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| Date Reviewed: 01/26/2008 |
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Strengths: 1080p for HD DVD player, Good upconversion, firmware can be upgraded direct with its ethernet port, free HD movies!
Weaknesses: None
Summary: I got it from amazon.com. The price is very reasonable. It comes with two free HD movies in box and another five via mail in rebate. Amazon also had a promotion with another 5 free HD movies. So it turned out to be 12 free HD movies. The player is very very good and very very reliable. I upgraded the firmware according to the notice in the box as soon as I received the player. At the first time, the netwrok cannot be connected, but I googled the issues and found answers on web. The upconversion to 1080p is also excellent. I am watching 007 DVD in this player with my samsung 46" 1080p LCD HDTV. It seems I am watching 007 in a theater since the picture quality is excellent. I also tried watch 300 in 1080p 24ps mode. It is more clear! So far I have enjoyed more than 10 HD DVD movies, I can tell you is is a better buy than Blu-ray players since all of blu-ray players are priced more than $300. I do not know why some buyers prefer Blu-ray to HD DVD. Basically, they do the same job on high definition movies, so why don't you buy a affordable one?
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| Date Reviewed: 12/26/2007 |
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Strengths: Sleek design, excellent crisp picture quality, easy to install firmware updates.
Weaknesses: Price???
Summary: The Toshiba A-30 is a beautiful piece of machinery. It's sleek black design will compliment any media system. The pictue quality when hooked up with our Aquos is out of this world. The picture actually looks like it is going to jump out and grab you. The firmware updates were almost effortless. As far as price, you can get a resonable price out there which can also include up to 12 "free" HD DVDs. Do your research.
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| Date Reviewed: 12/18/2007 |
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Strengths: Easy to setup/install; Great picture and sound; firmware updating available for downloading
Weaknesses: Boot time is little bit slow. If power off, the player will play a disk from beginning instead of remembering where it was.
Summary: Based on the price, promotions and shipping from amazon, I recommend that you buy this one. It has great quality to price ratio. It is HD-DVD format and you have a lot of choice s to buy the disks.
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| Date Reviewed: 03/18/2008 |
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Strengths: Improving old DVD video, audio seems to be improved also.
Weaknesses: None in the player, format has been terminated.
Summary: The free HD-DVD's with the unit and promised retail, for more than I paid for the player. I have a DVD player that upgrades the DVD video and it was a great improvement from a standard player. This player adds depth and more clarity to the video. The HD-DVDs are superb. It is disappointing to see this format come to an end. I bought it on line, and two days later Toshiba and Microsoft pulled the plug. After playing some old DVDs and seeing the video quality I would buy this player again.
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| Date Reviewed: 11/14/2007 |
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Strengths: Great right out of the box, just hook up the HDMI cable & go...
Weaknesses: Firmware upgrades available on the website but, need to let us know which version needs upgrade.
Summary: I have a great SONY 1080P 50" HD TV & everytime I play a DVD something is lacking. (Also, my cable company can not provide the picture that this TV deserves, only 1080i.) So, I had to purchase this DVD player that can show the picture the way is was meant to be shown.
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| Date Reviewed: 11/18/2007 |
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Strengths: Excellent picture quality. Sleek look is a bonus. Great deal from Amazon with 7 free HD DVD's. Overall good just needs the updates.
Weaknesses: Has some issues with not wanting to read the disc when left in the player when powered off. Other than that no issues at all.
Summary: This for the money is well worth it in my opinion. The firmware updates are on the wat to take care of any of the problems. The sound and picture quality is unmatched. It also upconverts my other DVD's better than the last upconverting DVD player I had.
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| Date Reviewed: 12/06/2007 |
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 HD-DVD Strengths: Great picture, great sound..
Weaknesses: Broke after a few weeks.
Summary: Loved the unit, when it worked but it broke after a few weeks so I am waiting for a more stable unit before I jump back into the world of being neutral.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/01/2008 |
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 Excellent 1080p quality HD-DVD player Strengths: Excellent image quality, firmware updates possible, Dolby TrueHD decoding, lot of free HD-DVDs
Weaknesses: Firmware update is must, Blue Ray looks better then HD-DVD IMHO
Summary: Picture quality was excellent but it was taking lot of time for initial load. Then I come to know, if we update the firmware it would decrease the initial load time. So finally I spoke with Toshiba people and got the update CD and now it is working great. Also I got lot of free HD movies, 2 in box, 3 in Best buy store and 5 via mail. Dolby TrueHD support is awesome. I still think PS3 (Blue Ray) has best picture quality. Given a preference, I would stick to PS3 IMHO but as you might know some movies only comes on HD-DVD and others only on Blue Ray. So have to keep both.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/23/2008 |
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Strengths: Less expensive than Bluray. Crystally sharp picture for its 1080p resolution. Easy to hook up. Worth the money to buy.
Weaknesses: Boot is still a little bit longer than I expected.
Summary: This HD-DVD player is a nice equipment to own for its nice cost-benefit ratio. The price cuts you half the budget down if you consider buying a Bluray player. In addition, this HD-DVD player won’t give you the trouble to buy another higher versioned player simply because the disc version is upgraded. Bluray has this headache which scares me away. This player can also decode many types of HD sounds while the Bluray player with similar audio features costs triple or even more. Since my receiver is 5.1 and my room is not very large, I don’t need to buy an A35 to have 7.1 capabilities. This player can satisfy my needs and save me $100. I am very happy with it for its price and performance. Thanks Toshiba!
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| Date Reviewed: 04/29/2008 |
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Strengths: Greate picture quality; Nice design and appearance;
Weaknesses: Discontinued and No more HD-DVD disks after June 2008; Boot time is still a bit slow.
Summary: 2008-04-30 02:07:21 Price is the most advantage of this 1080p player. I have received the 5 free HD-DVD movies and amazon.com even gave $50 GC for future purchase. The picture quality of HD-DVD is, as expected, superb, and DVD upscaling is the best I have ever seen. In summary, I am still pleased with this unit.
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| Date Reviewed: 04/21/2008 |
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Strengths: -Great Upconversion, and 1080p output.
Weaknesses: -Startup time
Summary: I grabbed this before HD-DVD officially died for a great price and I'm not disappointed. My old DVD player died so this works great as an upconversion machine on top of playing HD-DVDs.
Now that HD-DVD is officially dead its a great time to pick up cheap movies - and this player is a great way to play those.
Highly recommended. However, if you have a high-end sound system you might want to go for the a35. I don't so Im happy with this model.
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| Date Reviewed: 02/17/2008 |
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Strengths: Awesome picture quality, great sound, slick appearance
Weaknesses: Somewhat long load times, occasionally locks up
Summary: With the cost of a 1080p player finally dropping below $250 (yes, we all know why), I decided it was worth jumping into the HD arena. So, I bought the Toshiba HD-A30 based on user reviews, but also based on the fact that I got two free hd-dvds in the box (as with all third gen players from Toshiba), along with the five free by mail (mind you, the selection could certainly be better, and I haven't yet gotten these), and three additonal movies free due to store promotion....all for just over $230. With respect to the quality of video and audio, I was quite pleased. Most, if not all, of the movies are encoded using VC-1, and I have yet to notice any compression artifacts or other digital anomalies associated with the transfers. I believe h.264 and mpeg 2 are the other two codecs in use by HD-DVDs, but I haven't seen any HD movies using these. The audio is often one of the "enhanced" versions of DTS or DD, but since my receiver only handles standard DD and DTS, I have not been able to experience these formats in all their glory. In general, picture quality has been spectacular, though once in a while I do notice funky color gradients (mostly in reddish areas of the video). My assumption is that HDMI v1.3 would take care of that, but since my panel is not equipped with it, I'll just deal with it. All in all, that's a pretty minor issue to me. Plus, I figure it won't be too long before I upgrade to a newer television anyway. The only other significant issue, or rather inconvenience, is the occasional freezing of the player. What's strange is that if it does happen, it occurs early in the movie, say within the first 10 minutes. Then it'll work perfectly the second time. Hopefully, Toshiba will fix this in a future firmware update, but in the mean time, it's mostly just a minor pain.
While I don't have any idea what will happen to the HD-DVD format now that WB will no longer support it, I do know it's a nice format with great features. The Toshiba HD-A30 (along with the A3, the 720p/1080i capable little brother) provides a fairly cheap means to enter the high
def disc market. Will I be disapointed if HD-DVDs lose the format wars? Sure! But, so long as my player continues to work, I'll be able to watch the movies I have, and in the mean time, I won't stop buying them!
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| Date Reviewed: 01/25/2008 |
- webbedhand1
- Member Since:
Feb 2006
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Reviews
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Strengths: looks great, firmware works well, sharp pictures, excellent price
Weaknesses: a little slow in bootup, minor if you don't mind waiting half a minute
Summary: Setup was easy, just hooking this up to my 50" Samsung plasma, booting it up, loaded the "300" HD-DVD that came with it, and wow, the picture was amazing. Next, tried standard DVD (SD) and upconversion was actually quite good.
Even if HD-DVD becomes less popular later, I look at this player as a great upconverting DVD player as well as a bonus full HD-DVD player since I have hundreds of SD DVDs which I don't plan to upgrade any time soon.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/21/2008 |
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Strengths: Excellent upscaling, sleek design, compact, extraordinary picture quality, RJ45
Weaknesses: No coax audio out (requires a converter from TOS link), long boot time, no USB, no Wifi
Summary: The Toshiba A30 HD player does and excellent job of playing standard definition DVDS and upscaling them to 1080i. In fact, it does a far superior job of this than my Philips 6240. Upgrading the firmware is simple and Toshiba provides plenty of instructions on how to go about that on their site. The RJ45 jack on the back of the player is standard on all HD players but is a little behind the times for a cutting edge household that runs on Wifi only. Who wants to run ethernet cable into the living room? There's also no USB port that might have let a user install a WAP device. With no network connectivity, I upgraded my player by burning the firmware ISO to disk and stickig it in the player. The price of this player is currently fluctuating greatly. If you can get it below $199, I'd say you have a very good deal if not the best value on getting true 1080p HD onto your new TV.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/15/2008 |
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Strengths: 1080p quality, sleek, plug and watch
Weaknesses: you have to update, but it only takes a few moments
Summary: I bought this for my mom and dad for christmas and they seem to like it. It was the best deal for HD players at the time. IT is great quality, fun to play around and watch movies on. The only thing that was not cool was that i had to update, but I guess the thing to say is that thank gosh it has an update, to solve some kinks. So best bang for the buck and the 1080p.
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