I didn't buy this from Amazon, but since reviews of the player are scarce, I thought I'd share some thoughts.

A few short months ago I bought the Xbox add-on to try the HD-DVD waters, and have been nothing but impressed, so when my standard DVD player died (my 7th one in 8 years, I'm a very heavy DVD watcher), I decided to invest in a player that will (hopefully) last (I also purchased a 4 year warranty this time).

The player itself is beautiful, both in appearance and on screen (watching on 1080p Samsung LCD). Picture quality of HD-DVD is, as expected, superb, and DVD upscaling is the best I have ever seen (easily destroying my 1 year old Sony).

A very few negatives. Boot times are still a bit slow, it takes about 40 seconds before the HD-DVD logo appears on screen, with another 20 seconds to load the disc, it's around 60 seconds total from power on to actually start watching the disc. Discs also don't resume play, which is odd as it seems to be a... Read more

I just watched my first HD DVD, and all I can say is WOW! The picture quality of 1080p/24 is amazing. This player also does a nice job on SD DVD,the upconversion to 1080i looks great too. I have this player connected to a Samsung DLP 1080p TV and an Onkyo receiver, all interconnected via HDMI. This is the finest picture and sound combination I have ever owned. I am looking forward to more releases on HD DVD, Amazon has a great selection at great prices.

I bought this player probably without doing my homework thoroughly; even all the literature says that it passes the new audio formats (True HD, DD+, etc), this player does not pass these formats via the HDMI cable to be decoded by the AVR. It makes its own decoding, and as the Toshiba customer service rep said, it passes "its own version" of the new formats, and only in 5.1
The ONLY player that as of today can pass the new audio formats via the HDMI cable to be decoded by a capable AVR is the HD-A35.

I am returning it and getting the HD-A35.

Other than this, the player works as designed and the picture is absolutely breathtaking.