Toshiba Announces New HD DVD Players

September 14, 2006

As expected Toshiba announced their second generation HD DVD players today at CEDIA in Denver, and with one fell swoop addressed several of the complaints from early adopters of first generation HD DVD players. First up the Toshiba HD-A2:

hda2.jpg

•720p/1080i
•HDMI 1.2a
•Improved Load Times (Said To Be Half the Current Load Times)
•Support for Lossless Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus
•Slimline Design
•Ethernet Connection
•Available October 2006, MSRP $499.99

Toshiba’s HD-XA2 replaces their flagship HD-XA1 and features:

hdxa2.jpg

•720p/1080i /1080p Video Output
•HD 4x Oversampling with 297 MHz DAC
•12-Bit Video DAC
•Bi-Directional RS-232 Out
•HDMI 1.3 (Deep Color)
•Full Backlit Remote (With Improved Response Time)
•Ethernet Connection
•Support for Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, DTS-HD (Core Only)
•5.1 Analog, Digital Optical, Coaxial Digital and Stereo Analog Audio Outputs
•Available December 2006, MSRP $999.99

Nice looking second effort from Toshiba, these updates seem to have addressed many of the complaints from early adopters with the A1 and XA1 models. I’m told we can expect a few more HD DVD announcements before the shows over, stay tuned.



Posted by B.Greenway | | Filed Under HD-DVD


Comments

  • Mark Arnurius
    My problem with either format is that they tell you something in the beginning and don’t deliver what they promised. First, both camps talk about True Dolby and DTS HD and hardly any of the movies from both camps have these formats and if they do it’s in 2-channel form or they don’t have the internal or external processing for it yet. Don’t sell a player and have a different one out in only 6-months to trump the first ones. What about the people paying good money for stuff that shouldn’t be out yet until the product is ready?

    Why is Blu-ray putting any movies out yet? If your only presenter of your format is not up to par, than why bother? Don’t give me single layer Blu-ray and tell me this is the best. Sony says that MPEG-2 is superior if the bit rate is correct, so why release the early movies at a lower bit-rate? Please don’t release any movies that are compressed from the original. You know what’s going to happen, they are going to release the same movies again very soon with full bit rate dual-layer and all the audio options they talked about, so why buy now? Unless you like throwing away your money!

    Give me full bit rates on the movies if available and with all audio options w/HDMI1.3 capability.
    Also, are the original movies in the archives actually 1080p/24fps on MPEG-2?
    If so, why change them to VC-1. This would only cause problems with the originals because you’re changing the code from the original. Give me the original format that the movie is on and full bit-rate. If it is originally on VC-1 than give me that.

    I have spent too much money on things to throw it away in a year or two. I will wait until the correct product is out and the format has been declared.
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