and buy a Blu-ray player or a PS3 if you want to have an incredible picture experience. This thing just doesn't come close.

I think i'm confused. I recently purchased this product in order to fully showcase my new samsung 1080p tv. with such great reviews i was looking forward to the product. when i opened the box, i discovered that the toshiba HD DVD player only came with an RCA cable!!!!!! what a JOKE! wow, i guess paying $300+ for an HD DVD player only gets you RCA cables. i had to go out and buy a $30 HDMI cable in order to get the HD benefit. what a joke. that totally rubbed me the wrong way that i will only give this product 1 star. the picture is good and the features are nice, but an RCA CABLE, come on! what a slap in the face.