Toshiba Makes Progress With Second-Gen HD DVD Players

January 9, 2007, 2:05 PM by Nate Mook

Nate Mook, Editor-in-Chief, BetaNews: Toshiba has its second generation HD DVD standalone players on display at CES 2007, including the newest HD-A20 model announced just this week. Most important in the refreshed lineup is support for 1080p output, as well as Dolby DTS HD sound.

The $599 USD HD-A20 features a new SHARC DSP processor, although Toshiba couldn't really tell us what type of performance improvement consumers would see over the $499 USD HD-A2. The $799 HD-XA1 has been replaced by the $999 USD HD-XA2, which sports a heavy steel enclosure that Toshiba said is designed for home theater enthusiasts.

Strangely, Toshiba apparently hasn't decided whether the HD-A20 will be HDMI 1.2 or HDMI 1.3. Company officials could not tell us why they haven't decided such a thing when the player is destined to hit store shelves in February, but we're hoping they opt for the latter, or HD DVD buyers may find themselves upgrading sooner than expected.

One of the biggest problems plaguing the first generation HD DVD players was speed. Essentially, they were just computers, which meant boot-up times of over a minute and absurdly slow disc loading. Toshiba has made progress in this regard: a movie takes about 15 seconds to start up from the moment it's inserted. Still, the company acknowledged the hardware is still very PC-based, which means consumers will still find HD DVD sluggish compared to their standard DVD players.