Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba HD-A35 1080p HD DVD Player

My first entry into high definition dvds was precipitated by an impressive performance of a 32" Sony Bravia LCD HDTV. Its resolution was so improved over a Sharp Aquos (purchased 2+ yrs ago) that my standard definition DVDs looked less impressive. For example, an X-Men Last Stand now showed easily visible digital artifacts that made it less enjoyable.

So I plunged with a new Toshiba A35 player. I have now watched 4 HD DVDs and several standard definition DVDs and can say they are awesome. The Last Stand DVD indeed improved in appearance, definition, and, most importantly, enjoyment. While I would not necessarily get this for the SD DVD improvements, they are in fact beautiful. I do not think I would replace my SD DVDs with HD DVDs -- but I've thought about it.

Operation is pretty standard. The firmware update worked smoothly (via direct ethernet connection into an Airport Express wireless to my DSL). I did need to set dynamic IP settings to ensure no intranet difficulties. I just left it plugged in so when I try out the internet connectivity DVDs I will have easy access. Remote is satisfactory, but not as many options as my Pioneer Elite DVD player. On the other hand, that remote also controls the tv volume, power, channel, and most importantly, the input source on the tv. Are you tired of having four or five different remotes sitting around? This helps a bit.

My connection to the Sony Bravia is via HDMI. Picture is beautiful. The Chronicles of Riddick HD DVD is spectacular. The picture is detailed, crisp, fast responding with no discernible digital artifacts, and otherwise thrilling. Stardust reveals an incredibly horrid Michelle Pfeiffer as the wicked witch, but also dazling special effects. Bourne Identity (one of the box freebies) was also impressive, though with less graphical fanfare than Riddick. Some stress with the other box freebie, 300. At first the graininess was a bit distracting. Several have mentioned this at IMDB, and eventually I accepted it as an artist statement by the director. 300 is so good, that you are drawn into the story and ambience -- closest I felt to being at the movies in a long time.

The HD DVD experience is truly exciting. The choice between Blu-Ray and HD DVD was tough. Ultimately I went with this (which apparently is resonant with the last 2007 upsurge in HD DVD and Player sales). My guess is that the studios aligned with a particular format will just make their content available on both media -- how can you not? If you are skittish about the format war, wait. Or use some of those points you have accumulated... I am looking forward to the release of the Lord of the Rings in HD format. I would like Fifth Element, but that's in the Blu-Ray camp today.

I have read that the VHS-Beta formats was largely settled by the porn industry going VHS. So will that be the case here?

I am completely satisfied with the choice of the A35: it offers a wide variety of enhancements and features. It is a bit slow on start-up, but maybe a firmware update will improve that. Right now the question is which HD DVDs to get next...

PS: I just updated the software (2/17/08). Can't say what impact it has had. I had never had a software hang-up (as some have reported). It did seem snappier in start-up -- but I might have fantasized that.

I've had an A3 for a short period of time (~3-4 weeks) and since I was very impressed by the overall picture quality of HD DVD movies and subsequently bought a new 24p-capable 1080p plasma I decided to step up, get all the lossless audio codec support etc.
Originally I was eyeballing the XA2 for its (supposedly) superior upconversion of regular SD DVDs - due to my job I'm a big fan of Silicon Optix' Teranex/HQV technology - but after extensive research including countless visits to my local (NYC) stores I concluded that if there's any difference in scaling quality between XA2's HQV and A35's ABT chip then it must be very subtle or rather marginal because I couldn't really spot anything. Also A35's HD picture quality was reportedly a tad sharper though I could only see it in very few cases. The often touted "build quality" slogan never made any sense to me; I wanted a desktop optical disc player for home entertainment purposes, not a ruggedized military-grade mobile player - there's no sandstorm in our living room and it's a well-built brownstone so by the time a serious earthquake would knock my player to the floor half the city would be destroyed, taking US and world economy with it... long story short I could not justify the extra $150-200 the XA2's backlit remote control would cost - A35's remote lacks the backlight - so after I sold my barely used A3 for my friend I finally made the call and ordered this unit.
Shipping was quick and got it just in time to have everything in place for Christmas. First I upgraded the firmware - despite the network connection I burned it to a CD, better safe than sorry - then paired with my new TV and boy, we were impressed even beyond A3's level when we started watching the new Blade Runner HD DVD!
Excellent picture quality, excellent sound quality, right out of the box and despite I've never been the type of "watch all the extra including deleted scenes" guy with regular SD DVDs I think HD DVD's interactive features are really great.
We also love the region-free nature of HD DVD, the fact that imported movies - from EU and Asia - all play fine over here: studios should not be able to control what, where, how or when I watch as long as I pay for it, plain and simple.
Upconversion quality is really great and so far even those notoriously problematic Netflix discs played fine: I only recall one HD DVD playback problem but even then cleaning fingerprints off the disc fixed it.
There isn't any straight-out negative thing I can say but I have encountered few small annoyances and one bigger:
- I still think 30+ seconds for boot-up and another 10s to play is long,
- I'm a bit perplexed by this 1080p24 vs regular DVDs problem (there should be an automatic switch),
- I don't understand why this player cannot play movies from the network (it's wired, not a spotty wireless connection!) nor off the USB port, say VC1/264 first then Xvid/Divx later (PS3, anyone?).
And here's my only major annoyance: the return playback system or rather the lack thereof. What monkey-brained executive figured it will be a good idea to replace the well.-working standard DVD 'return' feature, I don't know but surely he is so clueless about this market he should be fired immediately...
Currently HD DVD doesn't offer any kind of classic DVD-style return after stopping playback - if you just hit Stop then you are screwed, period. Your movie will start from the beginning next time and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead first you have to make a bookmark by pressing button B then you can press Stop so you may return to it from the Bookmarks menu upon restart... really counter-intuitive, flies against the conventional DVD feature (which, of course, still works fine with regular DVD!) and makes no sense whatsoever: in most cases you stop a movie when someone or something unexpected interrupts you so there's very little chance you will follow this stupid procedure. I really would like to see a this return function fixed ie. stopping playback would automatically add a bookmark so at least you have a chance to return manually although wading through those non-skippable logos and intros to get to the bookmarks list would still ruin the feeling, the movie experience...
4.5 stars but there's no half star I give 5 stars because it's closer to 5 in my eyes with room to make it more perfect.

Here's note for anybody who got confused or scared by the recent news about Warner's upcoming 'defection' from HD DVD's camp: how much a high quality upconverting DVD player would cost today?
Right, around $200-300 or more (ie upcoming king of the hill Oppo 983HD).
How much this unit cost right now with added HD DVD playback etc?
That's right, $269 as of today... and we're talking about the highly unlikely worst case scenario here, if Toshiba would drop HD DVD tomorrow - with over 1M unit sold it won't happen anytime soon, I think.
Best value out there as of today (mid-January 2008), period.

I am a big old skeptic. I read reviews of stuff I want to buy and always seem to be overly influenced by the few negative reviews I read on a product, and consequently, not wanting to be an unlucky consumer, I avoid that product. However, I think I got lucky with this purchase. Not only is it a good-looking machine, it works beautifully. Upconverting? Oh, please, surely that claim is just to reel people in, I bet it doesn't upconvert...wait a minute...amazing! The quality between watching the standard Spider-Man DVD on my old DVD player, and watching it on the HD-A35 'upconverted' is VERY easy to see. I'm truly impressed. As for watching HD-DVDs, it blows you away, the quality is the best I've seen on any of my friends' HD equipment. I have a 1080p Panasonic plasma, and it really does the TV justice. As for sound, I'm not really a sound man, I am easily impressed, so watching a movie with the sound coming from the TV speakers or plugged through the rather crappy Philips DVD/3 speaker system is also fine for me. But I know that if you are a sound man/woman, go for the HD-A35, not the HD-A30, because it is the latest model to cope with those really fancy audio receiver surround-sound 5.1 thingys.
In all, this was a very worthwhile purchase, and seeing as I heard that the porno industry are siding with HD DVD as opposed to Blu-Ray, I'm not too worried. Even if Blu-Ray turn out to be the winners in the end, this machine does such a good job of upconverting my current, standard DVD discs, I won't care.

This player is just awesome. The deal is even better: 7 free HD-DVD movies + free shipping. Hooked it up to my Sammy HT-S5087W 1080P DLP and my jaw dropped. Switched the output to 1080p/60 and what a picture. It is unreal. Upconvert looks almost like a true HD, very hard to see the difference (watched Riddick).

Pros: Everything. HD picture is unbeatable. Upconvert also. Lots of features. It is future-proof. Looks awesome (if that matters), etc., etc.

Cons: Remote controler doesn't have a back-lit, although it glows in the dark.

Summa Summarium, if you need to buy an HD-DVD player, buy this device and you will not be sorry.

First off,Im kind of pissed that a couple days after I got this player, amazon dropped the price from what I paid $460 to $398. For you, thats a great deal. This is one of toshiba's newest hd players. Don't waste your time with any of the other players. This player has everything you need. If you have a new generation receiver that can decode dolby true hd or dts hd then you definitely want this player. I originally had the hd-xa2. The problem with this player is that, it decodes the dolby true hd signal on the player and then passes on the sound data to the receiver. The receiver needs to have an unprocessed sound data or the audio will show up on the receiver processed and play as multichannel audio. Now what that means in English, with the hd-xa2 you wont get a red dobly digital emblem on the receiver, with the hd-a35 you will. Another plus to this player is that it costs about a $100 less than the hd-xa2. If you're thinking you don't need this player because you don't have a capable receiver, its always good to go with the most current and top of the line product so that in the future if you do decide to get a new receiver, you won't have to get another hd-player. Overall, I am pleased with the player, dolby true hd sounds awesome and it looks beautiful. If you are one of those people undecided on blue rays or hd dvds, do your homework. Hd-dvds are the way to go. You might see more blue rays out there, but thats just because hd doesnt have as many movie studios making them exclusive movies. But times are changing, dreamworks and paramount are exclusive with hd-dvd, along with all of the porn industry. You know whos going to win now.