In the fall of 2006 I decided to provide some mainstream High Definition DVD content for my system. The first unit that I purchased was the first generation Toshiba HD-XA1. Despite its “bleeding edge” faults (agonizingly slow start up times, flaky remote, some HDMI quirks and a couple of firmware upgrades along the way nothing bad can be said about the way it performed in providing excellent picture and sound. Shortly after, in November 2006, Microsoft introduced an inexpensive HD-DVD add-on for my XBox 360 ($199 including an HD copy of King Kong) so I decided to test the waters. To my surprise, this was a 2nd generation Toshiba unit and didn’t have the sluggish performance of the earlier units. The only down side was the lack of HD audio codecs on any current XBox 360 unit (including the “Elite” model). But it was a nice addition to my HD-DVD stable.
In April, 2007 Toshiba lowered the price of their 2nd generation players so I replaced the HD-XA1 with a very capable HD-XA2. No longer sluggish, it appears as thoough most of the early bugs of the original model have been worked out and this is, to me, a much more capable unit - at a lower price. This full featured product also provides 1080p output over HDMI (instead of just 1080i output like the XA1) and also decodes HD audio codecs.