Toshiba First Generation Players.

I gave up hope on My buggy HD-A1 months ago. I don't think it's fixable, i think it is a design flaw, as the problems have never once occured on a standard DVD and they happen more frequently on certain titles more than others.(some sort of buffer issue I assume) I may replace the unit eventually, but prices will have to fall into the $150 realm for that to happen. It's part of the reason I buy all nuetral studio discs on BD rather than HDDVD; (reliability in playback).

There was some recent talk about v2.1 coming fairly soon in another thread the other day. I can only hope that if it's released, it will fix as many quirks as possible on the 1st gen units because I doubt we will see another firmware release beyond v2.1.

I Have The Xa1.
New Firmware Will Be Out Soon.
Xa2 And A2 Firmware Just Updated
Don't Panic

This has been a recurring rumor on this forum since early December - it was going to be just as soon as the G2 players are out, then after each subsequent patch for the newer players.

At this point, I will believe it when it is loaded into my A1. I have moved all new movie watching to Netflix as I don't want to invest much more into this given the weakness of Toshiba's and the studio's support.

No - I am not a BD shill. Don't have BD, and don't plan to get it any time soon. (You can check my posts). At this point, my best hope is that the war stretches out long enough so a reliable source of downloadable HD movies takes hold. At this point, BD has enough stability to make it unlikely for BD studios to change over. And given the recent HD DVD experience, there has to be a ton of change to stem the tide. That has been obvious for several months, and so far - no sign of change.

*sigh*

Ken

2.1 will be released in 2-3 weeks.

-Robert

Thanks Robert for that info!

As a (very happy) A1 owner, I'm heartened to hear that Toshiba hasn't forgotten about us first generation owners.

Robert (or anyone else) - any information on what 2.1 is supposed to address/do?
Thanks again for your continuing contributions to the forum!

It Should Address Audio And Video Skip/playability Of Certain Discs

If I was you guys I would email or contact toshiba and ask for the updates to be sent when they come out. I talked to a tosh. tech when i upgraded my A1 and he said once you are on the mailing list you get them when they come out.

Why? Having a 6Mbps incoming cable Internet line hard connected to my A1, it is faster to pull it electronically.

Besides not needing the CDs sitting around and ultimately going to the landfill, I would rather Toshiba put their money into getting updates working and out, rather than on duplication and postage. I am sure a beancounter at Toshiba knows the exact distribution cost for each update, and one of the back pressures on frequent updates will be those costs.


Ken

Thanks for the update robert.

Do you know how it works foir folks like me who bought a used HD-a1? Currently I am at 2.0 and it came like that. Can I contact Toshiba? Or do I need to get this from the original owner?

If you can hook the machine up to the Internet via the RJ45 jack, you can go into the menu (no disc in the tray) and select the maintenance operation and have the machine go pull the update from Toshiba's site.

I don't know what it takes to get a disk from Toshiba later on - there was a card that came with the machine in the original box.

I just got an update and 2.1 will be out by the end of next week.

tundrSQ, download the upgrade directly into the player with the RJ45 jack or just call Toshiba at 800-631-3811 be ready with your s/n.

-Robert

Robert,

Do you know what fixes/features will be included in this update?

Thank you.

Didn't you say that a few months ago?

^ Not sure I say so many things, I guess we could do a search. Anyway I was just updated and the G1 2.1 firmware will be out next week.

-Robert

I think you will find Audio And Video Skips even after the update.

Because you have advanced knowledge of this update, or because you think the skips are inherent in the technology?

I guess everyone's mileage varies. My A1 was bought a few weeks after launch and it works great. It has only frozen during power on twice and Fear and Loathing is the only disk which skips... and that only happens when using the TrueHD track.

Everything else I have plays flawlessly, including discs with TrueHD tracks. Go figure...

I also only seem to get skips when I use the TrueHD track. I wonder why this is. Perhaps it just cant get it all off the disk fast enough.

I'm happy this is happening next week as I will be out on business for 3 weeks and want to leave it updated before I go. I would hate to hear everyone say it is great and have to wait three weeks to find out.

Jorge

I'm thinking that perhaps this disc was manufactured using the upper-end of the spec and the drive or CPU in some machines can't quite keep up.

Yes i think the NEC drives have a hard time reading HD discs.The skipping started almost as soon as the A1s hit the market & since then we have had 3, 4, updates? and yet still alot of people had skips & glitches.
Enyway, lets hope for something nice for the folks who have 1st gen units that work ok

I wish Toshiba would provide some way to mod the A1 with the Toshiba drive.

Anyone know why the A1 sticky was removed a while back? The Xa1 still has a sticky.

I sure hope so.... My XA1 worked flawlessly for several months and now recently it glitches regularly. If this thing continues to operate this way, whether Toshiba believes I am a beta tester or not, it will cause me to stray from HD-DVD and more specifically the Toshiba brand.

^ He then goes on to say :

Which is now this week

If mine did that after several months (it does not), I would try cleaning the laser/optical pickup. Same problem sometimes occurs on CD and DVD players. There are cleaning kits that you can buy that are suppose to clean it -- but the best method may be some disassembly and careful cleaning. Soapy water with lint free task wipes twirled on the end of toothpicks. Then a rinse & dry buff with the same. You may get lucky.

Many, many owners, including myself have reported these problems with brand new players so I am extremely skeptical that it's a dirty optical pickup and novices trying to clean the pickup are more likely to damage it than fix any problem.

Since the problem appears random (some discs will play fine then if you play the same disc again you will get a freeze up) and sometimes powering the player on and off completely (unplugging it) seems to fix things "for a while" I am much more inclined to believe that some of the NEC drives are having trouble either "keeping up" or reading the HD discs themselves.

I've never had a single problem of any kind with an SD disc, and that also, should tell people something.

That is an entirely different issue (which could very well be an alignment problem). I was responding to a post where the user said that they had used the player for several months without problems. Just want to chime in that maybe maybe some crud and/or film got on the optical lens and that may be fixable/cleanable by the user.

Then again if an alignment problem has developed then either the drive will need to be repaired/replaced or the user can hold out the hope that later firmware might possibly have better error correction handling.