It wasn't just Toshiba. Microsoft and Intel sunk a lot of cash into HD DVD as well. The main killer of HD DVD was the Sony PS3 and then Warner dealt the final blow when they decided to stop producing HD DVD discs.
"What does the 'Toob have to say about HD DVD?" I asked myself in the middle of my Christmas Holiday Marathon viewing of Season 1 of the 2000s *Battlestar Galactica* reboot on..... HD DVD. And it brought me to this episode from one of my favorite technogeek channels! I'm watching BSG played from my Toshiba HD-A2 player, which was the predecessor of the one in this video. In fact, the one here, the HD-A3 was Toshiba's last model before throwing in the towel on HD DVD on Feb. 18, 2008. I was the crazy guy who went out and bought several players *AFTER* Toshiba cried "uncle!" because they were being dumped on eBay and at Best Buy for super cheap. And you could buy HD DVDs literally for a buck or two. I remember grabbing some partly because I had the player and partly because they were WAY cheaper than the standard DVD versions! Hence, acquiring Season 1 of BSG for about $3. It wasn't a serious purchase - I remembered the short-lived series from ca. 1978-80 and was just curious. Ended up *loving* it and acquired the rest of the seasons..... on Blu-ray!! My Toshiba A2 is a great, sturdy, thunky, robust upscaling DVD player.... even if the Microsoft operating system is a little clunky. The A3 is obviously built to a lower price to gin up sales for HD-DVD, but by the time it came out (Gary says the one here has an August 2007 build date), the future was not looking good for the format, tho' not completely hopeless at that point. Problem was, Sony was determined *NOT* to lose another format war (they had just recently taken a bath on SACD), so the Columbia movie studio, which they owned, AND the PlayStation 3 were firmly, immovably in the Blu-ray camp. Of course, there's some irony here because ..... ......Sony won a Pyrrhic victory. Yes, they prevailed with the high-def disc format, but by the time of their win in 2008, the future was already in streaming. I remember getting a kick out of reading reviews of new Blu-ray players that said practically nothing about how well they played Blu-ray discs and were ALL about which streaming services they could handle. The capability to accept streaming services was kind of an add-on to the Blu-ray package
Toshiba bet the farm on hddvd because the porn industry announced they were supporting hddvd and not Blu-ray. They did the same for VHS and that helped drive a few nails into betamax coffin. It failed for hddvd becauae the internet is for porn. Not that I would know anything about that.
I own one of these Hd Dvd players right along with my Betamax player. Plus a Laserdisc player. I love oddball vintage technology such as these machines.👍🏾
How is that? Sony invented both Batamax and the VHS format, which they shelved as inferior and tried to get everyone on board with Betamax. They had Sanyo, Toshiba, Zenith and NEC on board. JVC and Panasonic said they were on board and then went and released the discarded VHS format, and brought RCA on board with them. They dumped them on the market below the cost to make them, and handed out licenses to everyone to make them. Blueray was Sony's revenge to the others. Even DVD recordable was a bloody mess because of Philips and Toshiba with their DVD+R a+RW format to add market confusion, and Philips with their DCC format that killed the DAT format as a consumer recording format. The other companies did everything to hurt Sony, and finally Sony won big with Bluray, 8mm Hi8 and MiniDV / HDV were also Sony victories. HD DVD was Toshiba's baby, and it didn't make it out of diapers.
@@12voltvids Which ones won the format war? Betamax or VHS? DAT / Minidisc vs. CD-R / flash memory of MP3s MemoryStick / Universal Media Disc vs. CompactFlash / SD
@@GerardPinzone Betamax and VHS were both proprietary formats because you could not make cassettes and equipment for either one, at least while bearing the trademarks, unless you were licensed to do so by Sony and JVC respectively. And what you made had to abide by standards that those companies had set for their formats. CD-R is specified by the Orange Book, one of the rainbow books for the Compact Disc standard. You are aware that Sony is one of the principal authors of those books, right? One important factor for DAT's failure in the marketplace is due to the music industry and their fears of piracy; they believed that DAT, being capable of making perfect digital copies of their audio CDs, was a threat to their business. The RIAA even went so far as to lobby the United States Congress against the DAT format, forcing Sony to make changes to DAT to make it less easy to make digital copies, such as implementing SCMS (Serial Copy Management System). Another factor was that the regular consumer didn't see a point in DAT and, for that matter, DCC; they already had Compact Disc for digital sound and analog Compact Cassette still delivered reasonable fidelity while being very inexpensive and ubiquitous. You can't lump UMD, a read-only optical disc format for the PlayStation Portable, with solid state data storage formats. I will give you this much, though, Secure Digital is pretty much the standard whereas Memory Stick isn't.
@J Yes! The PS3 and XBOX 360 are what decided that format war. That and Sony had the ability to tip the scales with its media divisions. Spiderman on HD? Don't hold your breath.
Well, I wouldn't say that HD-DVD almost brought down Toshiba, but its failure certainly didn't help. Toshiba was almost brought down by its Westinghouse nuclear division. It took a while for them to find a buyer for that albatross. In the meantime, they had to sell parts of themselves off to stay afloat.
Right but they did gamble on HD dvd and that one came back to bite them. Not quite as big a white elephant than RCA had with their Ced video disk but it was still a big hit.
Well it certainly didn't help. The death blow was the studios releasing more movies on BluRay. Toshiba tried to play the price card but the PS3 was the discount BluRay player and it played games too. The PS3 also beat the crap out of the Xbox.
my Toshiba HD-A2 (2nd gen HD DVD w single laser) was $99 at Walmart - i knew then that Toshiba was desperate and HD DVD was going to lose so i never bought any discs. But it put out a great DVD upscaled pic until it crapped out last week, oddly at exactly the same time as my blu-ray Panasonic DMP BD87 (which had fried it's wifi long ago). Toshiba PC-like enclosed optical unit laser assembly doesn't want to slide much and the spindle only occasionally spins. wish i could fix it just for the DVD playback. clean and lube hasn't worked. so now my hoarder basement desk cocoon is down 2 optical drive sources, but i mostly stream these days anyway. thx much for all your vids.
I wonder if that infared was added because the unit might have been used in a classroom or rack with a central control module (perhaps with a LCD projector smart classroom setup).
Inside a cabinet Ni doubt. It was an installer that mounts tvs and equipment that gave it to me. He pulled it from someone's place he was updating equipment for.
I too,got taken by the HD-DVD format when it came out and invested in TWO HD-DVD players and a ton of HD-DVD movies..which at the time were selling at $35 and up here in the U.S.....I built a collection of about one hundred titles by the time the format was abandoned in favor of bluray.....I held on to my collection and my 2 players for several years before selling them....Lately,I have read many articles about HD-DVD`s developing "disc-rot",especially on titles from Warner Brothers....These days,I buy only blu-ray and 4-K blu-ray....the only times I buy regular DVD`s is seasons of TV shows...which generally are only available on DVD.I had one of the exact model on your bench today.....
What? They didn't offer to buy them back? RCA when they abandoned the ced format bought back all the dealer inventory of movies and players and offered customers coupons to trade their player in on a new VHS recorder. The shop I worked at had hundreds of movies and stock of all their players that didn't sell. They were all returned for credit.
The wavelength HD-DVD used is different than that of Blu-ray--explaining why a dual HD-DVD disc could hold at most 30 GB compared to BD's max of 50 GB--so a standalone HD-DVD player can't even read a Blu-ray disc in that regard. LG and Samsung did make combo HD-DVD/BD players at the end, which today are worth it alone for the novelty. But I don't have any interest in adding more HD-DVD players, since it's not a format I'm particularly invested in. My main player, a Toshiba HD-A35, is noteworthy in that it's the one player I know of that can output DD+ and HD audio as bitstream and not just PCM. But by sending the audio as bitstream, it does not include (for better or for worse) the button sounds that a lot of the discs' menus have.
I just saw this video you made where they gave you the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Yeah I was able to find one at a salvation army store. I paid only $15.00 dollars for it. Like you I tried it? DVD'S play really good on it. it's a pretty big player. What I don't like is that Toshiba didn't put a usb connection on it? but it could be because of the year they made them. So out of curiosity? I bought a few HD-DVD'S. while the quality is about the same as blu rays ? I have to admit the picture and sound is pretty good . I was impressed with it. Too bad they don't make them anymore.
I've got four of these players. Two HD-A1, one HD-A2 and one HD-A3. The Warner Brothers discs I have are starting to rot. I can send you a few HD DVDs if you want.
One thing I would have been curious about is, if you could find a Blu-ray drive with the right connectors, if the processor in that unit would be able to play a Blu-ray. Probably not, but it would be interesting to see if the drive makes a difference. I never used HD DVD, by the time I was ready to upgrade from DVD, Blu-ray was the winner, and the direction things were going. Now I'm in the process of getting more UHD Blu-rays whenever movies I like are re-released.
@@12voltvids Good point: I was thinking in terms of codecs. HD DVD, and Super Audio CD, are two of the disc formats I have no physical experience with. Super Audio CD I wouldn't mind still trying, but HD DVD doesn't really seem to be worth it at this point, other than having the experience of knowing the differences between them, and Blu-ray.
I bought one of these as it was cheaper than buying a BR player, I only saw a few films on it though. One problem with the format was most of the major studios dropped support for it pretty quickly (if they had it in the first place), thus it was destined to fail. Part of the issue was the cost of licensing the technology, I believe, as Toshiba weren't willing to do so as cheaply. The other issue was - as you have demonstrated - playback, or the lack of it, with incompatibility with most other formats; most people went for a machine that could play most of the previous formats, CD, DVD, etc.
That's right. My bd player can play audio cd, mp3 on CDR, mp3 on dvd-r mp3 on bd-r, dvd, dvd-r / rw, avchd video on dvd-r, bd, bd-re and of course BluRay. Only thing it won't play is the new ultra vilot 4k BluRay disks. Oh almost forgot, it will play all video and audio formats on usb stick too!
it really helped that sony put a bluray drive in every ps3 and when stand alone bluray players were going for 1 grand u could buy a ps3 plus the bluray remote for 600 bucks. hd dvd had microsofts backing but they didn't put the player built in to the xbox u had to buy a $200 add on drive plus the xboxes at that time weren't even coming with hdmi so u could only ran at 1080i out of component so u couldn't even take full advange of an hd dvds 1080p. one thing hd dvd had going for it was no region coding what so ever so u could import from anywhere and be able to play it were bluray the made it up to the studio weather to lock it or not so bigger studios like universal and dinsey wouldn't bother with the region locks but smaller regional studios like shout factory or alliance here in Canada lock down there releases. 4k bluray finally got rid of region locks for good though as there is no region locking what so ever.
My first bluray player was a PS3 with 60 gig HDD. Still have it. Have only played 3 games on it. I bought it as a bluray player. STill works, or did last time I turned it on. WIll play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games.
@@12voltvids same here i got mine in 2007 after they release the 40 gig cost reduced model was like 400 for the system 40 bucks for the remote bought gta 4 with it since that had just came out and a copy of T2 and commando on blu ray. i still have but dont use it for blurays now since i have a panasonic 4k ub820 there second from the top of the line only dif on the higher model is it in a fancier aluminum front and some unless audiophile type stuff like xlr audio connection and analogue hook ups for 7.1 and the drive is mounted a little more fancier damping stuff to make it quieter but it uses the same firmware and stuff that the lower end model uses so there is i no real advantage to someone who isn't an audio snob to pay nearly $700 more for it. i have a modded firmware installed that lets u switch region for both dvd and standard blu ray so i can play any region of dvd or bluray it also lets u skip over things like fbi messages studio logos that u normally can't skip on a blu ray.
PS3 was my first Blu-Ray player too, bought it in 2009 (PS3 Slim 120gb version) and still have it in working condition, well, would need new battery, that holds the time and date, but no other problems. I still have only two Blu-Ray players, besides PS3, I have Xbox One S, that can play Blu-Ray and 4K UHD discs too. Mostly I've used them for gaming though. I remember the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war, always liked Blu-Ray more than HD-DVD.
@@mrjsv4935 ud be surprised how long those cr2032 back up batteries last sometimes i still got some super Nintendo games that use them for save games and they are on there original battery from the 90s and some how there still working lol
@@mraaron1584 Cool, I do have a HP PC from 2001 and so far has been working with original coin cell battery at the motherboard, so sometimes they indeed last very long time :)
The old bodged design fix. HD dvd was designed to fail. The engineers at Toshiba likely said "you want us to build what? Don't you know Sony already has BluRay and they own most of the studios?
I have an old Philips DVD player that will take anything you throw at it, whether PAL, NTSC, MP4, etc. It is also Region 0. trouble is, it came out before Blu-ray, so it's DVD only. I wish they made new players today that were multi-format and unlocked... barring hacking the firmware.
Toshiba put up a good fight but Sony was not going to lose the format war twice. Sony already had the entertainment industry in their back pocket. Some of the early HD DVD players were actually a PC stuffed inside the box.
I wonder if the Epoxy is to prevent hackers from ripping or decrypting HD movies. Although the encryption on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray did get cracked by the same guy who went by the anonymous name Muslix64 back in the day. You can see the video of this here: czcams.com/video/P0Vs00N977I/video.html. Here is some more info about this history as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy. I am only listing this for a little bit of history.
I have quite a few hd dvds, but the Warner brothers discs are now failing much more than before.. Great format, films can be bought very cheap, but the fact that WB discs are rotting means that you are gambling every time you purchase a disc
I have a HD DVD disc here but my Philips BDP 3000 UK model Blu Ray player would not play it, even though it can play all regions on Standard Definition DVD’s and Region B only Blu Ray’s
@@markrowe8824 I have a couple of LG dual format players so bluray and hddvd work in both. I agree with others posters here and dont bother with warner based discs especially harry potter.
@@AvidRetro yes I know LG and Samsung both launched BD/HD-DVD combi players but the original poster mentions he has a Philips BD player, Philips never launched a dual format BD/HD-DVD player.
I have a second copy of a disc. I can send it to you, if you would like. I love the quality of the movies. I have the five disc set of Blade Runner and it is very nice. I have Blu-Ray disc but, I still enjoy my HD-DVD movies
i think alot of HD players could only read some disc, i have one that was new that only read HD DVDs, not any thing else, similar to how DVd couldn't play HD or Blue ray disc, there prolly was a format war where companies wanted only their players reading their disc or some thing, like VHS and Beta, not interchangable, I think thats what these players and others were, mine though is a 5 disc player, works just with HD disc though, but i'm not worried about that as i have blue ray and DVd for other disc i have.
Blueray players, at least SOny will also read AVCHD disks. AVCHD is a format that allows for HD quality to be recorded at lower bit rate using MPG4 onto an DVD disk. An 8.5G dual layer disk will store 2 hours of HD content easily. I record many things in AVCHD when I don't want to burn to a real BDR disk, even though I can burn to either.
hmm seems like this player isn't as multi-function as a blu-ray player, I remember a blu-ray players supporting a lot more formats, I'm guessing because they're usually more fully featured, because the OSD on this seems to be very basic, and most of the blu-ray players I've seen have has at least something in terms of smarts, because blu-ray relies on java to function, i guess adding more java applets wouldn't be that much more problematic.
There's no need to open-up a working Toshiba-made product. Waste of time... They always work and rarely need any service. Stick with Panasonic for your more enjoyable repair experience, since they always need constant service.
I never liked the idea of any optical disk not having a protective casette, like a 3.5 floppy disk. Its a shitty system using bare disks. An optimised betamax recorder/player would have been much better than vhs. Roughly 20 years back i told a friend what i thought would be good for recording tv programs in the future, a kind of memory Cartridge or similar could be plugged into a small box for instant faultless playback/recording. I also said computers would not have a conventional hard drive, a large memory device would be soldered to the pcb, a faster boot up would be possible. I didn't think much about capacity years ago, just boot up speed lol. The flash disk for laptops has happened, im still waiting for the small box with a slot in the top for a cartridge holding tv programs. A ssd comes close, but they die if they are written to too many times.
I still have my Toshiba HD DVD player hooked up and about 20 titles, I play theme every once and awhile.
It wasn't just Toshiba. Microsoft and Intel sunk a lot of cash into HD DVD as well. The main killer of HD DVD was the Sony PS3 and then Warner dealt the final blow when they decided to stop producing HD DVD discs.
HD-DVD live!...forever😊 all be back...🎉
"What does the 'Toob have to say about HD DVD?" I asked myself in the middle of my Christmas Holiday Marathon viewing of Season 1 of the 2000s *Battlestar Galactica* reboot on..... HD DVD. And it brought me to this episode from one of my favorite technogeek channels! I'm watching BSG played from my Toshiba HD-A2 player, which was the predecessor of the one in this video. In fact, the one here, the HD-A3 was Toshiba's last model before throwing in the towel on HD DVD on Feb. 18, 2008. I was the crazy guy who went out and bought several players *AFTER* Toshiba cried "uncle!" because they were being dumped on eBay and at Best Buy for super cheap. And you could buy HD DVDs literally for a buck or two. I remember grabbing some partly because I had the player and partly because they were WAY cheaper than the standard DVD versions! Hence, acquiring Season 1 of BSG for about $3. It wasn't a serious purchase - I remembered the short-lived series from ca. 1978-80 and was just curious. Ended up *loving* it and acquired the rest of the seasons..... on Blu-ray!!
My Toshiba A2 is a great, sturdy, thunky, robust upscaling DVD player.... even if the Microsoft operating system is a little clunky. The A3 is obviously built to a lower price to gin up sales for HD-DVD, but by the time it came out (Gary says the one here has an August 2007 build date), the future was not looking good for the format, tho' not completely hopeless at that point. Problem was, Sony was determined *NOT* to lose another format war (they had just recently taken a bath on SACD), so the Columbia movie studio, which they owned, AND the PlayStation 3 were firmly, immovably in the Blu-ray camp. Of course, there's some irony here because .....
......Sony won a Pyrrhic victory. Yes, they prevailed with the high-def disc format, but by the time of their win in 2008, the future was already in streaming. I remember getting a kick out of reading reviews of new Blu-ray players that said practically nothing about how well they played Blu-ray discs and were ALL about which streaming services they could handle. The capability to accept streaming services was kind of an add-on to the Blu-ray package
Toshiba bet the farm on hddvd because the porn industry announced they were supporting hddvd and not Blu-ray. They did the same for VHS and that helped drive a few nails into betamax coffin. It failed for hddvd becauae the internet is for porn. Not that I would know anything about that.
I own one of these Hd Dvd players right along with my Betamax player. Plus a Laserdisc player. I love oddball vintage technology such as these machines.👍🏾
I have one too now. Don't know what i will do with it. I guess look for some HD dvd movies cheap (as in free)
Wow, "vintage". :D its barely just over 10 years old.
@@dlarge6502
Yup, 10 years is a long time with electronics.
Still got mine with around 50 films. Plays normal DVD perfectly.
Considering Sony's track record of proprietary formats that only Sony uses, it wasn't unreasonable to bet against Blu-ray.
How is that? Sony invented both Batamax and the VHS format, which they shelved as inferior and tried to get everyone on board with Betamax. They had Sanyo, Toshiba, Zenith and NEC on board. JVC and Panasonic said they were on board and then went and released the discarded VHS format, and brought RCA on board with them. They dumped them on the market below the cost to make them, and handed out licenses to everyone to make them. Blueray was Sony's revenge to the others. Even DVD recordable was a bloody mess because of Philips and Toshiba with their DVD+R a+RW format to add market confusion, and Philips with their DCC format that killed the DAT format as a consumer recording format. The other companies did everything to hurt Sony, and finally Sony won big with Bluray, 8mm Hi8 and MiniDV / HDV were also Sony victories. HD DVD was Toshiba's baby, and it didn't make it out of diapers.
@@12voltvids Which ones won the format war?
Betamax or VHS?
DAT / Minidisc vs. CD-R / flash memory of MP3s
MemoryStick / Universal Media Disc vs. CompactFlash / SD
@@GerardPinzone Too many formats to remember. My brain hurts
@@GerardPinzone Betamax and VHS were both proprietary formats because you could not make cassettes and equipment for either one, at least while bearing the trademarks, unless you were licensed to do so by Sony and JVC respectively. And what you made had to abide by standards that those companies had set for their formats.
CD-R is specified by the Orange Book, one of the rainbow books for the Compact Disc standard. You are aware that Sony is one of the principal authors of those books, right?
One important factor for DAT's failure in the marketplace is due to the music industry and their fears of piracy; they believed that DAT, being capable of making perfect digital copies of their audio CDs, was a threat to their business. The RIAA even went so far as to lobby the United States Congress against the DAT format, forcing Sony to make changes to DAT to make it less easy to make digital copies, such as implementing SCMS (Serial Copy Management System). Another factor was that the regular consumer didn't see a point in DAT and, for that matter, DCC; they already had Compact Disc for digital sound and analog Compact Cassette still delivered reasonable fidelity while being very inexpensive and ubiquitous.
You can't lump UMD, a read-only optical disc format for the PlayStation Portable, with solid state data storage formats. I will give you this much, though, Secure Digital is pretty much the standard whereas Memory Stick isn't.
@J Yes! The PS3 and XBOX 360 are what decided that format war. That and Sony had the ability to tip the scales with its media divisions. Spiderman on HD? Don't hold your breath.
I agree with you on DVD recorders they had so many goofy formats.
Well, I wouldn't say that HD-DVD almost brought down Toshiba, but its failure certainly didn't help.
Toshiba was almost brought down by its Westinghouse nuclear division. It took a while for them to find a buyer for that albatross. In the meantime, they had to sell parts of themselves off to stay afloat.
Right but they did gamble on HD dvd and that one came back to bite them. Not quite as big a white elephant than RCA had with their Ced video disk but it was still a big hit.
The Sony PlayStation 3 which came with a built-in Blu-Ray player is what killed HD DVD.
Well it certainly didn't help. The death blow was the studios releasing more movies on BluRay. Toshiba tried to play the price card but the PS3 was the discount BluRay player and it played games too. The PS3 also beat the crap out of the Xbox.
@@12voltvids Most definitely 👍🏾
my Toshiba HD-A2 (2nd gen HD DVD w single laser) was $99 at Walmart - i knew then that Toshiba was desperate and HD DVD was going to lose so i never bought any discs. But it put out a great DVD upscaled pic until it crapped out last week, oddly at exactly the same time as my blu-ray Panasonic DMP BD87 (which had fried it's wifi long ago). Toshiba PC-like enclosed optical unit laser assembly doesn't want to slide much and the spindle only occasionally spins. wish i could fix it just for the DVD playback. clean and lube hasn't worked. so now my hoarder basement desk cocoon is down 2 optical drive sources, but i mostly stream these days anyway.
thx much for all your vids.
If you need a good player with best for upscaling DVD. HD DVD players are definitely the way to go for me.
I wonder if that infared was added because the unit might have been used in a classroom or rack with a central control module (perhaps with a LCD projector smart classroom setup).
Inside a cabinet Ni doubt. It was an installer that mounts tvs and equipment that gave it to me. He pulled it from someone's place he was updating equipment for.
I too,got taken by the HD-DVD format when it came out and invested in TWO HD-DVD players and a ton of HD-DVD movies..which at the time were selling at $35 and up here in the U.S.....I built a collection of about one hundred titles by the time the format was abandoned in favor of bluray.....I held on to my collection and my 2 players for several years before selling them....Lately,I have read many articles about HD-DVD`s developing "disc-rot",especially on titles from Warner Brothers....These days,I buy only blu-ray and 4-K blu-ray....the only times I buy regular DVD`s is seasons of TV shows...which generally are only available on DVD.I had one of the exact model on your bench today.....
What? They didn't offer to buy them back?
RCA when they abandoned the ced format bought back all the dealer inventory of movies and players and offered customers coupons to trade their player in on a new VHS recorder. The shop I worked at had hundreds of movies and stock of all their players that didn't sell. They were all returned for credit.
The wavelength HD-DVD used is different than that of Blu-ray--explaining why a dual HD-DVD disc could hold at most 30 GB compared to BD's max of 50 GB--so a standalone HD-DVD player can't even read a Blu-ray disc in that regard. LG and Samsung did make combo HD-DVD/BD players at the end, which today are worth it alone for the novelty. But I don't have any interest in adding more HD-DVD players, since it's not a format I'm particularly invested in.
My main player, a Toshiba HD-A35, is noteworthy in that it's the one player I know of that can output DD+ and HD audio as bitstream and not just PCM. But by sending the audio as bitstream, it does not include (for better or for worse) the button sounds that a lot of the discs' menus have.
many times those drives are actually ide, but through a nonstandard connector
I just saw this video you made where they gave you the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Yeah I was able to find one at a salvation army store. I paid only $15.00 dollars for it. Like you I tried it? DVD'S play really good on it. it's a pretty big player. What I don't like is that Toshiba didn't put a usb connection on it? but it could be because of the year they made them. So out of curiosity? I bought a few HD-DVD'S. while the quality is about the same as blu rays ? I have to admit the picture and sound is pretty good . I was impressed with it. Too bad they don't make them anymore.
Toshiba betting the farm on HD-DVD, sounds like RCA putting everything into CED videodiscs.
Yup, pretty much the same thing, with the same result. It dam near bankrupted the company.
I've got four of these players. Two HD-A1, one HD-A2 and one HD-A3. The Warner Brothers discs I have are starting to rot. I can send you a few HD DVDs if you want.
I wonder if there are any movies on HD that never got released to Blu-ray? I doubt it.
I have a single HD DVD disk. It's a recordable disk. It's a shiny orange.
Only HD-DVD I have is for the Xbox 360 with around 20 movies
One thing I would have been curious about is, if you could find a Blu-ray drive with the right connectors, if the processor in that unit would be able to play a Blu-ray. Probably not, but it would be interesting to see if the drive makes a difference. I never used HD DVD, by the time I was ready to upgrade from DVD, Blu-ray was the winner, and the direction things were going. Now I'm in the process of getting more UHD Blu-rays whenever movies I like are re-released.
No, it wouldn't. The security is totally different as is the disk structure.
@@12voltvids Good point: I was thinking in terms of codecs. HD DVD, and Super Audio CD, are two of the disc formats I have no physical experience with. Super Audio CD I wouldn't mind still trying, but HD DVD doesn't really seem to be worth it at this point, other than having the experience of knowing the differences between them, and Blu-ray.
I bought one of these as it was cheaper than buying a BR player, I only saw a few films on it though. One problem with the format was most of the major studios dropped support for it pretty quickly (if they had it in the first place), thus it was destined to fail. Part of the issue was the cost of licensing the technology, I believe, as Toshiba weren't willing to do so as cheaply. The other issue was - as you have demonstrated - playback, or the lack of it, with incompatibility with most other formats; most people went for a machine that could play most of the previous formats, CD, DVD, etc.
That's right. My bd player can play audio cd, mp3 on CDR, mp3 on dvd-r mp3 on bd-r, dvd, dvd-r / rw, avchd video on dvd-r, bd, bd-re and of course BluRay. Only thing it won't play is the new ultra vilot 4k BluRay disks. Oh almost forgot, it will play all video and audio formats on usb stick too!
There is it was Vob.files (MPEG2) MPEG Video V2 , AC-3 Audio Coding 3 (L R C LFE Ls Rs) 6 channels (448 kb/s) DVD Disk
it really helped that sony put a bluray drive in every ps3 and when stand alone bluray players were going for 1 grand u could buy a ps3 plus the bluray remote for 600 bucks. hd dvd had microsofts backing but they didn't put the player built in to the xbox u had to buy a $200 add on drive plus the xboxes at that time weren't even coming with hdmi so u could only ran at 1080i out of component so u couldn't even take full advange of an hd dvds 1080p. one thing hd dvd had going for it was no region coding what so ever so u could import from anywhere and be able to play it were bluray the made it up to the studio weather to lock it or not so bigger studios like universal and dinsey wouldn't bother with the region locks but smaller regional studios like shout factory or alliance here in Canada lock down there releases. 4k bluray finally got rid of region locks for good though as there is no region locking what so ever.
My first bluray player was a PS3 with 60 gig HDD. Still have it. Have only played 3 games on it. I bought it as a bluray player. STill works, or did last time I turned it on. WIll play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games.
@@12voltvids same here i got mine in 2007 after they release the 40 gig cost reduced model was like 400 for the system 40 bucks for the remote bought gta 4 with it since that had just came out and a copy of T2 and commando on blu ray. i still have but dont use it for blurays now since i have a panasonic 4k ub820 there second from the top of the line only dif on the higher model is it in a fancier aluminum front and some unless audiophile type stuff like xlr audio connection and analogue hook ups for 7.1 and the drive is mounted a little more fancier damping stuff to make it quieter but it uses the same firmware and stuff that the lower end model uses so there is i no real advantage to someone who isn't an audio snob to pay nearly $700 more for it. i have a modded firmware installed that lets u switch region for both dvd and standard blu ray so i can play any region of dvd or bluray it also lets u skip over things like fbi messages studio logos that u normally can't skip on a blu ray.
PS3 was my first Blu-Ray player too, bought it in 2009 (PS3 Slim 120gb version) and still have it in working condition, well, would need new battery, that holds the time and date, but no other problems. I still have only two Blu-Ray players, besides PS3, I have Xbox One S, that can play Blu-Ray and 4K UHD discs too.
Mostly I've used them for gaming though.
I remember the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war, always liked Blu-Ray more than HD-DVD.
@@mrjsv4935 ud be surprised how long those cr2032 back up batteries last sometimes i still got some super Nintendo games that use them for save games and they are on there original battery from the 90s and some how there still working lol
@@mraaron1584 Cool, I do have a HP PC from 2001 and so far has been working with original coin cell battery at the motherboard, so sometimes they indeed last very long time :)
I've seen engineers using epoxy on pins to remove crosstalk rather than redesign a bad board design!
The old bodged design fix. HD dvd was designed to fail. The engineers at Toshiba likely said "you want us to build what? Don't you know Sony already has BluRay and they own most of the studios?
I have an old Philips DVD player that will take anything you throw at it, whether PAL, NTSC, MP4, etc. It is also Region 0. trouble is, it came out before Blu-ray, so it's DVD only. I wish they made new players today that were multi-format and unlocked... barring hacking the firmware.
You can unlock most blu-ray players to region 0 for DVD's. All my DVD and bluray players are Sony and they all unlocked using the same codes.
Toshiba put up a good fight but Sony was not going to lose the format war twice. Sony already had the entertainment industry in their back pocket. Some of the early HD DVD players were actually a PC stuffed inside the box.
Most Blu ray players were x86 soc with java os in the early days.
I wonder if the Epoxy is to prevent hackers from ripping or decrypting HD movies. Although the encryption on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray did get cracked by the same guy who went by the anonymous name Muslix64 back in the day. You can see the video of this here: czcams.com/video/P0Vs00N977I/video.html. Here is some more info about this history as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy. I am only listing this for a little bit of history.
You drove to Alaska from Vancouver B.C!!!
Yup, and then all around the peace river area. Took me about a week in total.
I have quite a few hd dvds, but the Warner brothers discs are now failing much more than before..
Great format, films can be bought very cheap, but the fact that WB discs are rotting means that you are gambling every time you purchase a disc
I wonder this one uses a SATA interface.
I have a HD DVD disc here but my Philips BDP 3000 UK model Blu Ray player would not play it, even though it can play all regions on Standard Definition DVD’s and Region B only Blu Ray’s
there two different formats so of course your hd-dvd disc will not play in a bluray player.🤔🤔😨😨
@@markrowe8824 I have a couple of LG dual format players so bluray and hddvd work in both. I agree with others posters here and dont bother with warner based discs especially harry potter.
@@AvidRetro yes I know LG and Samsung both launched BD/HD-DVD combi players but the original poster mentions he has a Philips BD player, Philips never launched a dual format BD/HD-DVD player.
Cool.
Oh well !
Well it up converts regular DVDs
We need a shop tour! @12voltvids
It is exactly what you see. a work bench. A bunch of stuff is going to the recycle center in the next week.
Most HD-DVD discs suffer from disc rot so it's not even worth buying them sealed
Really, so the disks them self were bad.
Well at the time they were OK, but now it's hit and miss to find ones that work
I have 30 HD-DVD disc that work fine. I have had them since 2008 or 2009.
@@mmdhemphill
I will keep my eyes open for HD dvd disks that are being given away.
I have a second copy of a disc. I can send it to you, if you would like. I love the quality of the movies. I have the five disc set of Blade Runner and it is very nice. I have Blu-Ray disc but, I still enjoy my HD-DVD movies
One great thing about HD DVD is they’re cheap as crap now
Ya free.
Now I now why bluray won.
i think alot of HD players could only read some disc, i have one that was new that only read HD DVDs, not any thing else, similar to how DVd couldn't play HD or Blue ray disc, there prolly was a format war where companies wanted only their players reading their disc or some thing, like VHS and Beta, not interchangable, I think thats what these players and others were, mine though is a 5 disc player, works just with HD disc though, but i'm not worried about that as i have blue ray and DVd for other disc i have.
Blueray players, at least SOny will also read AVCHD disks. AVCHD is a format that allows for HD quality to be recorded at lower bit rate using MPG4 onto an DVD disk. An 8.5G dual layer disk will store 2 hours of HD content easily. I record many things in AVCHD when I don't want to burn to a real BDR disk, even though I can burn to either.
hmm seems like this player isn't as multi-function as a blu-ray player, I remember a blu-ray players supporting a lot more formats, I'm guessing because they're usually more fully featured, because the OSD on this seems to be very basic, and most of the blu-ray players I've seen have has at least something in terms of smarts, because blu-ray relies on java to function, i guess adding more java applets wouldn't be that much more problematic.
HD-DVD has an interactive VM as well, it's just not Java. IIRC, it's based on some of Microsoft's .NET technology, but it's been a minute...
There's no need to open-up a working Toshiba-made product. Waste of time... They always work and rarely need any service. Stick with Panasonic for your more enjoyable repair experience, since they always need constant service.
I managed to breathe life into my LG combo player here czcams.com/video/KqFVO6UpVeQ/video.html
I never liked the idea of any optical disk not having a protective casette, like a 3.5 floppy disk.
Its a shitty system using bare disks.
An optimised betamax recorder/player would have been much better than vhs.
Roughly 20 years back i told a friend what i thought would be good for recording tv programs in the future, a kind of memory Cartridge or similar could be plugged into a small box for instant faultless playback/recording.
I also said computers would not have a conventional hard drive, a large memory device would be soldered to the pcb, a faster boot up would be possible.
I didn't think much about capacity years ago, just boot up speed lol.
The flash disk for laptops has happened, im still waiting for the small box with a slot in the top for a cartridge holding tv programs.
A ssd comes close, but they die if they are written to too many times.
DVD RAM was probably the best recording medium for time shifting TV programs
Premiere Pro = GOOD
Final Cut Pro = BETTER
DaVinci Resolve Studio = EXCELLENT
I learned on premiere, and that is what I am sticking with just because I know how to use it. Don't feel like learning a new NLE again.