Toshiba HD DVD player as Transport

I have one, was going to use it for that but the first generation is rather loud because of the cpu cooling fan. When music is playing you cannot hear it but during quiet passages you can hear the fan. I have been trying to isolate mine or get a replacement heatsink to minimize it. Other then that, hd-dvd's and upconverted dvd's look amazing.

It is such a hassle to use. Loading and unloading is extremely slow. Much lower than my PC. It does a fine as a transport as far as sound quality. Just add a lot of time to the equation each time you want to switch CD's. Usually I am not one to complain about such things. This though is an extreme case IMO.

I own the XA1 with a Sept. build date.I think it's faster/ w/ new firmware. At HD- it's pretty hot.The thing ain't nearly as good as my 5year old Arcam at upconverting. I wouldn't bother to put a second SD disc in there. AS a cd player/w/dac?? Why not, should be ok. Sure there are 2 million better cd players so you just have to think:--everything matters,transports included. However the #1 thing that matters is your budjet.

My experience differs, mine is very fast when opening and closing while using cd's about on par with a normal cd player. SD playback with the upconversion (which only works via the HDMI port and not the component because of the macrovision copy protection scheme) looks much better then the Phillips DVDSA963 I had before. HDDVD looks fantastic via HDMI or component (HD-DVD's as of yet do not have the ict flag set limiting resolution on the analog component outputs). My only complaint with mine is the noise of the fan.