Honest Review of Toshiba A2 HD DVD Player

I started reading Tom Richmond's blog over at Tom's MAD Blog a couple of weeks ago and I have really enjoyed his posts. Tom is a very talented artist who does caricature drawings; he does a lot of work for MAD Magazine. Tom gives you the inside view of being a freelance artist and a lot of history on MAD all with a little bit of sarcasm and wit. (I recently picked up The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to improve my drawing skills from stick figure to, well, more human. I should ask Tom if he has heard of this book and what he thinks about it.)

Anyway, Tom recently posted a review of the second generation A2 Toshiba HD DVD player on his blog that I thought was a very honest review. It also sounds like he has a nice home theater setup so I think he's also got some good metrics to go by. All in all, it seems like he likes it and even has nice things to say about the image quality:

Of course, all that is just an aside when in comes to the really important thing… picture quality. As far as picture quality goes, it’s difficult to describe the difference between an HD DVD picture and even an upconverted regular DVD other than to say it’s incredible. The bigger your screen, the more you’ll notice the difference. The picture on a 42 inch plasma screen at 720p resolution is obviously tighter and clearer with an HD DVD, but get into the 50 inch range and it’s like night and day.

I used to work in the consumer electronic field and could tell you some interesting stories about this player - let's just say that it's more of a computer than high def DVD player. But it's at a decent price now of less than 400 bucks and has good image quality so I think it's a good deal for your home theater setup.