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.
Toshiba HD DVD player as Transport
Anyone consider using one of the Toshiba HD DVD players as an inexpensive transport with an external DAC. My understanding is that it uses a RAM buffer which may go a long way towards minimizing jitter and timing issues and considering that you can buy these things for around $500 new it might make sense to do something like this and put most of your money into a high quality DAC. Any thoughts?
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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. |
VERY good transport as far as I can tell when I get myself to use it for CD and not have an HD DVD filling its innards. I'd say that applies and can't hurt to try it. Regarding the comments of it not being a good standard upsampling DVD I can't say I agree, I think it looks quite good on a very hi resolution video setup. |
I'm thinking that going with an internal DAC with an inherently low jitter stream is preferable to sorting out the new jitter issues arising from the SPDIF receiver in you external DAC (3 ext DACs to my name). Give a listen to the Toshiba SD-3990 I hear the HD DVD players are Linux based and that means booting/slow. |
Just about everything in life can be measured against---what you had before--and how that compares to what you replaced it with.--My AX1 via a WireWorld hdmi--going into a Ruby; with HD-DVD material is better than anything I've seen. --However on SD material, my Arcam 27 is much,much better.---(Not to mention its stellar CD performance)--4/5 years ago this player was a killer in its price range--($3,000)---Most are probably comparing their Toshibas' upconverting of SD; to a lessor player. All in all these Toshibas are breakthrough players and for the money it does a lot, really really well. |
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