RHTI 22: Toshiba A2 Review, Black Friday (Staying Home?), Gift Ideas, My X-mas List

[eugovector]

Got this one out just in time for the big Holiday Shopping Season to begin. Pop it in the car to drown out the kids (maybe they'll learn something).

Enjoy your holidays everyone, but don't hold back with the comments.

Episode 022 (11/20/2007)
«» News and Email: Content is Still King, HD-DVD Attachment Rates, DVD Profiler
«» Black Friday: The Specials and Reasons to Stay Home
«» What's on My Christmas List?
«» Gift Ideas for HT and Non-HT people in your life
«» Toshiba HD-A2 Review: Nice, but not all Good News.
«» My apologies, no movie or music this week.

[wbassett]

As always, I enjoyed the podcast!

Sorry to hear about your A2 breaking on you Marshall, and as much as I sympathize and hear your pain I really think that was a fluke more than an indication of overall quality of the players. I have two now and no problems whatsoever and nobody that I know with an A2 has run into anything like that.

One thing I will mention is extended warranty! When I bought my $99 player at Best Buy the extended warranty was $9.99 and to me that was a no brainer. Based on what you are saying that shipping is $15, it sounds like it would have more than paid for itself. Now I can say I'm not sure what Best Buy would do, if they would fix the unit, give you a replacement, or a refund (in the form of a store gift card most likely, they're not to keen on giving actual money as refunds anymore...) but they would resolve the issue for you I'm sure. I suspect since they don't have any in stock to swap out a player with you, Best Buy would most likely ship it off for repair which would mean a couple weeks down time I'm sure, and to me that is pretty unacceptable... especially if the scenario is it is a primary HD player.

For those that bought at Walmart, I'm not sure Walmart has extended warranties, at least I have never heard of them offering one but maybe they started.
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Content- I agree content is king and with that the reigning king is SDVD! Still, at around 480 HD DVD titles, and last I saw slightly (but not by a wide margin) more BD discs, that is a lot of movies. I remember you saying you don't have a huge in house collection so that is a lot of titles to chose from either format before running out of options! Of course that's nothing compared to SDVD and for people like me that tend to like older movies that aren't always out on High Def yet, that still brings us back to SDVD being the king of content.
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Black Friday- Big disappointment to me and I agree, shop on-line and look for deals there for the Holidays. We didn't go out and wait in line mainly because there really wasn't any 'deals' that I was interested in. We went out around 1:00PM and in our area the parking lots were almost empty. We were able to get spots right up by the store at ToyrUs, Target, and Walmart. That's something that we never seem to be lucky on during a normal weekend or shopping day so I was very surprised.

I'm sure the price of gas (and heating oil) has a lot to do with it, but in my area at least it didn't look like shoppers turned out in droves, unless they all were out and back home by the time we went out.

[eugovector]

I didn't go out this Black Friday either, but in past years I start heading home around 11am, and the store would be empty. By 1pm, when you were out, those folks would have already had their Friday Turkey and been in a football coma. I bet there were still plenty of folks in line. What they would have been in line for, I don't know.

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My dad just mentioned this story...looks like I was right. Jordon Creek Mall in Des Moines, IA opened at midnight on Friday. They estimate about 35,000 people showed up over the course of the night.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/app...NESS/711240320

[wbassett]

Most years were early morning runs, so you're probably right, but it really was slow from what I saw, slower than last year at the same time.

This isn't HT related, more of shopper's beware... ToysRUs ran a 50% off sale on certain toys in the morning. The sale was only for a couple of hours, but it looks like they raised the prices on some of the more popular items by as much as 60%! So for those few hours people were able to get things a bit cheaper than Target and Walmart, but certainly not 50% less. What kind of rubbed me the wrong way was for the rest of the day they more than made up for any 'sale' they had for two hours earlier in the morning with some inflated prices. Basically what I'm saying is buyer beware... make sure to do your comparitive pricing before heading out and that applies to not only toys, but even HT gear.

I'm not sure if they raised the price, or if it just didn't hit my area yet, but there were definitely no $199 or less A3's forsale in Walmart. The list price was $289! A little online shopping or price checking can find a much better price. I got my second A2 for $89 with three free movies in the store and then the five free ones through mail in.

Oh, I remember something else from the podcast that I agree with 1000%... those cables included with HD DVD players! It's not just Toshiba that's a 'shame on you' but even my PS3 only had a composite cable. Granted it's a game system, but Sony does push it as a Bluray player too. It wouldn't have killed them to throw in an inexpensive HDMI cable and I'd even say if they were serious about it as a player... the remote too. But PS3 aside, there are other dedicated BD players that don't have an HDMI cable included either. Perhaps they don't want people knowing that HDMI cables aren't as expensive as people think?? Even if that is the lame reason, they could throw in component cables!

As far as the A2 upconverting, I have a Samsung HD-931 and there is no contest between the two of them. I can't say anything about the Oppo since I don't have one. What is the price of the Oppo now? One thing to mention is if the Oppo is still hovering around the $200 mark, then an A3 is a better choice in my opinion if only because it can play HD discs and if it is on par with the A2 as far as upconverting, it does a respectable job... Maybe not as good as the Oppo, but the Oppo is limited to just SDVD and at a premium price. If the Oppo was say $100 (maybe it is now, I don't know) then it would be a viable option for SDVD, but if it's within 10-20% of a HD player, I'd have to recommend the HD player for the reason I mentioned- it can play HD discs and the Oppo can't.