Amazon.com accidentally leaked a preview of Toshiba’s next-generation HD DVD players last week, but Toshiba officially announced the players today. Right on time for our site redesign, no doubt.
The new players will be the HD-A3, HD-A30 and HD-A35, and they supercede the current HD-A2, HD-A20 and XA-20 models (which were the successors to the A1, etc. — wanna place any bets on what next year’s models will be named?).
We’ll learn more about these players next month at the CEDIA show in Colorado, but the information that’s been shared in Toshiba’s press release is that the two higher models feature something called “CE-Link,” which is a way for your HD DVD player to communicate with other devices that it’s connected to (like your TV and home theater amplifier) via its HDMI cable. This will allow your HD DVD player to turn the other two devices on, for example, if they’re not already on — allowing for a one-touch playing of discs. It’s a two-way control, which means that the other devices can send commands to the player as well acknowledge receiving a command, ensuring that the device is in the proper state.
The top-of-the-line HD-A35 boasts a few more enhancements:
- Support for “Deep Color” via HDMI
- Up to 7.1 channel High Bit Rate audio via HDMI
These new players are slimmer than the ones they replace, and feature a high-gloss “piano black” finish.
Pricing on these models is $299, $399 and $499 — I’m sure you can figure out which price applies to which model. According to the press release, the A3 and A35 models will become available in October, and the A30 comes out in September. We’ll be glad to show you some pictures and tell you where they’re available.
I’m sure that all of us who’ve had to deal with the “remote shuffle” (having to find and use multiple remotes to get all of the devices selected properly on each corresponding device) will greatly appreciate CE-Link. Of course, you’ll need to have an HDTV and other devices that support CE-Link in order to make this all work out. Is that a big problem? For those of us who have already invested in HDTVs and systems, yes it is a problem, but we’re actually in the minority at about 30%. If you were forward-thinking enough and purchased an HDTV that already came equipped with HDMI-CEC (the generic name for CE-Link), then you’re in luck. The bigger population of people has yet to purchase an HDTV of any kind, and haven’t even had to commit to a high-definition DVD format, and they’ll definitely have some fun with this.
UPDATE: More information about HDMI-CEC enabled HDTVs coming soon in an upcoming post.
