Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Toshiba HD A2 for $98.87

I'd be a little jaded too. I haven't had any failures yet (knock on wood) with any of my cd/dvd players, computer related or otherwise.

Thanks John,

I read some of the threads on AVS as well. Most likely I won't spend the money. My plan is to use the Z2 as long as possible, maybe until my first bulb blows. Then at that point I could sell it, explaining to the buyer that it just needs a new $200 bulb.

To be honest the thing has very low hours on it for as long as I have had it...

Once the 1080p projectors come down in price that will be my next step. The only thing is I don't think my anamorphic lens will work with the 1080p movies.

Wow, Mojo, you sure are unlucky. I've only had one CD drive failure and that was in a laptop that would often see my fists come crashing down upon in rage and frustration.
My first CD player was a Sony 5 disc in '92 that still works flawlessly. My DVD is a JVC from '03 that has never had any problems either. Same goes for any walkman or ghetto blaster I've owned.

I still have my early 90's Sony 5 disc player as well and still use it. I've never had problems with CD players for the most part.

No need to apologize. We are all family here. It would be different if you were a "troll" but you aren't by any means, so again, no worries!

I've been rather fortunate in life actually with the exception of CD/DVD players . I have to figure out how to avoid this problem with my next CD/DVD player purchase. Maybe the answer is to go to a more "esoteric" player or maybe I should really "burn" in whatever I buy during the first week and see if it gives out. Then I can just return it.

That's what I'm planning on doing, Randy. I'll buy a 1080p projector in a few years when they're a lot cheaper . In the meantime my wife has ok'd a HTPC upgrade for this Christmas so I should be able to buy the bluray/hd-dvd drive, which will allow me to jump on the HD bandwagon.



Why do you think it wouldn't work?

Just a quick note to mention that all is well with my A2.

I bought two of thm, but my Dad didn't want the other, so I'll end up returning it in a few days.

In the end, it was worth it....I'm liking it much better than the XBox add-on. I couldn't compare them directly as my XBox is currently dead, but I'm a happy camper.

I'm also starting to see some positive results with our A2...

I played with the unit for a couple of hours Friday afternoon and then unplugged it and reconnected the Denon 2910 (do to aggravation), wife and I went away for the weekend so I didn't have time to do any more messing around with the A2. This morning I reconnected the A2 to show my wife there wasn't *that* much of difference between the A2's HD and the up converted SD on the Denon, popped in the 'Last Samurai' HD-DVD and she also said there was not much of a difference she thought ... I then loaded up 'Face-Off' and whoa mule, there's that hi-def I was looking for on Friday with Samurai or Transformers, the difference was incredible.

I did play with the A2 for quite a long time today and am still unimpressed with Transformers and the Last Samurai, like earlier stated the movie Face-Off was incredible and 95% of the SD movies was very impressive, I did notice that whenever I turned off the 'black enhancer' (or whatever it's called) the picture seemed to be a bit better for both HD and SD. Sound-wise, running the A2 to the H/K635 via an optical connect I don't know if I can tell any difference between the A2, Oppo or the 2910 ... the A2 definitely sounds equally as good as the other two units, better? I just can't tell.

Whenever I spoke with Mr. Toshiba on Friday about ordering a firmware disc he did say that some of the older HD disc *may* have pixelation/sound breakup and some of the new disc *may* be 'a little' advanced for the A2 prior to the firmware upgrade but I shouldn't have any problems and to go ahead run it with any disc because "....chances are you won't see any difference".

So....

My take is that the Samurai disc is one of the first generation run disc (somebody mentioned that prior, forgive me for forgetting who) and just isn't a good quality disc, period. The Transformers disc is a new movie and the A2 without the firmware just isn't reading like it should with the upgrade, whereas the Face-Off disc is probably in the middle of the road generation-wise and the A2 is having no ill regards reading the information on the disc and supplying us with an awesome picture ... *the* picture I was looking for on Friday but not finding it 'til Monday, making me a much happier consumer.

I'm thinking maybe the firmware upgrade is *probably* going to help this unit out, thanks again Nick for sending a disc!

I just watched the HD / Transformers movie and the BR / Fantastic 4 (the new one) movie this past weekend. Both of these disks are at the very top of my list for outstanding PQ and SQ. If you were not that impressed with the Transformers movie, I don’t know what to tell you Richard. I found that disk to be nothing short of eye candy and you can most definitely use that one as an HD reference disk. I have not seen one better yet, and I’ve got over 200 HD/BR disks now.

One disk for you to try and if it doesn’t “Wow” you, nothing will. Try Corpse Bride. That movie flat our freaked me out. Between amazing colors, shadow detail and down right unreal detail, it’s right up there with the best of them. Actually, most of the animated movies look amazing on both HD and BR.

Where I’m really enjoying HD and BR is with the old movies that they are transferring. Some of the old John Wayne films are really good. The sound sucks, but they didn’t have much to work with when they were filmed, so I’m not complaining.