Toshiba HD-EP10 – HD DVD Player – With 1080P Full HD3

Review by D. I. Shipley for Toshiba HD-EP10 – HD DVD Player – With 1080P Full HD3
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For the last two years, I have made do with my Denon 1920 upscaling DVD player, on a Pioneer 436 43″ Plasma TV. The upscaling provided on normal DVDs from this player is very good, indeed. However, I was now ready to take the step to an HD player proper.

I have watched the Blu-ray vs HD DVD struggle from the sidelines. At the moment, Blu-ray seems to be out in front. However, I would summarise my doubts about that format into as follows:

- There were very poor reports about the quality and playback of many of the early Blu-ray machines (with particular emphasis on poor playback caused by the frames per second issue). What I have seen in reviews is pretty poor to put it mildly…. HD DVD on the other hand seems to be getting the thumbs up from both professional reviewers and consumers.

- Blu-ray has more storage data space on its disks than HD and has been labeled the superior format as a result (shortly to be bettered by the arrival of 51GB HD DVD disks). However, this also makes it the more expensive format, and despite recent price cutting, is still more expensive than HD price wise for both machines and disks. Despite having a slightly smaller storage capacity than Blu-ray, the HD disk can still store much more data than a normal DVD and being a cheaper format than Blu-ay, will give it one hell of an advantage as prices are slashed. Indeed, this is now starting to happen. In a price cutting war, these cheaper overheads could well be the difference between success and failure.

- Lastly while the major studios are either evenly split or like Warner Bros, backing both formats, a certain company called Microsoft has backed HD against Blu-ray. Indeed, the latest Xbox machines all have HD DVD player capability.

I have waited for the next generation HD players before making a move for one and have elected to go for the Toshiba EP10. This is a mid range player in between the Toshiba E1 and the Toshiba XE1, and has been available here in the UK since May 2007. The EP10 has an all important advantage over the Toshiba E1, it has a 1080p facility whereas its smaller brother only goes up to 720p. Therefore, having an EP10 will give you the ability to play 1080p if you have a TV that supports that format, or are planning to get one in future.

My current TV supports up to 720p and 1080i. I therefore set the EP10 to playback at 1080i… and the result is a simply superb picture. Just look at the Universal logo in true HD instead of an upscaled picture and you will see what I mean. The 1080i picture in true HD is simply superb and is better full stop than upscaled 1080i, even from a machine as good as the Denon 1920. The picture that I get from the Toshiba EP10 when playing an HD DVD is the best picture that I have ever achieved on my 43″ Plasma TV. There is no blurring or distortion, focus is pin sharp and light and black are both superbly realised. King Kong, The Chronicles Of Riddick, and Pitch Black are simply superb, and I am seeing detail on them that simply was not there before.

The EP10 upscales normal DVDs well but is only slightly ahead of the Denon 1920 when it comes to upscaling though.

The machine is easy to operate and set up. A tip if you are plugging it into a home cinema, remember to set the Input Jack to Bitmap on the player’s Sound Menu during set up. Otherwise you will not get multichannel sound. If your AV amp supports HDMI then you can simply plug an HDMI cable between that and your machine. If your AV Amp does not have an HDMI connection, then it will be via a Digital Optical cable. Strangely the Toshiba EP10 does not have a Coaxial Digital Input plug and you can only use an Optical cable to link up to a non HDMI AV amp.

My only moans about the EP10 is firstly the approximately 30 seconds that it takes to load up a DVD. Secondly, while HD DVDs are Region free, the EP10 will only play Region 2 normal DVDs. So a multi Region code will be needed if you have normal DVDs from other regions.

To sum up though this is a superb machine which gives pictures of incredible clarity and this is on 1080i. I can only wonder how much better 1080p will look on this machine, albeit you will need a screen size of 40″ plus to be able to notice the difference, I would think.

It is great to be able to keep the old DVD collection and just add new HD DVDs where necessary.

On the strength of this mid range HD player, I think that HD seems to be proving itself the better format and once prices really fall, should start to pull the rug from underneath Blu-ray.

Review by Whisper for Toshiba HD-EP10 – HD DVD Player – With 1080P Full HD3
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I just bought it yesterday from a local store and I’m in love. It’s what my Panasonic TH-42PY700P was craving for :) The level of detail is astonishing. I only have Matrix Trilogy on HD DVD at the moment, but the wish list on Amazon is pretty long :)

The free HDMI cable is not very good, I had a better one which I bought for a Pioneer DV-600AV and I switched between them.

An hour ago I started the firmware update, it had 1.0 version. It downloaded for 45 minutes, at the end it said download 36/36 and started the actual update process, in 5 steps. The fifth step takes quite a while. All around, from the first download to the power off (it remains powered off after the update) it took about 65 minutes. OK…I went again to the maintenance page, pressed update again and it said now the firmware version is 2.5. Check for updates? Hell, yeah! Guess what? Now it’s at 1/40…I guess I won’t use it today :)

Will get back when I have more info.

LE

I have The Matrix series and the second movie always crashed at chapters 19 and 20. I tried the disc on another Toshiba – same thing. I recently bought an LG unit – it plays the disc very well.

Review by Mrs. R. L. Cable for Toshiba HD-EP10 – HD DVD Player – With 1080P Full HD3
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Just got mine delivered today as a present for my hubby for xmas but I notice that its a french version. All the box writing is in French along with the instructions and even the 2 Free DVD’S are french versions. Whilst I am sure we can knock off the subtitles and watch Batman Begins in english, I just think we may have a problem setting it up. Did anyone else have a french model? Any ideas as to whether I should return this and ask for an english one?