Kathy’s folks gave us a generous Christmas gift (they really didn’t need to but we are grateful anyway!).
With some of it (and returning a upscaling DVD player I had just bought), I decided to get 2 HD-DVD players. I’m not really attached to either side of the format wars (HD-DVD vs Bluray) but since I needed 2 players (more in a sec) I really needed to go with the lowest cost option and that was clearly the HD-DVD players from Toshiba and by quite a bit.
The reason that I need 2 players is that I have 2 places that I primarily watch movies. My family and watch movies in our family room with an early generation HD rear screen projection Pioneer Elite TV (they no longer do anything but plasma). I also have a dedicated theater in my Gym (it’s an elaborate gym and somewhat elaborate theater). I’m really the only one who watches movies there though the kids play the Wii in there. As I have almost 500 DVD’s, there was no way I was only going to upgrade just one location because I am an avid watcher and wanted to be able to watch in both locations.
As to the player, the picture is fabulous. The setup was easy. The sound is great. The controls are great. I still need to set up my universal remote (I hope to do that today). My one complaint is that there was a feature that we have gotten used to on the Sony DVD players that is missing from the Toshiba players. On the Sony players, it will remember the location on where you left off from on several DVDs even when power is turned off. The Toshiba will remember only one DVD and only if you leave the player on. This is frustrating and wasteful with power. Not a show stopper but frustrating none the less.
The player came with 2 movies in the box (Bourne Identity and 300) and if you search the web for the right PDF, you can mail order 5 more so in the end, I should get 12 HD-DVD movies. I’m not sure I’m rushing out to convert my collection but I will turn the switch on Netflix and start getting HD-DVD’s when possible. The picture is very cool.