The Short Form

Price: $420 ($499 list) / tacp.toshiba.com / 800-319-6684

Snapshot

Toshiba's affordable midline HD DVD player provides solid performance but with a few picture-quality compromises.

Plus

•Much-improved startup-and-load time over first-generation players •Good-quality DVD upconversion

Minus

•Occasional artifacts visible on 1080p output

Key Features

•1080p high-def output •Upscales DVDs to 1080p resolution via HDMI •Onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding •Outputs HDMI; component-, composite-, and S-video; optical digital and stereo analog audio; Ethernet •17x 13.5 x 2.5 in; 9 lbs

The HD-A20's remote control keypad is not backlit, but its numerous small buttons are cleanly arranged and clearly labeled with glow-in-the-dark text. One interesting feature is a series of eight navigation cursor buttons — twice as many as you usually see on a disc player's remote control. Toshiba's manual says the eight-point cursor is designed to take advantage of "games and drawing software" to be found on future HD DVD titles. So along with movies and games, another thing HD DVD adopters can look forward to is drawing Etch-a-Sketch-style on their TV screens — awesome!

SETUP Toshiba kept the HD-A20's setup options mercifully simple (all the better to prevent alienating HD DVD newbies). The player sends simultaneous high-def signals to both its component-video and HDMI output jacks, although 1080p is available only via the HDMI connection. A Picture setup menu lets you choose the appropriate maximum resolution for your TV, with options ranging from 480i up to 1080p (at 60 frames per second); it also allows you to select Film, Video, or Auto mode for deinterlacing DVDs. In addition, there's an Enhanced Black level setting that's supposed to set black for 0 IRE when switched on and 7.5 IRE when off. From what I observed, both settings remained fixed at 0 IRE when a component-video or HDMI connection was used.

The HD-A20's audio options let you set its optical digital output to PCM (stereo) or bitstream (when connected to a receiver that can decode Dolby Digital or DTS). The player passes conventional Dolby Digital or DTS bitstreams from regular DVDs to your receiver as is, and despite claims to the contrary in the HD-A20's manual, it also converts Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD soundtracks on HD DVDs to standard 5.1-channel Dolby Digital. When using the player's HDMI connection, you get the choice of two settings: Auto (outputs DD and DTS bitstreams and converts Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD soundtracks to multichannel PCM) or PCM (decodes and delivers all multichannel soundtracks as PCM).

PERFORMANCE Another benefit to owning a second-gen Toshiba HD DVD player is reduced startup-and-load time. The HD-A20 clocked a little over a minute to power up, load, and display a disc — about half the time taken by the HD-XA1. And I experienced no regular incidence of playback glitches or freeze-ups. One thing I did find irritating was that the player didn't return to the last scene viewed after stopping playback: I had to sit through the FBI logo once more, jaws clenched in frustration. But this apparently is a limitation of HD DVD discs with advanced content (according to Toshiba) and doesn't apply to regular DVDs.

Speaking of regular DVDs, the HD-A20's upconversion of those discs to 1080p looked surprisingly clean and solid for a machine that isn't hot-rodded with the likes of Silicon Optix video processing. There was a slightly crispy and "enhanced" look to the discs I watched but no objectionable line-twitter or other artifacts. Even so, I should note that the player failed most of the deinterlacing tests on the DVD version of the Silicon Optix HQV test disc, showing considerable "jaggy" artifacts on most patterns.

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