Tuesday, April 18, 2006
First Look at Toshiba's HD-DVD Player
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 09:17 AM
"Over the last week I've had a chance to use the HD-XA1 at home and while the choice of movies is still limited, the few available have given me a taste of how the player shapes up. In terms of picture quality, I'm pleased to report that the player delivered everything I've come to expect from high-definition. I played a few discs: The movies "Biohazard" and "Moonlight Jellyfish" are bundled with the player in Japan, and I also purchased "Zozakura," an HD presentation of Japanese cherry trees in full bloom that has the distinction of being the first commercial HD-DVD content on the market. All looked great. All three discs are encoded with the MPEG4AVC codec, which is one of three HD-DVD codecs. To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference between the HD-DVD disc and the MPEG2-encoded HD television that we have in Japan."
The review goes on to talk about the slow boot time: it takes a full minute from pressing the power button until you're able to even eject the disc from the machine! Something like that would be frustrating for me in particular. Looks like a painfully 1st-gen product. Every product has to start somewhere, but this certainly doesn't seem like a very compelling first attempt. I figure they'll get it right by late 2007 or early 2008, but I wonder where the content will be at that time?
The review goes on to talk about the slow boot time: it takes a full minute from pressing the power button until you're able to even eject the disc from the machine! Something like that would be frustrating for me in particular. Looks like a painfully 1st-gen product. Every product has to start somewhere, but this certainly doesn't seem like a very compelling first attempt. I figure they'll get it right by late 2007 or early 2008, but I wonder where the content will be at that time?
