Which HD-DVD player should I buy? Seriously.

[Bauhausler]

All;
I want to buy a HD-DVD player. Not to play HD-DVD, but for the Audio CD and paleo-DVD functions. Contrarian logic says this is the time to pick up a unit of outstanding quality for peanuts. I would guess that units are going at fire sale prices that outperform many conventional CD players in terms of sound. Any recommendations on models? I'd probably spend up to $200 for one.

[uofmtiger]

I thought about this back when they were selling them for $99 at Walmart. I ended up with an Oppo. For less than $200, you can pick up one that also plays DVD-A and SACDs in addition to upconverting DVDs.

I have not heard that the HD DVD players outperform other players for music, so I will be interested to see the comments.

[Bauhausler]

Well, I got a lightly used Toshiba HD-A3 for about $60 delivered. It sounds very good playing CDs. I think I could be satisfied with teh sound of this as a primary CD player.

Dislikes:
1) long 'setup' time when it's powered on before it will play a disk. Initially I thought it was broken.
2) takes a long time to start playing when disk is loaded. I'm not patient.
3) does not display track number. Possibly there's a setup option to take care of that.

Likes:
1) sound, so far.
2) it's compact
3) internal fan
4) nicely legible display
5) Unobtrusive looks.

[bre's dad]

Wal-Mart has been blowing out A3's for about $75. One Wally World in town nas never carried them. The other has a display out and gets them in from time to time. They were listed on the website a few weeks ago. In other words, with wally world its hit & miss.

I've enjoyed mine. I'm watching on a 52" lcd projection tv & a dlp projector w/ 100" screen. It has a much better picture quality unscaling standard dvd's than my Denon unscaling dvd (don't remember the model #.) It looks good on both component video & hdmi. It won't upscale over the component though, which sucks becasue the projector is older & doesn't have hdmi. My only other complaint, which is standard for HD-DVD & Blu-Ray is that it takes along time to initially start up. Its very well built, which is more than I can say for the Denon. The Denon tends to lock up and will skip if the dvd isn't perfectly clean. The Toshiba plows right through. Also, I don't know if HD requires the calibrations & fine tuning that Blu-Ray does, but I'm running everything as-is from the factory and all looks great. Too bad HD lost.

[fmueller]

Well, this is only marginally related, but here it goes. I've been using a DVD player (Toshiba 4800) for music CD playing for year - not HD though. The sound was nice enough , but the lack of a track display and the endless time it takes for the thing to read a CD were driving me nuts. My wife had even more of an issue with it - less patient and likes to jump around between tracks. So recently I was ready to dump $300 on a new CD player, when dr*audio advised bying an old Onkyo DX-702 CD player from the local Craigslist for $25. It's instant CD reading and large display delighted, and it sounded pretty decent right away. However, a modified op amp installed by dr*audio for $35 turned this into the by far best sounding CD player I've ever heard - all for 20% of my budget :music:

In other words, if all you want to play is CDs, not DVDs, maybe a CD player is still the way to go.

[bre's dad]

Well, this is only marginally related, but here it goes. I've been using a DVD player (Toshiba 4800) for music CD playing for year - not HD though. The sound was nice enough , but the lack of a track display and the endless time it takes for the thing to read a CD were driving me nuts. My wife had even more of an issue with it - less patient and likes to jump around between tracks. So recently I was ready to dump $300 on a new CD player, when dr*audio advised bying an old Onkyo DX-702 CD player from the local Craigslist for $25. It's instant CD reading and large display delighted, and it sounded pretty decent right away. However, a modified op amp installed by dr*audio for $35 turned this into the by far best sounding CD player I've ever heard - all for 20% of my budget :music:

In other words, if all you want to play is CDs, not DVDs, maybe a CD player is still the way to go.

Absolutely agreed 100%. My HT setup is only for watching movies. I've got my Carver gear for everything else... :yes:

[tecrench]

Well, I got a lightly used Toshiba HD-A3 Go to their website and see if you unit needs a firmware upgrade, the update will help and once you run some hours on it, you will learn the beast:D. I had a A3 until I swapped for a A35 - great Audio and Video