Toshiba DVD Players Ithaca NY

You can find some great deals on the Toshiba HD-DVD players right now, especially the HD-A2 ( Buy Now ). They've had the 5 free movie promotion going for a while, and it seems like the price just keeps getting lower. Is the player so bad that they need to practically give it away to get people to buy it? Why would Toshiba go to such lengths to get these into your home theater? The answer, of course, is the format war. In the end, whoever can sell the most movies wins. And for someone to buy or rent a movie, they have to have a player to watch it on. If more people have HD-DVD players, more will buy HD-DVD movies and the rest will be history.

As far as the specs go, the HD-A2 supports:

• HD Output at 720p and 1080i
• SD Upconversion to 480p, 720p and 1080i
• High-performance SHARC® DSP Audio processor
• Dolby® Digital Plus 5.1ch
• Dolby® TrueHD 5.1ch
• DTS® HD (core only)
• Persistent storage
• HDMI™
• Ethernet Port

It probably goes without saying that the pure audio visual experience with the HD-A2 is awesome. We tested it on a JVC HD-61FH97 ( Buy now ) for video and ran it through a Denon AVR-3806 ( Buy now ) with Klipsch speakers for audio. The player provides absolutely the best home theater experience we've had to date. It was even better than Discovery HD Theater - which is hard to say, but completely true. The picture quality is stunning and the audio is unbelievable. We tried King Kong, Aeon Flux, Batman Begins, The Phantom of the Opera, The Entire Matrix Trilogy, you get the picture. We just couldn't stop watching the thing.

The HD-A2 is the least capable of the current crop of HD-DVD players available from Toshiba. Both of the other two models, the HD-A20 ( Buy now ) and the HD-XA2 ( Buy now ), support 1080p video. In fact the HD-A20 is nearly identical to the HD-A2, it just adds 1080p for an extra $100 more on the MSRP. So the odds that a firmware upgrade will ever be available for the HD-A2 to allow 1080p are pretty slim. How would you explain that to someone who bought an HD-A20? The HD-XA2 also comes with HDMI 1.3, better video processing, and gold plated input jacks. But the HD-A2 is the one that's getting all the hot sale prices, so it appears to be the most popular right now. But if you shop around, you might find a great deal on the HD-A20. For example, right now it's only about $25 more than the HD-A2 at the HT Guys store (as of 6/22).

The audio is nothing short of amazing. Perhaps it was just wishful listening, but we were blown away with how good the multi channel audio from the HDMI connection sounded. Surround sound tracks have never been that immersive or detailed. The player lacks multi channel analog outputs, so if you don't have an HDMI capable receiver you won't get the full listening experience....