Toshiba HD-A3 Review:

The Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD Player will blow you away with HD-DVD resolution and advanced HD-digital audio playback capabilities. The Toshiba HD-A3 brings your home theater experience to a whole new level, without breaking the bank.

A Refined, Slimmer Look
The Toshiba HD-A3’s refined design–with rounded edges, a slim chassis, and a high-gloss black face plate, standing less than two-and-a-half inches tall–looks sleek and elegant in your home theater system without taking up too much real estate.

Outstanding Performance
All of Toshiba’s HD DVD players support the enhanced features of the HD DVD format, including picture-in-picture video, audio commentary, and Web-enabled network capabilities. With an Ethernet port, the Toshiba HD-A3 can connect to the Internet for firmware updates to keep the player up to date on new features, and to support the growing number of HD DVD titles with interactive online features and bonus content. The Toshiba HD-A3 features an HDMI interface that carries both a video and an audio signal in one cable for the highest quality and convenience. The Toshiba HD-A3 outputs video at 720p and 1080i for a detailed and sharp image. The Toshiba HD-A3 has progressive scan capability, which means it eliminates the scan-lines of interlaced video and produces a clean image with no motion distortion and artifacts.

Sparkling Surround Sound
The Toshiba HD-A3’s built-in circuitry processes the multi-channel decoding of Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, and DTS-HD (core only).

Plays a Variety of Formats
The Toshiba HD-A3 is backward-compatible with your DVD collection: It can play and upconvert DVDs to the HD resolution that is being output. Toshiba HD-A3 can also play DVD-R/W, DVD-R, DVD-VR, CD, CD-R, and CD-RW formats, so you don’t need extra players taking up space.

I bought the Toshiba HD-A3 the day before the announcement from Warner Bros about changing their format to exclusive Blu Ray. I was very dissapointed and contemplated about returning it. After reading some articles and discussions over in internet, I decided to give it a chance.

I had an OPPO DVD player before this. OPPO is probably one of the best up conversion DVD players out there. You can read all about them here on Amazon. Since I have a 60″ HD TV and do not get HD stations at home, I decided to get a HD DVD player. The Toshiba HD-A3 was the best priced HD DVD available and it came with 10 DVDs.

First, make sure you have a HDMI cable for this player!!! If you don’t, your SDVDs will not upconvert to 1080i. In addition, the HD DVDs don’t look as sharp. The player doesn’t come with a video cable. You can get the HDMI cable for $5 here on Amazon.

I tried my SDVDs on the Toshiba HD-A3 and I was very surprised that it was clearer than my OPPO. I had thought the OPPO was the best in the biz, but the Toshiba HD-A3 made a noticable difference. That was probably the main reason why I decided to keep it.

The HD-DVDs were even better. The pictures are clearer and sharper than expected, and the sound was incredible!! I can hear every chirp. What I couldn’t hear on my SDVDs, now I can.

My only complaint is the response from the remote to the player seems to have a little lag. It’s slow by about two seconds. Loading time for SDVD is quick and HD-DVD takes a little longer, since HD-DVD holds much more data.

Overall, I am happy with the Toshiba HD-A3 and hope to keep it for a while. It’s a great deal even as a SDVD up conversion player.

—– By H. Shaw

Toshiba HD-A3 Features

• HD DVD Playback
• DVD/CD Playback
• Upconversion for SD
• 720p/1080i resolution
• Includes Warner Bros’ 300 HD DVD and Universal’s The Bourne Identity HD DVD (packaged inside)

Toshiba HD-A3 Specifications

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