Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba HD-EP30 - HD DVD Player - With 1080P Full HD3 - Plus 2 Free HD DVD's
Toshiba HD-EP30 - HD DVD Player - With 1080P Full HD3 - Plus 2 Free HD DVD's
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £1,000.00Average Customer Rating
(4.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share71 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
Flawless.
(5 out of 5) by Videot on Nov 10, 2007This player is excellent. Connected by HDMI at 1080p24 to a Full-HD plasma screen, the picture quality is limited essentially by what came out of the camera. I can't fault it, and as a trained broadcast engineer I'm exceedingly fussy. The scaler does a good job of standard-definition DVDs too (Region 2 only).
The internet connection was easy to set up - turn on DHCP and DNS, plug it into the router, and that's it. I only did this out of curiosity - I don't expect ever to use it, although I did use it to flash the firmware to the latest version. This went without a hitch but took about 45 minutes.
There is just a little fan noise, but it's only perceptible in a very quiet room and is completely masked once the audio starts.
There were two discs in the box - 300 and The Bourne Supremacy. Five additional free discs can be obtained by downloading and filling in a form.
The internet connection was easy to set up - turn on DHCP and DNS, plug it into the router, and that's it. I only did this out of curiosity - I don't expect ever to use it, although I did use it to flash the firmware to the latest version. This went without a hitch but took about 45 minutes.
There is just a little fan noise, but it's only perceptible in a very quiet room and is completely masked once the audio starts.
There were two discs in the box - 300 and The Bourne Supremacy. Five additional free discs can be obtained by downloading and filling in a form.
51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent high definition player
(5 out of 5) by S. Shafran on Dec 8, 2007 (UK)I was intially very sceptical about the merits of High definition DVD, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Could it really provide noticeably better picture quality than what I was already viewing, with a Denon 1920 upscaling DVD player ? The Denon provides a great picture on my set-up, which includes a Panasonic AE900 projector projecting onto a screen just under seven feet wide. I was watching the prices of these high def players with interest, and when the price of the Toshiba HD-EP30 dropped to below £200 with seven free films thrown in, I decided that now was the time to find out.
The Toshiba HD-DVD player comes with an HDMI cable included. Setting the player up was a matter of a few seconds, plug in the power lead, optical output to the amplifier (you will need to buy an optical lead if you want the best audio quality, unless your amp can process both audio and video through HDMI), HDMI lead to the projector, and switch on. The player takes about a minute to power up, not really a problem for me as the projector also takes a good few seconds to power on and reach full lamp brightness. The player takes a further few seconds to recognise an HD-DVD or SD-DVD disc, then the HD-DVD logo appears and you're in.
My projector being native 720p resolution, I didn't even bother with the higher 1080p resolution setting. At 720p, the picture quality is astounding. HD-DVD came out razor sharp and the colours literally burst onto the screen. There is a very clear and noticeable difference between HD-DVD and standard definition (SD) DVD.
The sound quality is also extremely good. HD-DVD sound via optical is transferred at a higher bitrate than SD-DVD, but still compressed. For Dolby True-HD you will need an amplifier capable of taking sound via HDMI. Me, I don't think I would be able to tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio - I think it would depend on how expensive your speakers and amplifier are. I can say though, that the sound quality from an HD-DVD was noticeably better than the sound from an SD-DVD.
I tried a few SD-DVD's to assess the upscaling capabilities of the Toshiba compared to the Denon. The Denon 1920 uses a Faroudja processor for upscaling and I've always been extremely happy with the quality. The Toshiba uses an Anchor Bay processor for upscaling. Maybe it's the fact that the Denon is a couple of years out of date, but the Toshiba was noticeably better at upscaling DVD's than the Denon. Within a few hours of testing, I knew that I would never watch another film on the Denon again, unless it was region 1 (the Toshiba can play HD-DVD's from any country as HD-DVD is a region free format, but it will only play region 2 DVD's).
Although it's reportedly very easy to upgrade to the latest firmware via the ethernet link, I didn't bother. Every disc I tried played fine. I decided that if I came across a problem or a particular reason to do so at any stage, I would upgrade the firmware, but if not....
In summary, this is a fantastic HD-DVD player, and a superb DVD upscaler as well. An upscaled DVD will never match the quality of an HD-DVD, at least not on a large screen, but on a smaller screen I guess the player is worth the money for the upscaling capabilities alone. For HD-DVD, if you have £200 and want stunning picture quality and sound, you can't go wrong. I can't help thinking, if 720p quality is this good, what will the full 1080p resolution be like ? If you own a TV capable of 1080p resolution you're in a better position than me to find out !
The Toshiba HD-DVD player comes with an HDMI cable included. Setting the player up was a matter of a few seconds, plug in the power lead, optical output to the amplifier (you will need to buy an optical lead if you want the best audio quality, unless your amp can process both audio and video through HDMI), HDMI lead to the projector, and switch on. The player takes about a minute to power up, not really a problem for me as the projector also takes a good few seconds to power on and reach full lamp brightness. The player takes a further few seconds to recognise an HD-DVD or SD-DVD disc, then the HD-DVD logo appears and you're in.
My projector being native 720p resolution, I didn't even bother with the higher 1080p resolution setting. At 720p, the picture quality is astounding. HD-DVD came out razor sharp and the colours literally burst onto the screen. There is a very clear and noticeable difference between HD-DVD and standard definition (SD) DVD.
The sound quality is also extremely good. HD-DVD sound via optical is transferred at a higher bitrate than SD-DVD, but still compressed. For Dolby True-HD you will need an amplifier capable of taking sound via HDMI. Me, I don't think I would be able to tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio - I think it would depend on how expensive your speakers and amplifier are. I can say though, that the sound quality from an HD-DVD was noticeably better than the sound from an SD-DVD.
I tried a few SD-DVD's to assess the upscaling capabilities of the Toshiba compared to the Denon. The Denon 1920 uses a Faroudja processor for upscaling and I've always been extremely happy with the quality. The Toshiba uses an Anchor Bay processor for upscaling. Maybe it's the fact that the Denon is a couple of years out of date, but the Toshiba was noticeably better at upscaling DVD's than the Denon. Within a few hours of testing, I knew that I would never watch another film on the Denon again, unless it was region 1 (the Toshiba can play HD-DVD's from any country as HD-DVD is a region free format, but it will only play region 2 DVD's).
Although it's reportedly very easy to upgrade to the latest firmware via the ethernet link, I didn't bother. Every disc I tried played fine. I decided that if I came across a problem or a particular reason to do so at any stage, I would upgrade the firmware, but if not....
In summary, this is a fantastic HD-DVD player, and a superb DVD upscaler as well. An upscaled DVD will never match the quality of an HD-DVD, at least not on a large screen, but on a smaller screen I guess the player is worth the money for the upscaling capabilities alone. For HD-DVD, if you have £200 and want stunning picture quality and sound, you can't go wrong. I can't help thinking, if 720p quality is this good, what will the full 1080p resolution be like ? If you own a TV capable of 1080p resolution you're in a better position than me to find out !
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent upscaler for SD movies; Excellent 'dead format' player
(5 out of 5) by Jason on Feb 19, 2008 (Warwickshire, England)Some 'reviewers' have given this 1-star simply because it doesn't play Blue Ray movies. Guess what? It never did, it never claimed to.
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If you DON'T care about High-Def, then this is a *excellent* buy just for the upscaling alone, which gives a near-HD quality to the existing DVD collection which you've spent your hard-earned money on.
As for the 2 HD-DVDs, you can sell them if you wish because there are a lot of people like me looking for firesales.
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If you DO care about High-Def, and your favourite films are out NOW in HD-DVD, then its still worth considering (especially at this insanely cheap price). Again, prices of HD-DVD films are about to drop big-time, so you could build a decent High-Def movie collection for a very cheap price. And while films exclusive to HD-DVD (Transformers for instance) will be re-released on Blue Ray, that won't happen overnight....so why wait????
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Worse case scenario: You've spend £77 (or less) on one of the best upscaling DVD players money can buy.
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If you DON'T care about High-Def, then this is a *excellent* buy just for the upscaling alone, which gives a near-HD quality to the existing DVD collection which you've spent your hard-earned money on.
As for the 2 HD-DVDs, you can sell them if you wish because there are a lot of people like me looking for firesales.
----------------------------------
If you DO care about High-Def, and your favourite films are out NOW in HD-DVD, then its still worth considering (especially at this insanely cheap price). Again, prices of HD-DVD films are about to drop big-time, so you could build a decent High-Def movie collection for a very cheap price. And while films exclusive to HD-DVD (Transformers for instance) will be re-released on Blue Ray, that won't happen overnight....so why wait????
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Worse case scenario: You've spend £77 (or less) on one of the best upscaling DVD players money can buy.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
great hd player
(5 out of 5) by S. Flynn on Nov 9, 2007 (manchester uk)just bought this toshiba hd ep30 this week wow the picture quality is amazing. great bargain also 199 with 7 dvds{2 in box}cant go wrong with blu ray still around the £300 mark. makes your tv come to life
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent Upscaling DVD Player - with HDDVD capability as well!
(5 out of 5) by R. Jones on Mar 22, 2008 (Wales, United Kingdom)This really is a great piece of kit. I was very apprehensive about buying it for £59.99, worried about HD-DVD being phased out etc. For the money, this blows my old Pioneer dvd player out of the water, with regards upscaling. OK, my Pioneer only does 576 progressive output (component), but it was a very good picture nevertheless on my Panasonic 37PX60 Plasma. I've got the HD-EP30 connected via HDMI to my plasma instead, and it looks stunning via 1080i. The picture on Star Wars (A New Hope) is absolutely amazing. Don't be shunned into avoiding this DVD Player due to all the fuss around the retirement of HD-DVD. It's a massive shame that HD-DVD is being phased out, as looking at the 2 free disks you get with the unit, the picture is amazing and the menus/ interactivity is very impressive to say the least. This player really is a BARGAIN...