Digital Trends

Toshiba HD-XA1 July 9th, 2006 | by Rebecca Day

Design and Features

The HD-XA1 is an attractive add to the equipment stack. Solidly built, the player's elegant two-toned front-panel design features a glossy black upper panel and solid brushed aluminum lower panel. The power button changes from red to lime green when switching between standby and on modes. The other two front-panel buttons include Door, which motors down the front panel cover, and Open/Close, which powers the disc drawer. Behind the lower panel are five small round buttons for the basics: track advance and reverse, pause, stop and play. Two USB jacks reside behind the front panel for game players or memory sticks.

Like all HD DVD players, the HD-XA1 is compatible with the full gamut of DVD and CD formats: HD DVD/HD DVD-R, DVD/DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and CD/CD-R/CD-RW. Output connectors include HDMI 1.1, component video, S-Video and composite on the video side and 5.1-channel analog, coaxial digital and optical digital on the audio side. The jack pack is completed by two USB ports, RS-232 for control systems and an Ethernet RJ45 jack, which allows for feature upgrades and player interactivity.

The HD-XA1 has on-board audio encoders for Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS and DTS-HD. Audio encoders include multi-channel 24-bit/192 kHz digital audio converters. The player is also compatible with two-channel Dolby True HD.

On the video side, the player upconverts standard DVDs to 720p or 1080i, depending on your display. The HD-XA1 does not support 1080p output, although future generations almost certainly will. At issue, according to Toshiba HD DVD advisor Mark Knox, is that not all 1080p TVs currently available can accept 1080p at all possible frame rates. Movies use a 24-progressive frame rate, but according to Knox, “some of new TVs out now that say they have 1080p won't take 24 frames progressive because it's related to the scan rate of display itself.” Frame rate support is one of the issues still being ironed out in the standardization process for HDMI 1.3, which should be ratified by the end of the year.

Image Courtesy of Toshiba