Toshiba HD-DVD Players- Importing

[ian220756]

Hi,
Has anyone got a source in either America or Hong Kong to buy one of these players.Frankly they are so cheap that I will buy one,and then get a better Blu Ray like Sony or Pioneer,when they are available.

To put pricing into perspective,I bought a Sony DVD 7000 THE WEEK DVD WAS LAUNCHED IN THE STATES AND PAID A $1000 FOR IT NINE YEARS AGO!

Any help would be appreciated

[CogPaul]

B and H photo (New York) - http://www.bhphotovideo.com sell internationally, and I have seen posts on the forums fron people who have used them, you can also calculate postage on their website. They do not have them listed yet but they may be a source

I am also thinking of getting one of these players so if anyone else has any suggestions for suppliers I would be grateful

Paul

[mjcairney]

Bear in mind that there will be duty and VAT to be added to whatever price you get, plus shipping, etc.

There will also be power considerations.

Tread with caution.

Cheers,

Martin.

[filmman]

crutchfield in the usa can supply a player but it has to shipped to a listed american postal address and then shipped to you(they cannot ship direct)

the two methods i am looking at are
1) ship to a contact you know and trust! and then get them to ship it to you
2) get crutchfield to ship it to a courier service centre like U.P.S and then arrange U.P.S to send it to you.
contact them at www.crutchfield.com
re customs i think they charge 5% import duty and then 17.5% on the whole lot for good luck!

[Godfather]

Hong Kong would be a better source because it's a 230V region so you won't need a step-down transformer.

[Rasczak]

Far be it from me to put off an early adopter - I intend to buy into HD DVD this year - but there is talk of Toshiba launching one or both of it's HD DVD players in the UK this year. Now it probably won't be until September/October time - and it will probably be nearer £500 - but if the rumours are true and HD DVD has no region coding then a UK player may be able to play both UK/US discs. I bet the US model turns out not to be PAL compatible. Just a thought anyway...

[CogPaul]

Good point about customs - always needs to be factored into the price. I would however say that I have never paid more than 23% in total on equipment I have imported from the states ( scalers, processors, DVD players, switchers etc).

Multi-region US machines are normally unable to cope with PAL properly - so if anyone is thinking of buying a USA model with this aim I would have to agree with Razczak and advise strongly against it until firmer specs on the players are available.

I have always kept two players (r1 and r2) since dvd first appeared so power requirements not a problem ( and I never experienced some of those early horrible problems with disc compatiblity!)

Hong Kong sounds an interesting option - anyone have any suggestions for suppliers there? I am off to the US in September, so could try and be patient, but feel the early adopter bug is just too strong to fight!

Originally Posted by Rasczak

Far be it from me to put off an early adopter - I intend to buy into HD DVD this year - but there is talk of Toshiba launching one or both of it's HD DVD players in the UK this year. Now it probably won't be until September/October time - and it will probably be nearer £500 - but if the rumours are true and HD DVD has no region coding then a UK player may be able to play both UK/US discs. I bet the US model turns out not to be PAL compatible. Just a thought anyway...

Why would HD need to be either PAL or NTSC? Surely that's a thing of the past! If not, can anybody shed any light on it? (or are you just thinking back compatibility with SD?)

Dave

[HighDeff]

Seems like it won´t be necessary to import from the US, according to this article, Toshiba Deutchland is considering to offer the same players over here.

And as you can see in the article the HD-DVD discs will be region free.

http://www.areadvd.de/news/2006/2006...2_HD-DVD.shtml

Article.:

Die im März geplante Einführung der HD-DVD in den USA wird voraussichtlich von einem positiven Nebenaspekt begleitet werden, der bei Film-Fans für Freude sorgen dürfte: Denn nach dem aktuellen Stand der Dinge werden HD-DVD-Player nicht mehr mit einem Regionalcode-System versehen werden, bestätigte Frank Eschholz von Toshiba Deutschland auf Anfrage von AREA DVD. Bei der DVD sorgte das Ländercode-System noch für eine Aufteilung der verschiedenen Weltregionen in unterschiedliche Zonen und verhinderte damit, dass man z.B. auf einem deutschen DVD-Player eine amerikanische DVD abspielen konnte. Bei der HD-DVD soll damit Schluss sein, was auch ohne Modifizierungen das Abspielen von HD-DVDs aus aller Welt ermöglichen dürfte.

Entsprechend gibt es auch bereits Überlegungen, die beiden ersten für den US-Markt geplanten HD-DVD-Player HD-A1 und HD-XA1, die ab März in den USA zu Preisen von 499.99 USD und 799.99 USD verkauft werden sollen, auch in Deutschland anzubieten, obwohl diese ausschließlich für den amerikanischen Markt konzipiert wurden und entsprechend keine PAL-DVDs abspielen können. Eine Entscheidung über den Verkauf dieser HD-DVD-Player in Deutschland ist bislang aber noch nicht gefallen.

[inzaman]

Originally Posted by dgkp

Why would HD need to be either PAL or NTSC? Surely that's a thing of the past! If not, can anybody shed any light on it? (or are you just thinking back compatibility with SD?)

Thats actually a very good point, what format is hd in?

Originally Posted by HighDeff

Seems like it won´t be necessary to import from the US, according to this article, Toshiba Deutchland is considering to offer the same players over here.

And as you can see in the article the HD-DVD discs will be region free.

Thats excellent news if it actually happens, especially with region free discs as well.

[mjcairney]

Originally Posted by HighDeff

Seems like it won´t be necessary to import from the US, according to this article, Toshiba Deutchland is considering to offer the same players over here.

And as you can see in the article the HD-DVD discs will be region free.

http://www.areadvd.de/news/2006/2006...2_HD-DVD.shtml

Article.:

Die im März geplante Einführung der HD-DVD in den USA wird voraussichtlich von einem positiven Nebenaspekt begleitet werden, der bei Film-Fans für Freude sorgen dürfte: Denn nach dem aktuellen Stand der Dinge werden HD-DVD-Player nicht mehr mit einem Regionalcode-System versehen werden, bestätigte Frank Eschholz von Toshiba Deutschland auf Anfrage von AREA DVD. Bei der DVD sorgte das Ländercode-System noch für eine Aufteilung der verschiedenen Weltregionen in unterschiedliche Zonen und verhinderte damit, dass man z.B. auf einem deutschen DVD-Player eine amerikanische DVD abspielen konnte. Bei der HD-DVD soll damit Schluss sein, was auch ohne Modifizierungen das Abspielen von HD-DVDs aus aller Welt ermöglichen dürfte.

Entsprechend gibt es auch bereits Überlegungen, die beiden ersten für den US-Markt geplanten HD-DVD-Player HD-A1 und HD-XA1, die ab März in den USA zu Preisen von 499.99 USD und 799.99 USD verkauft werden sollen, auch in Deutschland anzubieten, obwohl diese ausschließlich für den amerikanischen Markt konzipiert wurden und entsprechend keine PAL-DVDs abspielen können. Eine Entscheidung über den Verkauf dieser HD-DVD-Player in Deutschland ist bislang aber noch nicht gefallen.

Here's the page translated - hopefully.

http://translate.google.com/translat...%2DDVD%2Eshtml

Cheers,

Martin.

[Lin3ar]

Region free eh.That is very interesting.My wife has been going on about a trip to New York next month which I have been frantically trying to ignore but if I can make an excuse and put it back to March/April I might have to book those flights.

[Rasczak]

Thats actually a very good point, what format is hd in?

PAL and NTSC still exist even though there is now common resolutions (i.e. 720 or 1080). The biggest difference is frequency: our PAL discs will be at 50Hz, the US at 60Hz. There are dozens of different reasons for this - and there are more learned people than me on the forum who will tell you - but I believe power supply is one of the principle reasons.

Regardless do you not want to play standard def DVDs anymore?

[Miniholic]

This might be of interest. Apologies if it's been posted elsewhere.

http://www.movietyme.com/catalog/pro...ucts_id=30707&

Description

Prepare to be blown away by the new standard in home entertainment! Thrill to movies in eye-popping, true high-definition with Toshiba's first player for the next-generation HD DVD format. This model also plays standard DVDs in near-HD resolution for improved picture quality.

Next-generation HD DVD format compatible, for true HDTV video with amazing color and incredible high-resolution surround sound

Delivers greatly enhanced video performance with standard DVDs by upconverting their video resolution to HDTV-compliant 720p or 1080i via the HDMI interface

Built-in decoders for next-generation Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD high-resolution surround, plus lossless Dolby TrueHD (2-channel)

Backward compatibility & up-converting: Enjoy backward-compatibility and play your collection of standard DVDs on the HD-A1. In addition, the standard-definition DVD picture resolution can be up-converted via the HDMI interface to near-HD quality, with output resolution of 720p or 1080i to match your HDTV's performance. Because the conversion takes place in the player, the signal remains free from excessive digital-to-analog conversion artifacts.

Built-in multichannel decoders: The HD-A1 employs four 32-bit floating-point DSPs to decode Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD (2ch), DTS, and DTS-HD, offering improved fidelity and sonic realism to DVD soundtracks. The DSPs are world renowned for their high accuracy and are used in many high-quality audio solutions in the home theater market.

Transfer rate: The HD-A1 disc drive has an astounding 36.55 Mbps transfer rate. By comparison, standard DVD has an average transfer rate of less than 10 Mbps, and HDTV has a rate of 24 Mbps.

[CMcK]

Great news that HD-DVD titles will be region free. I wonder if that will extend to DVD playback on a HD-DVD player as well?
I am tempted to import a HD-DVD player from the US but I would imagine that for DVD playback you would be limited to region 1.