Toshiba HD-A1: HD DVD Player (US Import)

Introduction

Just a few months ago, Toshiba managed to get its first HD DVD player onto store shelves in the United States, beating the rival Blu-ray format out of the door.


Although I personally have no format or brand loyalty bias (I just wish the two had managed to create a unified format), it's undeniable that those who DID instead wait for Blu-ray were, for the large part, disappointed by the video quality of the early launch titles. As such, there's been what seems like a large number of ex-Blu-ray supporters - myself included - who have had to, for the time being, eat humble pie and make a late change to their HD format plans.

In the months that it's been available, Toshiba has worked on further improving the rough-around-the-edges HD-A1 by means of firmware upgrades. This review concerns itself with the latest version at the time of writing (July 1, 2006). So, don't think that Toshiba have rushed this thing out the door and abandoned it, because the support is ongoing. They make this very clear in the manual. NOTE: As of originally posting this review, Toshiba has released firmware version 2.0. The review has been updated accordingly.

The HD-A1 is, in terms of performance, supposedly identical to its pricier brother, the HD-XA1. The only differences are mechanical - the HD-A1 lacks the automatic flip-down door on the front of the unit, an RS-232 port (to allow other home theatre devices to control the player) and the backlit remote. The price you pay for these added features? An additional $300 (RRP).

Information for European importers
The HD-A1 is an American player and as such has been designed for use on 110v (US, Canada etc) only. It is usable in the UK with a small, inexpensive stepdown transformer. Toshiba has officially rated the HD-A1's power consumption at 90 watts, meaning that a "100VA" stepdown should be appropriate. (It's what I use, and my HD-A1 hasn't gone up in smoke yet!)

First Looks

To cut to the chase, the HD-A1 isn't going to win any beauty contests. Some have likened its design to that of an old VCR. It's true that the player certainly is boxy and, compared to today's slimline DVD players, large.

It also features a piano black glossy front. I can't for the life of me understand the current manufacturer obsession with this because I don't think it looks good, and it picks up fingerprints and occasionally scratches. It makes little sense that the part of the player you're going to be touching the most has this finish!

Nevertheless, when you consider that this is new technology in a case smaller (albeit uglier) than today's high-end DVD players, the HD-A1 doesn't really offend too much.

By the way, inside the box, Toshiba give you manuals, a sheet of paper that tells people experiencing teething problems to call Toshiba support and NOT return the player toe the store, a power cord, Stereo audio cables, and - get this - an old-fashioned standard-def Composite video cable. I'm assuming that the latter of these is Toshiba playing some sort of April fool's joke.

Remote Control

It's easy to tell that this player's been rushed out the door quickly by the fact that the remote has several buttons that are blank, with no function assigned.



The HD-A1's remote, for some reason, reminds me of something out of the Bang & Olufsen school of design. It has a brushed steel finish, is long, thin, and reasonably heavy. Curiously, the number buttons and "SET UP" are hidden under a flap at the bottom. The remote draws power from four (4!) AAA-size batteries. My player came supplied with these, but apparently, earlier ones didn't. You see? The technology is improving all the time.

The HD-A1 remote control can also control your TV's mute, power, channel, and volume functions. Out of the box, it's of course rigged up to control Toshiba TVs. Holding "TV Code" and entering a number sequence from the instruction manual will let you use these functions with other brands of TV. (Handy tip: the remote code for the new Sony BRAVIA LCDs is 1111).

On peeling off the protective layer that the remote ships with, I discovered that the HD-A1 remote acheives a new low in ridiculous design: the fingerprint-o-riffic piano black gloss has been used ON THE REMOTE! Yes - the one part you're going to be touching the most. Seriously, what is the obsession with this glossy finish?

Picture Tweaks

Other than toggling the video output mode (between Analogue Component Video and digital HDMI), as well as switching between 480p, 720p and 1080i output resolutions, the HD-A1 offers no video tweaks at all. Except, that is, for an option to change the Black Level between 0 and 7.5 IRE. European users will probably have never seen this option before - it's really just there for the sake of the NTSC TV system's strange design.

I'd really appreciate a Sharpness control, because somewhere along the line, edge enhancement is being added to my standard-definition discs. There's currently a bug in my TV that accentuates edge enhancement (which Sony are working on) but even connecting to a monitor - which adds no unwanted tweaks to the picture at all - showed that the scaling process was creating a little bit of ringing. My old Faroudja-based Panasonic upscaling DVD player lets me soften the picture gradually to conceal this and I'd appreciate a similar tweak on the HD-A1.

Video Performance (HD DVD)

This is really difficult to judge because as of yet, there have been no other HD DVD players released. Well, OK, there's been one from American electronics manufacturer RCA (known on these shores as Thomson), but it's really just the HD-A1 in disguise - same insides, different front panel. In addition, no software I know of lets you play the discs back on a computer.

What I can tell you though, is that the HD-A1 can produce very impressive HD pictures. At the time of writing, the HD DVD titles available are visually superior to what's available on Blu-ray and look better to any HDTV broadcasts I've seen.

The currently released HD DVDs use the (comparatively) new VC1 codec, which has its roots in Microsoft's Windows Media Video codec. So, if you've ever downloaded sample clips from Microsoft's WMV HD sample site and watched them on your PC, then you'll have some idea of what to expect - just at a higher bit rate. This is one of the main reasons why the currently available HD DVD discs look better than the competing Blu-ray ones - the VC1 codec is far more efficient than the old MPEG-2 that Blu-ray discs are currently using.

The first HD DVD I popped in - "Million Dollar Baby" - instantly showed the expected difference. On the FBI warning screen (nice welcome to a new format, huh?), I could actually read the fine text in the FBI badge that read "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity". So, I am now an upstanding young citizen thanks to the added definition of HD DVD. Following this, the "Warner Home Video" logo appears and it's apparent that the logo itself is in full HD resolution, yet the blue sky with clouds behind it was recorded in standard-def. This makes the gain in resolution blatantly obvious.

I'm sure these aren't the most exciting examples of the detail gained - but at least they leave nothing down to individual perception and show a night-and-day difference!

Update: August 25, 2006: Toshiba has released firmware version 2.0 which has improved the quality of the player's 720p output. Previously, when downscaling a 1080p HD DVD disc to 720p for output, the image was not much better than standard definition DVD. As such, I originally suggested that only users with displays adept at handling the player's 1080i output look into the HD-A1. This has now been corrected and while I still recommend using the 1080i output for the best quality, the downscaled 720p output is now far more impressive.

Because the HD-A1's 1080i output is still the method of choice, I recommend that you couple it with a TV that is good at handling 1080i video. Of course, if you can find an HDTV that actually has 1080 lines of resolution - like the new X-Series Sonys - then so much the better. Fortunately, my 1366x768 resolution Sony KDL-32V2000 HDTV does a very good job of taking the 1080 lines and resampling them to fit the available TV resolution.

After I'd watched the film (which, by the way, looked very good but did have some Noise Reduction artefacts and a smidge of edge enhancement - the fault of the disc, not the player), I took a look at the Theatrical Trailer, which is stored on the disc at 480i. I was shocked to say the least - I've always been one of the most critical people I know when it comes to the quality of video transfers, and I realise that any Trailer is unlikely to be reference quality material - but after watching 1080 lines (downscaled to 768 by my TV), going back to 480 is extremely difficult. You have been warned!


On the next page, I test the HD-A1 with standard definition DVDs (remember those?) and discuss usability.

Video Performance (Old SD DVD)

In addition to this, the HD-A1 is also great at playing selected standard definition discs. By "selected", I mean NTSC discs from Regions 1 or 0 only. I realise that PAL is of almost no consequence to most US users (this player after all is a US import), but all the same a more expensive player such as this should surely be able to handle PAL's 576 lines if it can spin HD discs with 1080. (That actually makes my review nice and easy because I only have to test half of the discs I normally would!)

The handling of interlaced video - for playing back television shows, for example - isn't QUITE as good as I've been used to from Faroudja-based players such as the recent Panasonic DVD-S97. I'd assume that that's because the Faroudja-based players benefit from the "DCDi" technology that smooths out the jagged lines left over from deinterlacing. The HD-A1 seems to be attempting something similar, but the effect doesn't look quite as natural.

That said, this player has none of the macroblocking enhancement errors (where blocking artefacts that already exist on the DVD are exaggerated by the player) that show up on Faroudja-based players either, so the overall image is better.

Better still, the player does not suffer from the Chroma Upsampling Error (where the edges of colours appear jagged). That means that all in all, there's a lot to like about it's handling of your DVD back catalogue.

Sadly, it doesn't pass Blacker than Black video, which means that subtle very dark shades of colour will be "crushed together" and displayed as one single black area. The effect is normally very hard to spot, but it'd be good if Toshiba could address this via a firmware upgrade. As I don't have an HD DVD test pattern disc - if such a thing exists yet - I can't tell you for sure if it's doing the same for HD DVDs, but my hunch would be that it is.

Although this player can output HD DVDs in true high definition over Component video (for those of you with HDTVs made before DVI-HDCP and HDMI became common), the upscaling of regular DVDs is still only allowed over HDMI. I can't understand for the life of me why this is but I'm sure it makes sense to some Hollywood executives somewhere.

Sound

Similar to control over the image, there aren't many options to tweak the sound. We're allowed to change the type of audio signal that goes out over the SPDIF output (PCM or Bitstream) as well as the HDMI connector (PCM, Downmixed PCM, or Bitstream).

There's also options in the menu - as you can see - to adjust Dynamic Range Control, as well as Dialog Enhancement. Unfortunately, with or without these options enabled or disabled, I experienced some pretty irritating volume drifting when playing back some standard-def DVDs. The Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the R1 DVD of "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" highlighted this issue - whenever there was loud action (like the bike crashing through the church window), the audio volume seemed to lower dramatically. This is with all of the audio tweaks turned off, so needless to say, I'm a little confused.

For whatever reason, this didn't affect the Digital Coaxial or Optical audio outputs when connected to a 5.1 set-up.

Of course, you also have to tell the player if you have a Stereo or 5.1 speaker setup.

Speed

The HD-A1 takes a full 59 seconds to "boot up". No joke - this first player has been released so early that it actually runs from PC parts (there's a widely circulated video showing the player's insides, revealing a Pentium 4 processor among other things). Even pulling the front panel flap down reveals that the discs are read by a standard PC HD DVD drive (with visible eject button).

After dropping a disc, there's another wait time of either 30 seconds (for standard-def DVDs) or 52 seconds (for HD DVD) before the sparks start to fly. I'm sure those wait times will vary depending on the disc, though.

All the same, this all means that when you turn the player on and want to watch an HD DVD, you can expect to wait about two minutes before your disc actually starts to play video. Yikes. Oh well - at least after waiting for high-def video discs for five years, it's not as big a deal - right?

It's annoying, but these wait times actually sound a lot worse than they are. I'm by no means denying that they exist, but I was surprised at how little they bothered me. The boot-up time has actually decreased due to firmware upgrades, so here's hoping that Toshiba can shave even more precious seconds off with future revisions.

The layer change for SD DVD takes less than one second (and drops to half-resolution video). Supposedly, layer change time will not be an issue with HD DVD because the standard has been designed around this. In theory, players that show a slight freeze between layer changes for HD discs should be the exception rather than the rule - the exact opposite to SD-DVD.

Usability

Once again, in this department, it's clear that the HD-A1 has been rushed out the door. It's by no means hard to use, but the user interface is rarely consistent - it's a real "Frankenstein" player.

Basically, the player can flip between three "modes" - "Wait for a disc to be inserted" mode, Disc Playback mode, and Set Up mode. The latter takes you to a Windows Media Centre-esque screen with a few selectable options and a button to search for new firmware upgrades (if your player is connected to the web via the Ethernet port, that is).

When I first plugged the player in through HDMI, I wasn't getting a picture at all. I soon realised that I had to manually press the "V.OUTPUT" button on the remote to enable HDMI picture mode. That's pretty strange when you consider that studios seem to want us to use the all-digital HDMI output because of the copy protection it allows for. I think that the player should have been set to output HDMI out of the box, but it's not really a big deal.

Playing back DVDs is responsive; I was pleased with the speed of fast-forwarding and rewinding. It's faster than my Panasonic SD-DVD player and, unsurprisingly, is very similar to the speed I get from fast-forwarding DVDs on my PC. That's probably no coincidence.

I should add that while playing a standard-def DVD, I did once get the HD-A1 to crash simply by pressing "Previous Chapter". The effect appeared as garbled video and the player locked up, but this was easily cured by cutting power to the player and starting again.

I'm glad to report that I experienced no "HDMI Error" issues that other users have reported. The player connected directly to my Sony HDTV without any problems. I've heard that some users have had problems with connecting the HD-A1 to their TVs via an HDMI switch. We should expect glitches like these to be fixed in later firmware versions.

I did, however, encounter an HDMI annoyance. When I was reviewing the image quality the HD-A1 puts out, I switched between different displays - an HDTV as well as a monitor. Whenever I unplugged the HDMI cable, the disc would stop and require me to play it back from the very beginning again. That's not going to have consequences for too many people, though.

In addition, changing output resolutions between 480p, 720p and 1080i when playing HD DVDs, flashed up a message telling me that since the resolution had been changed, the disc would have to start playing again from the beginning. Grrr.

Closing thoughts

I'm sure that the HD-A1 is going to acheive legendary status in the AV world. It's big, boxy, slow to boot, and still has a few issues - but I have a feeling it'll always be known as the device that introduced us to this great new format with amazing image quality.

No doubt second generation players, based from dedicated chipsets rather than all-purpose PC components that have been thrown together quickly, will offer a considerable improvement in terms of speed and size. As cruel as it sounds, I actually can't wait to get rid of this machine and get whatever new and improved versions appear instead. I'd really like an HD DVD player that feels more like an actual player, and less of something that was thrown together from available parts (which this was).

If you're still sitting it out as regards to the High Definition format war, don't. By the time we know who's "won" this war, we'll be a few generations in, and players and prices will have improved considerably. So, why not pick this bargain up, enjoy HD movies right now, and then pick up a cheaper and better player of the winning format, later on? After all, it's a player for a brand new format available for LESS than what some high-end standard-def players cost!

The only other comparable option for watching HD movies right now is Sky HD. A year's subscription fees for Sky HD are about the same price as buying this player from a UK importer, and that's not including the cost of the Sky HD set top box. True, movie channels would give you better choice, but they lack the pristine picture quality and convenience available on pre-recorded media (and better yet, with HD DVD, you get to own the physical disc itself).

All you need to know is that the HD-A1 offers the best HDTV picture quality currently available, at a shockingly reasonable price (about half of the currently inferior Blu-ray's cheapest players). This makes its few issues - which might be ironed out by further firmware upgrades - extremely bearable. I just hope they hurry up and get some more titles out soon, especially some animated ones!