Toshiba HD-XA2 Review @ PC Magazine

[Ian]

Robert Heron of PC Magazine has reviewed Toshiba's second gen HD DVD player, the HD-XA2. It's a pretty good read.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2111329,00.asp

It looks like it has some issues when playing back standard DVD's.

The HD-XA2 performed well on my HQV Benchmark test DVD, but not quite as well as I expected. Static detail was excellent, but the player stumbled through the first two deinterlacing tests, leaving jagged edges apparent on the moving bars. On the test's bridge scene, used to evaluate detail preservation and image enhancement, it was a complete mess, with jagged edges present in stairs and significant blurring of detail within the bridge's fine brickwork. Experimenting with the video-processor settings, I found that disabling the block NR feature brought the detail back, but jagged edges along the curved stairs remained. Though the processing prowess of the HD-XA2 surpassed that of the Sharp HDTV, it was not even close to the performance of the (relatively expensive) Realta HQV processor unit I use when evaluating HDTVs.

[Wesociety]

Sucks for Toshiba & the HD DVD camp. If their 2nd generation HD DVD player can't playback standard DVD's with EXCELLENT quality, they might have a hard time selling the players, or at least get a lot of returns.

On the other hand, with all the chinese and cheapo DVD players out on the market at the moment, maybe most people won't notice subpar standard DVD playback? Maybe it will even make HD DVD look better than it actually is (compared to crappy standard DVD playback).

I'm sure that hardcore video and highdef enthusiasts will notice the crappy standard DVD playback though. Hell, if I were thinking about buying that HD DVD player, I would want nothing less then phenomenal standard DVD playback along with good quality upconverting.

[dolphinius_rex]

Ever since I bought my HDTV, and my Panasonic Upconverting DVD player/Recorder, and hanging out on HighdefDigest's forums, I've become a lot more picky about my audio and video quality.

I would *NOT* be happy with this as a DVD player. And I don't like the idea of having to have 2 units, one for HiDef and one for SD DVD.