Toshiba HD-EP35
As good as the Xbox 360 HD DVD player is, it can’t hold a candle to a decent stand alone player, and it’s certainly a whole lot noisier. Lazy comments about the noisiest console on the market aside, the Toshiba HD-EP35 is what I have been waiting for since the HD-A1; a high quality, small form factor player with a sensible price tag.
Of course, price has always been the trump card of HD DVD (or the Toshiba format as it may as well be known), and while Toshiba may have been able to crow over the initial Blu-ray players for being half the price of the competition, with the entry level PlayStation 3 coming in at just a few pounds more than this new model, the format doesn’t seem quite so tempting any more.
When I first saw the EP35 (and its lower spec’d brother the EP30) at IFA I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe it was due to the sheer quality and desirability of the Blu-ray players from Sony, Pioneer and Panasonic, but the Toshiba players looked like a £30 DVD player and with the build quality to match. So how does the player stack up?
Seven free movies? None too shabby, 300 and The Bourne Supremacy are included in the box with a further five from a mail-in rebate, and I was half expecting two discs in slip cases, not the full retail packaging.
Unboxing photos are hardly exciting, so I’ll spare you the full horror and just say that in the box you get the player, remote, batteries and an HDMI cable (nice touch Toshiba).
The player itself is functional without being flashy, it DOES feel like a £30 DVD player, and the remote control is absolute junk. Seriously, I’ve seen better remotes on the aforementioned supermarket special players. Oh, and while I’m bashing the player, the eject mechanism is slow, noisy and clunky and the whole thing feels very plasticky.
But the all important thing is how do the movies look and sound? Fortunately, the answer to that is great. This higher end player supports all of the assorted HD audio formats (including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD), HDMI 1.3 deep colour, 24fps playback and outputs up to 1080p.
Setup is nice and simple thanks to an easy to follow menu system. The only snag I had was the ethernet connection had trouble picking up a default gateway from my DHCP server, but that’s a thirty second fix. Audio, video and clock settings are all run through within five minutes and I was ready to go.
Boot up time is around thirty seconds, but as with previous models it takes a good twenty to thirty seconds to recognise an HD DVD disc (DVD boot times are much faster). After the initial wait access times are instantaneous and remote response is fine.
I tested the player with three of my favourite reference quality discs – The Matrix, Transformers and Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. Tokyo Drift for the bright colours against dark backgrounds, Transformers for the incredible CG and live action blending and The Matrix because…well, it’s The Matrix, and it looks fantastic.
Picture quality is outstanding, a marked improvement over the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. Black levels are superb and the picture is crisp and clear (the 360 player has a tendancy to look a little wishy washy in places). Sound is also an improvement, front speaker dialogue cuts perfectly through the soundscape. Bottom line is, the player looks and sound fantastic, and for less than £300, it’s a steal.
DVDs upscale up to 1080p and they look superb, better than some stand alone upscaling players costing £200+, certainly better than the PS3 (but not by much), but not as good as my Pioneer DVD deck. The Pioneer retains its place in my AV rack for the forseeable future at least.
So how do I sum up this player? Just to go over the negatives first, the player looks nice but feels cheap. Buttons are plastic, the tray is clunky, the remote is an absolute joke and it takes a while to boot. Oh there is also no resume playback from pressing stop.
But what this player does very well is what it was designed for – playing discs. HD DVD movies look and sound great, the interface is clear and concise. This range of players is exactly what Toshiba wants them to be, a high quality player with a competitive price that may tempt consumers who have been waiting for the price to drop.
Despite my negative comments, I like this player an awful lot. If you can look past its faults you have a great quality player for a competitive price. It’s a consumer player with high end features and I’m glad I bought it.
The Look And Sound Of Perfect is still a stupid slogan, though.
NOTE: There are more, higher resolution photos on my Flickr page.
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Nice one homey! Great review. After I pay Christmas off I’ll look at this to replace my 360 add-on player.
Good choice!
Great review Pete! I can’t wait ’till I finally get myself together HD wise and finally can allow myself to buy DVDs again. (#):)
+1
Oh, I forgot that I had a question. So you say that this player supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD… In your setup do you have the player decoding those signals and then pass them processed to your receiver, that simply plays them or does the player just pass the audio to your receiver which than processes it?
Sorry if that’s a bit of a n00b question, but I’m feeling more and more out it home theater wise so I thought I’d ask. *nod*
Bush, the amp is the all important thing here. To obtain Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD you need an amp that is capable of handling those signals, and that is only achieveable over HDMI.
You take your HDMI from the player, into the amp and then output another HDMI cable from amp to your TV. Like I said, this is the only way to get uncompressed HD audio.
Connecting the player up via a regular optical output will take the HD audio output and downsample it to regular Dolby Digital or DTS audio. It still sounds ten times better than regular DVD audio, but you’ll need a nice amp (and speakers, of course) to get the best of it.
@Pete – Well I’m glad I asked! (#):)
So do you not have a receiver in your setup? I’m curious as to where your speakers are hooked in then…I mean, it looks like your do have a receiver in your setup (from your pics) or are you calling that your amp? (As in it has a built-in amp or something)
Ah yes indeed, a tomato/tomatoe thing there, receiver and amp are one and the same
@Pete – Ah ha! Well aside from the amp/receiver, you taught me something new with those HD audio formats. *nod* Thanks for the lesson Pete – Next time I’m in your neck of the woods your drinks are on me. (#):)
Is it not possible to get Dolby true hd or DTS hd via the 5.1 analogue outputs fed to an older reciever,e.g a Denon 1906
Sadly, no. The HD audio streams are only capable through HDMI. New receivers all round!
I’m actually looking very seriously at the Onkyo amp that What Hi Fi have given numerous awards to.
Oh dear,if i decide to treat myself to a new EP35 looks like i’ll have to upgrade my reciever in the near future aswell!Just have to see what Santa brings,eh?!
Hi, I have the Onkyo receiver, and it decodes from the Tosh fantastically. I think the load time is not an issue; its about 15 secs, so what.
i know these players are region free on the HD side but will they play my normal
region 1 or 3, dvd’s
Sadly, no. The DVD side of things is region locked to 2. The only reason I still keep my Pioneer DVD player in the rack now is because its multiregion.
And then Tosh ‘gave-up’ the battle!!
A brand new EP35 for around £120/£130 (still with two discs) seems like a no-brainer! Especially since the discs should just keep dropping in price now, even if they do eventually fizzle out…
PS: Thanks for pointing out that the EP35 is NOT multi-region, akes me feel better about having bought my Denon DVD-1940 upscaler (multo-region) deck last year……
No problem Andrew! I still think that the higher quality DVD upscalers like your Denon (great choice!) and my Pioneer are a real step up from the EP35.
All of my cheapo discs are finally starting to arrive, at least its a way of getting a good library of flicks.
Hi there – not sure if you are aware but there is a firmware created to make the ep35 and ep30 models region free for sd dvds. The author of the firmware is looking for 200 people who are willing to pay for it, you can find out more here
http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=65405&pid=1053747&st=120&#entry1053747
The idea is that once people have paid for it they won’t be as inclined to share it for free as he got grief before for his firmware being shared openly instead of by PM, anyway – if you are interested check out the link for more info.
All the best – Berth
Will the EP-35 or the EP-10 play Hi Def camcorder footage edited with Pinnacle 11 and burned with an Ordinary DVD burner onto SD DVD-R discs?
Responded via e-mail.