Toshiba's entry level HD-A2 player has no 1080p output

[Zeus]

Cnet has taken a good look at Toshiba's entry level HD-A2 HD-DVD player and report back that the bad points of the unit are; HD DVD could lose the format war, there are no multichannel analog outputs and there is no 1080p output.


The good: Relatively inexpensive; excellent image quality on HD DVD; solid upscaling performance on DVDs; Ethernet jack for firmware upgrades; onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding; much faster load times than its predecessor.

The bad: No 1080p output; HD DVD could lose the format war; no multichannel analog outputs.

The bottom line: Offering most of the performance of more expensive players, the HD-A2 is an excellent value for budget-minded buyers looking to jump into HD DVD.


News Source: <A href="http://reviews.cnet.com/video-players-and-recorders/toshiba-hd-a2/4505-6463_7-32074340.html" target="_blank">Cnet</a>

[XxBigP123xX]

hd dvdead ftl:cool:

[dwrecording]

hd dvdead ftl:cool:

Thats bullshit we all new it would only do 1080i. If you want 1080p just get the new player for $299. It's only a $100 more. Do you need multichannel output NO!!! Just use optical or hdmi. Most of the points people make about BR and HDDVD are just crap. Just use both they will have multi format players for $250 soon. why have to pick they both kick ass. only down side to BR is it uses slow ass junk java.

[Ichinisan]

A total noob wrote the article. He thinks that the only difference in 1080i vs 1080p on a 1080p set is how well the TV de-interlaces the 1080i signal.

Bullshit. 1080p is precisely TWICE the detail of 1080i. There is no way around this fact. It has nothing to do with this reviewer's flawed perception. Sheesh.

[Hidari_Mak]

Since its unknown at this point whether HD-DVD or blu-ray will win the format war (if either), stating that the player "may [be in the format to] lose the format war" sounds like they're looking for reasons to give a failing evaluation to the player and/or format. Not supporting 1080p and multichannel audio output are both good reasons on their own, though.

Since the player is the first one from a known manufacturer to hit below $200 though, it's price is already in the "sweet spot" which will drive sales, since DVD players and game consoles typically start selling much faster at that price. That price point has proven to be very appealing to the mass market, and this player may do quite well despite its shortcomings. It will also encourage other HD-DVD manufacturers to release their lower end player in that price range, at a point in time when manufacturers of blu-ray players won't be able to do the same.

As usual, I'm not saying that blu-ray is dead, just citing why it's too early to say that HD-DVD is.

[ShinoBboy]

hd dvdead ftl:cool:

LAWL!!!

oh btw where did you get Uncharted??? It's not out yet:o

[grapeape]

All I know that as far as standalone players go I would rather be on the loosing end of $200 than the loosing end of $400.

[XxBigP123xX]

LAWL!!!

oh btw where did you get Uncharted??? It's not out yet:o

it's my most anticipated game of the year:D def getting it on day one.

[brywalker]

A total noob wrote the article. He thinks that the only difference in 1080i vs 1080p on a 1080p set is how well the TV de-interlaces the 1080i signal.

Bullshit. 1080p is precisely TWICE the detail of 1080i. There is no way around this fact. It has nothing to do with this reviewer's flawed perception. Sheesh.

I'm not saying that you are wrong, but you are wrong.

Take my DLP, for example. 1080i and 1080p look identical. If you PAUSE it, you are getting half resolution in 1080i. If you hit STILL on the display they are the same exact image - exact same resolution. It has EVERYTHING to do with how well the display deinterlaces. A deinterlaced 1080i signal on my set has 1920x1080 lines of resolution. It IS 1080p when deinterlaced. In my case, it is 1080p 60fps.

When you are getting into 1080p 24fps, you are in a different realm altogether. But there are very few players that can output that anyway.

[godashram]

what's the point of this thread? the xa2 is the 1080p model. the a2 is now the cheapest dedicated player on the market, and not everyone has 1080p. a majority of hdtv's in homes right now max at 720p/1080i. yes, 1080p is better and if you want it, the xa2 is for you. if you only have 1080i, the a2 is just fine... and not many people can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p.

[Kenban]

A total noob wrote the article. He thinks that the only difference in 1080i vs 1080p on a 1080p set is how well the TV de-interlaces the 1080i signal.

Bullshit. 1080p is precisely TWICE the detail of 1080i. There is no way around this fact. It has nothing to do with this reviewer's flawed perception. Sheesh.

Actually he is correct. 1080p has twice the resolution of a single 1080i frame but 1080i has twice the frame rate. Overall the same data is transmitted to an extent. 1080i is produced by decoding the 1080p frame then transmitting the odd lines as one frame and transmitting the even lines as the next frame. But the whole picture all 1920×1080 is transmitted and a good TV set can de-interlace the image and produce something that looks as good as it would if the source had been 1080p to start with.

1080p60 is better but thats better because it has the same frame rate as 1080i and does have twice the resolution. But thats not how movies are encoded and I am not even sure if either HD-DVD or Blu-ray even support 1080p60.

Something else to think about. A few months ago all the top stand alone Blu-ray players converted the 1080p stored on the disk to 1080i then de-interlaced that back to 1080p to output. Its cheaper for a player to skip that last step and thats what Toshiba did to save money on its low end player. If its going to be converted to an interlaced signal no matter what anyways why not let the TV handle the conversion back into a progressive signal?

[Hootermancs]

HD DVD could lose the format war, there are no multichannel analog outputs and there is no 1080p output.


what the hell kind of article summary is that? Toshiba has had a 1080i cheap model in their HD-DVD line for quite awhile now.

If anything this will help HD DVD win the format war as the blu-ray camp keeps churning out $500+ stand-alone players.

[Mikeyy]

Hostile thread alert. LOL.

HDDVD has been losing big time for a year now, and you get 1 movie and a player and all the sudden your epic ****?

Please.

And for the 9000th time, Hybirds will never make it, Hybrid = ultra lost money for the manufactures who have to double all productions for peoples "tastes"..

Blu-ray has everything, and industry support, its ready to win and take over now if it has to. Just let HDDVD die, its not neccessary, Blu-ray costs will drop dramactically anyway.

[zymologist]

come off it, how many people buying "entry" level players do you think are going to own 1080p televisions? it would be a waste of money to include support for it on the tightarse equipment

[kilodelta]

hey, no biggie for me. my HDTV doesn't do 1080p.

[So-Unreal]

Go into Best Buy and over ~70% of the so called HDTV's are ONLY 720P so I can see that this is not that big of a deal when it came out for $499 LAST year.

[Hootermancs]

And for the 9000th time, Hybirds will never make it, Hybrid = ultra lost money for the manufactures who have to double all productions for peoples "tastes"..


Um, they aren't doing it for peoples "tastes" they are doing it because both the Blu-Ray and HDDVD camps acted like stubborn babies that couldn't/wouldn't agree to a single format

people could care less if their disc case is blue, red or yellow, they just want HD movies

[dwrecording]

The HDDVD people wanted to make one disk but good o sony said FK OFF!!! Just like with minidisk,dat and 10000000 other things sony tried to make there own. I am so sick of sony. Yes long ago they made great products but now its all just junk. You want to watch this movie you have to get a FW update. want to play this game you need a FW update. want to get your songs off MD, sorry we changed DRM again and you can't. It's **** FK YOU SONY!!! They lie,cheat,and steal. The ps3 is cool but it will not even do 50% of the stuff it said on the box, the 80gig does not even have the right HDMI to do true HD audio. Anyway I think that BR and HDDVD are great use them both we do not need a winner. For me DVD with upconv is working just fine for now and will for years to come. $9 for a dvd or $35 for HD disk. hmm i think ill get 3-4 dvds thx :rolleyes:

[XxBigP123xX]

The HDDVD people wanted to make one disk but good o sony said FK OFF!!! Just like with minidisk,dat and 10000000 other things sony tried to make there own. I am so sick of sony. Yes long ago they made great products but now its all just junk. You want to watch this movie you have to get a FW update. want to play this game you need a FW update. want to get your songs off MD, sorry we changed DRM again and you can't. It's **** FK YOU SONY!!! They lie,cheat,and steal. The ps3 is cool but it will not even do 50% of the stuff it said on the box, the 80gig does not even have the right HDMI to do true HD audio. Anyway I think that BR and HDDVD are great use them both we do not need a winner. For me DVD with upconv is working just fine for now and will for years to come. $9 for a dvd or $35 for HD disk. hmm i think ill get 3-4 dvds thx :rolleyes:

you act like sony is the only one behind blu ray:rolleyes:

[MaTiAz]

come off it, how many people buying "entry" level players do you think are going to own 1080p televisions? it would be a waste of money to include support for it on the tightarse equipment

Damn true, and besides, everyone already knew it didn't do 1080p. For the most HDTV's, 720p or 1080i is perfectly fine. Those who can afford a better TV can afford a better player. This player isn't meant for the highest end people, try to understand it.

[billysastard]

The HDDVD people wanted to make one disk but good o sony said FK OFF!!! Just like with minidisk,dat and 10000000 other things sony tried to make there own. I am so sick of sony. Yes long ago they made great products but now its all just junk. You want to watch this movie you have to get a FW update. want to play this game you need a FW update. want to get your songs off MD, sorry we changed DRM again and you can't. It's **** FK YOU SONY!!! They lie,cheat,and steal. The ps3 is cool but it will not even do 50% of the stuff it said on the box, the 80gig does not even have the right HDMI to do true HD audio. Anyway I think that BR and HDDVD are great use them both we do not need a winner. For me DVD with upconv is working just fine for now and will for years to come. $9 for a dvd or $35 for HD disk. hmm i think ill get 3-4 dvds thx :rolleyes:

actualy it wasnt just sony, fox and disney wanted their "own" format too so they could join with sony in f*cking over their customers, then it was upto the hardware manufacturers which camp they would fall into and that group then founded the blu-ray group which is the group who keep getting minor bit part members to make the "big" announcements about how well blu-ray is doing in the hopes that the public wont realise that they are part of the blu-ray propoganda machine, luckily at least on the web they get revealed pretty quickly.

just ignore the zealots who believe br can do no wrong because it happens to be the storage medium for games in their blu-raystation3.


:cool:

[sigma8]

The HDDVD people wanted to make one disk but good o sony said FK OFF!!! Just like with minidisk,dat and 10000000 other things sony tried to make there own. I am so sick of sony. Yes long ago they made great products but now its all just junk. You want to watch this movie you have to get a FW update. want to play this game you need a FW update. want to get your songs off MD, sorry we changed DRM again and you can't. It's **** FK YOU SONY!!! They lie,cheat,and steal. The ps3 is cool but it will not even do 50% of the stuff it said on the box, the 80gig does not even have the right HDMI to do true HD audio. Anyway I think that BR and HDDVD are great use them both we do not need a winner. For me DVD with upconv is working just fine for now and will for years to come. $9 for a dvd or $35 for HD disk. hmm i think ill get 3-4 dvds thx :rolleyes:

Hey dude, you think MS is better? Hey, let me boot up Windows Vista and Office 2007--the two most unpopular new business apps of the year. Or let's watch our Xbox360's get RROD's. Of course, if there's a problem with it...like maybe some security holes, we can just patch it 9 hojillion times. Also, the newer that Windows Media Player gets, the more it tends to suck. And don't forget one of Windows Media's big power-plays is that it offers robust DRM. you think MS doesn't want to copyright the crap out of everything? How about their wonderful invention of product activation? I didn't mind entering serial numbers, but this whole server authentication whenever you change your hard drive? Crappy.

You want them defining your HD experience?

Yeah, I know you think Toshiba is involved. That's a nice fantasy. Toshiba is too busy making Cell processors.

[billysastard]

Hey dude, you think MS is better? Hey, let me boot up Windows Vista and Office 2007--the two most unpopular new business apps of the year. Or let's watch our Xbox360's get RROD's. Of course, if there's a problem with it...like maybe some security holes, we can just patch it 9 hojillion times. Also, the newer that Windows Media Player gets, the more it tends to suck. And don't forget one of Windows Media's big power-plays is that it offers robust DRM. you think MS doesn't want to copyright the crap out of everything? How about their wonderful invention of product activation? I didn't mind entering serial numbers, but this whole server authentication whenever you change your hard drive? Crappy.

You want them defining your HD experience?

Yeah, I know you think Toshiba is involved. That's a nice fantasy. Toshiba is too busy making Cell processors.

if m$ were that heavily into hddvd you know that windows simply wouldnt work with blu-ray drives and it would be game over for blu-ray.

[sigma8]

if m$ were that heavily into hddvd you know that windows simply wouldnt work with blu-ray drives and it would be game over for blu-ray.

Not really. MS has to "respect" a lot of things it doesn't like, and allow them to run on its OS. Like FireFox, Java, non-MS keyboards and mice.. Windows lets you use iPods...maybe MS should lock it out and only allow Zunes? Yeah, I see that happening.

Besides, last I heard, Windows didn't support blu-ray anyway, you had to use third party device drivers, has this changed?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/24/vista-will-not-support-blu-ray-or-hd-dvd-playback-out-of-the-box-or-on-most-PCs/

MS is very heavily in HD-DVD.

[MadMax31]

Hey dude, you think MS is better? Hey, let me boot up Windows Vista and Office 2007--the two most unpopular new business apps of the year. Or let's watch our Xbox360's get RROD's. Of course, if there's a problem with it...like maybe some security holes, we can just patch it 9 hojillion times. Also, the newer that Windows Media Player gets, the more it tends to suck. And don't forget one of Windows Media's big power-plays is that it offers robust DRM. you think MS doesn't want to copyright the crap out of everything? How about their wonderful invention of product activation? I didn't mind entering serial numbers, but this whole server authentication whenever you change your hard drive? Crappy.

You want them defining your HD experience?

Yeah, I know you think Toshiba is involved. That's a nice fantasy. Toshiba is too busy making Cell processors.


OK, again, when people will understand that MS doesn't care about Format wars!, if BR wins (still to early to tell, and for the people that think HD-DVD is dead 60% of nothing is nothing idiots) MS will bring an add on (even is they say they wont; duh!), they care about winning the console wars (vs the PS3 at least) and so far they are doing it (wii is at another level).

So just because sony among other companies support BR (and is always telling us why is needed :rolleyes:), that doesn't mean that MS will defend HD-DVD as if it was the format of the X-360.

[Raist3d]

A total noob wrote the article. He thinks that the only difference in 1080i vs 1080p on a 1080p set is how well the TV de-interlaces the 1080i signal.

Bullshit. 1080p is precisely TWICE the detail of 1080i. There is no way around this fact. It has nothing to do with this reviewer's flawed perception. Sheesh.

On movies, this is a complete non issue as movies are deinterlaced and run at the same framerate and resolution.

- Raist

[CZroe]

[whoops, posted in brother's acct]

[Hidari_Mak]

HDDVD has been losing big time for a year now <SNIPPETY>

Blu-ray has everything, and industry support, its ready to win and take over now if it has to. Just let HDDVD die, its not neccessary, Blu-ray costs will drop dramactically anyway.

That might mean something if blu-ray accounted for a much bigger amount of total movie sales. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that blu-ray is beating out HD-DVD by the same factor that DVDs are beating out both of their markets combined (it isn't), that blu-ray won't be missing out on major movie releases by major studios (it will be), and that the blu-ray camp can suddenly do better whenever they want (they've been trying all along).

You also seem to be underestimating the appeal that a <$200 price tag has with the general public. If you need a reminder, that's where the majority of PS2s sold at, and where the DVD market started to take off. Despite every PS3 coming with a blu-ray drive, it hasn't sold well enough to allow for the manufacturing costs to drop that low yet. For the cheapest blu-ray player to be double the price, with the PS3 in 3rd place, the success of blu-ray is as likely as it becoming the next Betamax.

[Evolution]

And this has precisely what to do with 360 consoles?

I can understand the Blu Ray stories being posted on the PS3 boards but I fail to see what a stand alone player has to do with this board unless it has a hidden 360 built into it.

There is a bad enough feeling on the board between the various idiot fanboy sects without starting pointless arguments about something that has NOTHING to do with the 360 or the PS3

[grapeape]

And this has precisely what to do with 360 consoles?

I can understand the Blu Ray stories being posted on the PS3 boards but I fail to see what a stand alone player has to do with this board unless it has a hidden 360 built into it.

There is a bad enough feeling on the board between the various idiot fanboy sects without starting pointless arguments about something that has NOTHING to do with the 360 or the PS3

Actually it has alot to with it. The Blu-Ray being the least expensive blu-ray player is one of its biggest selling points. For people looking for HD movies it was the least expensive solution by far but now a Wii or 360 arcade plus a standalone hd-dvd player is comparable in price so its a bit of a blow to that particular selling point. I dont think it will affect gamers much since the 08 lineup for the PS3 looks much better and gamers will continue to buy consoles mainly for playing games but this could really take a bite out of the portion that was buying primarily for the cheap HD.