Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player

Pros: Great picture, affordable

Cons: Poor remote, no coax digital sound port, playback errors

Summary: My wife and I decided we wanted an HD-DVD player since the prices had finally come down into a range we could afford. Since there are very few players on the market (for less than $500), it boiled down to the Toshiba and the XBOX 360 add-on drive. At first, we were sure the Toshiba stand alone player would be the best. While the player looked great, we immediately had problems with it. First, we had an error while trying to play back the new Harry Potter movie. We updated the firmware using the ethernet port. It crashed during the update, and we had to do it again. After that, it still crashed while player HP. Additionally, it would have trouble playing other HD-DVDs that we bought. Just to see if the problem was with the player, we bought the 360 drive, and everything works perfectly on it. We're returning the Toshiba today.

On a lesser note, the remote is awful. Not the worst ever, but whoever designed it should take some courses in industrial design. None of the buttons are well located, you frequently have to adjust your hand position to perform basic functions.

One more point. Being tech nuts, we have a lot hooked up to our entertainment center. It has two optical sound ports, and one coax digital sound port. Both optical ports are in use (FIOS box and XBOX), so we had the coax for our DVD. None of our systems have coax (except our old DVD), and this player didn't either. If any system designs are reading this, please include coax ports on new machines! We still use them, and the sound is the same.