Those old bastions of consumer advocacy over at Consumer Report?s have chimed in on HD-DVD and specifically the Toshiba HD-A1 (not sure why they refer to it as the HD-A1KN). And true to form they uncover reasons you shouldn?t buy it.

I first knew something was amiss when I read, ?Neither player is a must-buy yet.? Can anyone cite an example of a consumer electronics item that is a must-buy, maybe a cell-phone or baby-monitor? What gives here? Is that how CR bases their recommendations, on whether you actually need the item? I don?t ?need? half the items in my house, but I?m sure as heck not throwing them out. Ok deep breath, I?ll move on.

From there CR went into the whole format-war speech. You know I?m thinking that in most cases any reiteration of the whole format-war is redundant, but in CR?s case maybe their readers are genuinely unaware of how things are playing out here, so I?ll grant them this point.

Next up was the ?WHAT WE LIKED? section of the review. Among the examples cited here were image quality with both HD and SD discs and that was about it?

The ?WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE? section however complained about lack of 1080p support (even though just about every 1080p capable display will up-convert 1080i internally to 1080p) and ?Finicky HDMI connections? as well as the often bemoaned remote.

Here?s a tip CR, I?m guessing a large portion of the folks who are buying this player use a universal remote, which could easily handle the HD-A1?s remote codes. High Definition DVD is here and we?re talking about remotes?

R.Hollis

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 8:56 pm and is filed under HD-DVD, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.