Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player

Toshiba lost the next generation format wars.

Well, maybe lost wasn't a great word for it. How about... sold out?

Regardless of the grumblings, it's done now. Which really brings me to the device itself. What's beautiful about the A30 is that it actually does do 1080p unlike it's cousin the A3 which is 1080i. In fact, it can do 1080p/24 which is pretty impressive.

It plays CDs, DVDs, and HD-DVDs and upconverts those older DVDs in case you were wondering.

Has it be demoted to just an upconverting DVD player? Pretty much. There's a few other great features like the audio playback modes which include Dolby Surround and DTS, but overall it's just a media player. One little annoyance is that the remote to actual device is a bit slower on the draw. I'm not sure why the device takes its time to boot up and such along with shutdown, but the buttons on the front of the player are actually a lot quicker response time than trying to do it from the remote.

In any case, it's still not a bad price for the Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player. Especially if you're going to go bargain bin hunting for HD-DVDs.