Toshiba HD-A20

Pros: DVD Upconversion - better than my Oppo; HD-DVD movies- excellent

Cons: Froze on one movie, stopped playing sound, No 'resume playback' option--and that's REALLY annoying.

Summary: The A20 would be a perfect dvd player if it would work consistently (and quicker). My A20 was working fine, until one-day I decided to play a CD. The next day, I put in a standard definition movie, and there was NO sound. I checked the movie in my Oppo and it worked well, and played sound. I even tested the input jacks on my Denon to see if they were broke. The problem only seemed to happen if I left a dvd (or in the one case a CD) in the player for 30 minutes or more without playing (...I guess no one at Toshiba decided to see if the player would still work if you had to stop the movie because of a phone call).
I called Toshiba Customer report but all I got was a recording telling me to update my firmware (it never asked what my problem was) and then it hung up on me...several times--so, I emailed customer support. Said they'd never heard of the problem so connect it to the internet and do a firmware upgrade (which I find to be annoying, when I want to watch a movie I don't want to waste time makeing a dvd that might not even fix my problem). I was also told to initiate my player (one of the settings on the setup menu) and powerdown for 30 seconds.
Anyway, it turned out that the only way to fix my problem was to insert an HD-DVD movie, wait the 30 seconds it took to load, and then eject it and replace with the desired standard DVD. If the picture quality hadn't been so good, there's no way in hell I would have gone through this madnes...but the picture quality was that good, so I did.
So, after a couple of weeks of constantly having to preload an HD-DVD movie to watch my blockbuster rentals, I returned the player. I was told that the A20 was no longer being sold (HALLELUJAH)so I was given the A30. If this one breaks I will get my money back and jump to the blu-ray camp (and I guess you'll be able to see my HD-DVD collection on ebay or craigslist). But for now...I'm still rooting for Toshiba (note: if you work for Toshiba and you're reading this--tell your staff to start TESTING these products before pricing them putting them on the market; consumers actually like their products to work when they buy them...true story).