Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player

This player performs exactly as advertised. It plays HD DVDs, DVDs and CD audio discs and nothing else. Although some have complained of seeing jagged lines in 1080p mode, I don't have this problem with my HDTV, which incidentally does not support 1080p/24 mode, so I have used 1080p mode with the player. I also have no way to test whether or not this player only downconverts audio as my 3 year old receiver can't accept HDMI inputs and has no Dolby TrueHD decoding, so I have to use downconversion from the player. The documentation seems to indicate that the player may be capable of sending out unconverted audio streams via bitstream, but I have no way to test this. There must be some kind of difference between the A-35 and this model to justify the higher cost of the A-35, so perhaps the other review is right that the A-30 can't send out unconverted audio streams.

Pros:
Plays HD DVDs very well.
Upconverts DVDs very well.
Excellent quality audio, even if it is downconverted to DTS or AC3.
DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL were tested by me and all work fine. I've read that CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW and DVD+RW all work, but I didn't test them.
Automatically sends DVD output in 4:3 or 16:9 depending on how the DVD is authored. In other words, if the DVD is 16:9, the player sends out 16:9 video and if the DVD is 4:3, it sends out 4:3 video. This is a nice feature.

Cons:
Won't play VCD, SVCD, Divx, MP3, JPG.
Will only play region 1 and region 0 (all region) DVDs.
Won't play PAL video at all.
Won't play HD DVD format on burnable DVD DL discs, even though HD DVD format explicitly allows this and earlier generation players were reported to play such discs.
Firmware updates are SLOW. It took 15+ minutes to update my firmware from 1.1 to 1.3 (1.3 is also known as 1300U).

To be fair, Toshiba makes no claims at all to play anything in my Con list above, but I just want to be clear that if someone expects this to be a "play everything" kind of player that it certainly is NOT that. Interestingly, the player did play a test DVD I have of MPEG-1 video, so the player could support VCD and SVCD too if the firmware was written to allow it.

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.

***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.