Toshiba HD-A30

Pros: Makes regular dvds look better.

Cons: dated styling

Summary: I'm not audiophile, but I just hooked up my new Pioneer Elite monitor along with a Pioneer 92 a/v reciever and a Toshiba A 30 HD DVD player. I played a HD DVD of "Knocked Up" and it looked pretty good and then I played a regular dvd of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". (the funniest movie ever made), and it really seemed to make the regular dvd look a whole lot better. In fact, I was so pleased with the upconverting that I wonder if I'll even bother replacing my regular dvds with HD versions. I also played a regular dvd of "the incredibles" and it looked pretty darn good. Again, maybe not as good as HD DVD, but I was happy. However, I am not as picky as most of you on this site. I played the regular dvds at 1080p/24 frames and I could see jagged edges and funky stuff happening in certain areas of the picture, but when I switched it to 1080i maximum output, all that jagged stuff went away and it looked very good.

Hey, it may not take much, but I'm happy with the purchase. The also had two free HD DVDs in the box.

All the connections were with HDMI cables.

One other thing that may help is to know that I don't actually like the super clarity of HD DVDs..... the picture is actually sharper than the human eye can see, so it makes the movie look a bit 'unrealistic'. I turned down the sharpness on the Pioneer monitor to take a little edge off the super sharpness. Call me nutty, but I like a bit more "softness" to the picture. To me, that looks more natural.

I'm pretty pleased with everything, although I haven't really gotten in there and played around more than the basics.