PRODUCT REVIEW: DECEMBER 13, 2006
Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player
The HD-A2 is Toshiba’s 2nd-generation entry-level HD DVD player. This time around, they got it right.
Figure 1. Toshiba’s HD-A2 has slimmed down from its predecessor,
but still has a large footprint.
The 2006 rollout of blue laser DVD players has been fraught with missteps. Products have missed their ship dates repeatedly, haven’t worked correctly, have booted up too slowly, and have often times refused to connect to HDMI-compliant projectors, monitors, and HDTVs. (And it’s usually been the player’s fault.)
On top of all this, manufacturers are pushing two different and incompatible blue-laser formats (HD DVD and Blu-ray) in front of consumers who, for the most part, seem largely disinterested, focusing instead on buying that new $2,000 50-inch plasma or $800 37-inch LCD HDTV — and using a $150 up-scaling DVD player to watch movies on it.
In a rush to be first to market, some compromises are often inevitable. Take Toshiba’s HD-A1 player, which appeared on retail shelves this past April. It was an enormous, 16-pound box that housed a computer, an HD DVD drive, and a video encoder board. It took forever to boot up and wasn’t happy with many of the HDMI ports it met up with.
For better or worse, the HD-A1, and its high-end cousin, the HD-XA1, were all the HD DVD offerings to be had — that is, until Toshiba unveiled their 2nd-generation models at Cedia Expo 2006. The HD-A1 was to be replaced by the smaller and sleeker HD-A2, while the HD-XA1 would be superseded by the still-to-come HD-XA2. (This player promises 1080p output, something the HD-XA1 didn’t offer.)
The HD-A2, like other blue laser players, missed its ship dates more than once. It was pure luck that I stumbled across one at a Best Buy store in Montgomeryville, PA earlier this week. The player had literally just come in the door — it didn’t even have a price sticker yet.
It appears that Toshiba has scored a major coup by getting its next-gen player to retail before Pioneer, Panasonic, and Sony even have their first-gen Blu-ray players shipped in any quantity to big box stores. Is it worth the price ($499?)
OUT OF THE BOX
The different between the HD-A2 and its predecessor is like night and day. The height has been reduced by almost half to 2.6”, while the depth and width are the same. But the cabinet design, which uses a sloping front, looks more like a conventional DVD player from 4-5 years ago. (OK, so the HD-A2 isn’t super-slim like today’s players, but it’s a step in the right direction.)
(Figure 2a) An view under the cover, and (Figure 2b) a close-up view of the optical drive.
Remove the top cover and you’ll see the biggest change. There are two PC boards — an MPEG decoder/video encoder with CPU, plus the power supply — and a Toshiba HD DVD drive. That’s it!
The remote control has also undergone extensive renovations. Gone is the backlight design (which never worked right in my tests anyway) in favor of a lighter, slightly thinner control, which also feels less substantial than the original remote. It has way too many buttons and many of them are quite small, so navigating to the menu and executing basic operations isn’t easy without supplementary lighting — or a good memory.
You’ll have the same connection options as before, with your choice of component YPbPr output through three RCA jacks, or digital output through an HDMI v1.2 interface. (The HD-XA2 will support HDMI v1.3.) There are also composite and S-video jacks (why???) and one pair of RCA jacks for stereo down-mixes, plus a Toslink connection for digital audio formats. (The coaxial SPDIF jack is gone.)
Figure 3. The remote is completely different and a lot more confusing to use.
MENUS AND OPERATION
Speaking of audio formats, the HD-A2 supports a bunch of them. An HDMI-equipped AV receiver will be able to demux Dolby Digital Plus and True HD, DTS-HD, MPEG, and multi-channel PCM and 5.1 channel PCM, if compatible with those latter formats.
The HDMI output connector can be set to detect Dolby or DTS audio automatically, or force to PCM formats. If you don’t have an HDMI-enabled receiver, the Toslink SPDIF connector will pass most of these formats, including DTS-HD.
There is also a three-position automatic dynamic range control that is supposed to compress low-amplitude audio for low-level playback — turn it off for conventional home theater use. A dialog enhancement setting boosts the center channel, if you have trouble hearing it.
In the Picture menu, you can select the desired aspect ratio (4:3, 4:3 letterbox, or 16:9), set black levels to 0 or 7.5 IRE, turn 3:2 encoding on or off (or leave in Auto mode), and set the output resolution through HDMI and component video jacks to 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i.
Figure 4. A close-up view of the rear panel connectors.
Toshiba has retained the LAN port from the HD-A1, which allows you to update the operating software in your player but connecting it to the Internet. To do this, you’ll need to configure the player’s IP address and Ethernet settings from the internal menu. The HD-A2 does allow for DHCP address configuration, so your Internet hook-up shouldn’t be too troublesome. (If you can’t or don’t want to use the LAN feature, you can order an OS update DVD directly from Toshiba.)
PERFORMANCE
First off, the HD-A2 boots up a lot faster than its predecessor. From the time I pushed the power switch until the HD DVD logo appeared, I measured all of 30 seconds. That’s not much to write home about when compared to standard (red laser) DVD players, but it’s almost ½ the time the HD-A1 required.
Pop an HD DVD disc in, and you’ll be ready to play in 10-11 seconds, representing a reduction in wait time of 66% over the HD-A1 and HD-XA1. Again, not great, but much less infuriating when you’re ready to sit back and enjoy a movie.
For playback in all modes, I suggest using the 1080i output (analog or HDMI). You’ll get the sharpest images this way, and if you are connected to a video scaler or one of the new 720p or 1080p projectors with an advanced image processor, that combination can do the heavy lifting of de-interlacing and correcting for 3:2 motion errors.
I hooked the HD-A2 directly to my Mitsubishi HC5000, which comes equipped with Silicon Optix’ Reon processor. With 1080i component or HDMI connections, images were clean as a whistle — plenty of picture detail, no obvious interlacing artifacts, and no motion problems.
Selecting 720p or 480p output mode degraded picture quality considerably. I verified this with the SMPTE test pattern on the Silicon Optix Realta HD DVD and was plagued with flicker in areas with finely spaced lines. That suggests some sort of “bobbing” is in use in these modes.
Switching back to 1080i output mode cleaned all of it up. Running the 1080i component or HDMI output through an outboard Whitehorse video scaler (using the Realta chip set) didn’t make much of an improvement, but did add a considerable audio latency problem that I was unable to fully correct.
That suggests the Mits’ Reon chip is still buffering and cleaning up the 1080p/60 video from the Whitehorse — and 1080i-to-1080p processing is something the Reon already handles quite adequately on its own. It doesn’t need any help from its higher-priced sibling!
One note: The format up-conversion (720p, 1080i) from standard-def DVDs only works through the HDMI output. You won’t see any signal through the component video outputs, except in 480i or 480p modes. And the HDMI interface is a lot more dependable than before — I could disconnect the cable from the Mits HC5000 projector and not crash the player.
CONCLUSIONS
Toshiba’s HD-A2 is much easier to use than the HD-A1 — it starts up and loads discs faster, and looks a lot smaller. In other words, it actually feels and operates like a regular DVD player should, not a hybrid computer/video device. Perhaps the 3rd-generation players will trim another 50% from the overall dimensions?
The $500 price tag remains steep for the average consumer, who still doesn’t see any need to upgrade from red laser DVDs. That’s not good news for Pioneer, Panasonic, and Sony, whose Blu-ray players will retail between $1000 and $1300 when they start showing up in quantity, and it hasn’t been good news for Samsung, whose “first out of the gate” BD-P1000 Blu-ray player has been a slow seller and was reduced recently to $799.
Another problem: The selection of HD DVD movies needs to be a lot larger. I counted about 2/3 as many HD DVD titles for sale as Blu-ray versions, on my way to the Best Buy checkout lane. However, there is an HD DVD promotion currently being run by Toshiba and Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Universal. If you buy any new Toshiba HD DVD player before February 28, 2007, you can get three free HD DVD movies by mail, choosing from 15 titles.
Fearless prediction: Toshiba will lower the suggested retail price on this player by $100 to $150 sometime early in 2007 to try and spur sales. That would still put the HD-A2 at a $200 disadvantage to some really nice up-scaling DVD players, but potential buyers won’t be scared off as easily — particularly if the player is part of a promotion, such as the purchase of a new Toshiba rear-projection or LCD HDTV.
