Home Theatre/TV: Toshiba HD-E1 HD-DVD Player – 56

Having auditioned Blu-ray in Tone 54, Gary Pearce now gets to put HD-DVD through its paces.

The HD wars are fully upon us it. Way back in December’s Tone I sampled Panasonic’s DMP-BD-10 Blu-ray player, and I must admit I came away from that experience highly impressed. It seemed that the harsh lessons learnt from the introduction of DVD all those years ago had been absorbed: the menus were intuitive, searching for your favourite scene meant that the movie didn’t have to stop and, most of all, resolution and sound quality had taken a giant leap forward.

But in a world where complications only seem to multiply as technology advances, cinema and music video fans have an alternative format in the guise of HD-DVD, Toshiba’s competing high-definition format. It too is based on blue laser technology, but is closer in principle to the existing DVD format. Because of its close relationship to the DVD, standard disc manufacturers do not have to completely re-equip with new disc authoring equipment as Blu-ray suppliers do, and maybe it’s this fact alone that could see the HD-DVD format prevail – unless some enterprising manufacturer comes forward with a unified disc player. [Check the CES report from page 28 – Ed).

But I’m digressing here. At this stage consumers have a choice to make, and for technophiles like myself it’s a bit like being a child in a sweetshop: with all this new technology around me it’s hard not to gorge myself. And so here I am with Toshiba’s brand spanking new HD-E1 HD-DVD player on my home theatre rack. It’s fairly unassuming, looking more like a conventional DVD player than the latest and greatest. But looks, as they say, can be deceiving.

The feature count is fairly comprehensive without being outstanding. As the HD-E1 is Toshiba’s entry-level player, only 1080i is supported, and the sole HDMI output is version 1.2 only – HDMI 1.3 will carry even higher quality video (36 and 48-bit ‘Deep Colour’), and will also carry insanely high quality audio in the form of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. So as the player most likely to make an appearance in the average home, how did it fare?

Connected up to the stunning Mitsubishi HC5000 and my now geriatric (gulp) Panasonic PT-AE900 projector, the picture quality from the Tosh could only be described as stunning. But that’s just part of the story. After reading countless online accounts of lethargic disc loading times, noisy operation and glitches in the first generation HD-DVD players (not released here), operating the HD-E1 was as easy as using a decent DVD player. Load times were perfectly acceptable, and although the remote wasn’t backlit it was pretty easy to find my way around it.

After connecting the Toshiba into my Pioneer AX4-AVI receiver and then into the Mitsubishi HC5000, images were revelatory with HD-DVD source material. Swordfish isn’t a masterpiece by any means, but this entertaining Travolta flick came to life with superb detail, natural skin tones (thanks Halle!) and wonderful, uncompressed 5.1 PCM audio. Likewise those lovely mobsters in Goodfellas; every blood splattering scene was portrayed unflinchingly with beautiful picture quality – forget about digital noise or blocking, this was better than any cinema I’ve been to in terms of picture quality.

As with Blu-ray, menus are accessible while the movie is playing, and to make your movie experience that more enriched the HD-E1 has an Ethernet connection for instant access to movie websites. Waaay cool. So did I enjoy my first encounter with HD-DVD? Hell yeah. And on this sampling Blu-ray has one heck of a competitor. Babe, where’s my chequebook?

Toshiba HD-E1 HD-DVD Player  $TBC