Got my refurb A35 from Amazon Warehouse on Friday. The player looked immaculate but had clearly been repackaged. It is a very handsome machine — especially when on — and quieter than my A1. The remotes are interchangeable, although different in construction, layout and appearance. I immediately updated the firmware from 1.3 to 2.0 using a burned CD I had made in advance. No playback issues at all thus far.

It came with the two pack-in discs, although I don't know what to do with them since I already have "Bourne" and have no interest in watching or owning "300". Both are marked "promotional" or "not for sale" so selling them will be tough (not to mention that the market is flooded with them).

I plan to use the player for a month or two to make sure it is solid, then put it away until I get a 1080p/24 display in a couple of years (I am still using an old 1080i CRT RP). The venerable A1 will suffice until then.

You might be able to do a 2-for-1 trade with those discs in the selling/trading thread here, or maybe put them up for $5 each. Otherwise you might try craigslist or something.

What about PC drives? Anybody tried one of the BD/HD DVD combo drives on their HTPC? Strengths? Weaknesses?

You should at least watch 300. I was a hater naysayer when it came out too - watched in on HD DVD and was blown away. Awesome movie.

On topic - Vanns has brand new A30s for $119 shipped. I'm thinking about snagging one, but my A2 has been so reliable about playing anything I throw at it, I'm a little scared to use a different machine. I'm only 1080i anyway, so eh.

Thanks for the heads up, I have been looking for another A30 as backup and this is the best price I've seen for a new A30 delivered. Just finished ordering one. Thanks again!

I'm kinda wishing I had kept my A2 (sold it to another DVDTalker), since I found out it shares several parts with my new...er, refurbed XA2. Oh well.

lizard: Good for you!

(I'm new to the A35 family too! )

A35 UPDATE!!!: I've always had to wait all day (until late afternoon) for all of my UPS deliveries and they NEVER show up earlier, and Well...

I just got back from picking Treesa up from her work over there in BH doing donuts and 180's off the curb cuts on side streets and dodging cars and guess what?

The UPS truck was parked up on the corner of our street, and Tree said, 'HURRY! RUN AND STOP HIM BEFORE HE LEAVES!', so I pulled into our driveway and slammed it into park and jumped out the car and ran my arse off up and into the truck, but he wasn't there!

So I looked all around and I couldn't find him! I ran back to the car and that's when I heard Treesa say, 'There you are!', and it was the UPS dude with my package in his sweet little hands!

(It was the A35. I'm gonna have to wait a couple more days for the XA2 because I ordered it a couple days later...)

So I thanked the dude and put it in the car and after I parked it, I took the box out and grabbed my 'Man Tool' out of it's holster thing and whipped out one of the knife blades and cut that bad boy open (to check if it was new or an open box) and guess what?

It was...

...was...

...was...was...

It was, was, was...

So there ya have it...

Just another day in the life of,

-Ol' Baggy Eyes, THEEK!

Still waiting for the open box A35 unit I purchased from Amazon.com (03/19/08) to be shipped. It says now it will ship on 03/28/08. You would of thunk that this was already in stock.

Don't get me started...

TOO LATE!!!

SON OF A BEE!!!

I ouch for ya, Kahuna!

They just did the same thing to me!

First they said they HAD them in Stock (I actually CALLED THEM BEFORE I ordered, making SURE they had them in stock, and the guy who I spoke to named 'Alex', said they did and that it would be delivered ON TIME, because a similar situation happened to me once before with them) and then (After they took my money) they told me they DIDN'T have one and they WOULDN'T let me cancel!

Not to mention, I had things I had to do today! But instead of taking care of business, I had to hang around the ol' bumstead and pivit on my tail bone, while waiting the entire-damn-day for the damn thing to be delivered, and that really sucks, especially if ya have things you've got to do.

Anyway, Sorry about the 'mini-rant'!

(BEWARE! There's more to come below... )

Here's hoping you won't have to go through any more than absolutely necessary and get your player real soon.

(The 35 is V-e-r-y Nice, BTW! )

-THEEKSAKE!
____________________

The following is an extended, Director's Cut Rant of sorts. I spoilerized it so you won't have to see it unless you really want to. I don't want to purposefully ruin any-one's day! -Paul

^Although I already did the firmware update to 2.0 on my A35, you might want to not do it until you read up on it. Apparently 2.0 has (minor) issues with 1080p/24 and AVC encoded discs. I don't think I have any AVC encoded HD DVDs so it may be a moot question for me. Assuming that I understand the problem from the posts at AVS.

Perhaps Toshiba will come out with another firmware update. But I would guess that the folks there in charge of such work must be pretty demoralized with the dropping of the HD DVD format.

One oddball problem with my A35: it comes up with the clock set screen every time I turn it on. I presume that this is because I turn my HT stuff all the way off with a power strip and the machine might not have an internal clock that has a battery/capacitor to keep it going when unplugged, as some devices do. Can't figure why an HD DVD player really needs a clock anyway. Anyone else see this, or is it just me?

Oh NO, lizard!!!

I already did it last night!

(I made a disc and updated it ASAP. )

No problems yet, and I don't have the clock situation.

However, turning everything off like that (with a power strip) is probably the friggin' culprit! Have you tried turning it off and on using only the power button?

(Bet ya that's it.)

Best of luck, A35 Brother! &

-Pablo Tres

Yes, it is the power strip. I prefer to have most of the HT components fully off to stop the power drain as well as to help isolate them from possible surges from the daily lightning storms in the summer. But it is pretty silly to have a clock on an HD DVD player with no capacitor to power it when off.

Not a big deal, the clock set screen can be easily skipped.

Glad ya found the bugger!

Hey, you're right!

A Clock?

What the HELL?

With that logic, I suppose if the remote had a little LCD display window they would have added a calculator!

The problem is only minor if you don't use 1080p24 output, in which case it won't affect you at all. If you do use 1080p24 output, the problem is huge.

Fortunately, someone on AVS prepared a bootleg firmware that will let you revert to v1.3 even after having installed 2.0.

Yup, and it's trivial to modify the official 1.3 firmware to allow the downgrade. (For folks who are wary of using a firmware someone else modified). It just requires a hex editor.

Same goes for folks who have 2nd generation players, and want to revert to firmware 2.7.

Well, I read a lot of that AVS thread, set the player for 1080p24 out, put in Transformers (Chapter 5), gave it a test drive and try as I could, I couldn't see any jaggies or what have you. What am I doing wrong?

-THEEK!
___________

hello?

anyone?

Hello??

Anyone??

HELLO???

ANYONE???

Oh, well...





-paul

I must have misread the thread; I thought it applied to AVC encoded discs only.

Regardless, I was hoping to track down that hacked 1.3 firmware so I can have it in reserve if Toshiba does not correct the problem with another firmware update. I do hope to get a 1080p/24 display in a couple of years.

Do you know where the hacked 1.3 can be downloaded?

TEK, if you can't see any jaggies, why worry? Just go with the flow, and enjoy the movies.

Kinda like when I heard Joe "Broken" Theisman remark during a MNF game a few years back: "If there's no flag, it must not have been a penalty!"

http://tacp.toshiba.com/tacpassets-i...-A35-1300U.zip

That's the official 1.3 firmware. Then you just need to hex edit the version number so it's greater than 07D0, the equivalent of 2000 or v2.0.0.0

More fun reading here:

AVS thread

WELL!!!

I just wanted to be a part of the happening crowd was all...

(Still waiting for my XA2 BTW... Supposed to arrive on the 27th! )

-Paul

Good luck with your XA2. I used my new A35 for about a week and then the XA2 arrived last Friday. Now the A35 will be a backup player, along with an A2. My XA2 is from ubid with a Dec. 2006 build, looks perfect cosmetically and seems to be working perfectly.

I'm running it at 1080i at the moment but took it to a friends house and tested for the 1080p shutdown bug, no shutdowns in 3 hours straight between two movies.

Thanks, Void!

I'll do the same thing with my 35 & XA1.

You know I bought my XA2 from uBid also (thanks to bretski's help), so I'm extra glad to hear yours looks so good and passed the shutdown test drive!

It is only AVC discs, but Paramount had been favoring that codec recently.

Need new glasses?

To the best of my knowledge I have no AVC encoded discs. I need to go through them and check.

Well, I heard a knock at my door today at around 12 noon and it was none other than...UPS!!!

I could hardly believe it, but there was that lad from a few days before with a nice size package (no, that doesn't sound right...) a nice sized box (no, no...that doesn't sound any better either...) a 'cubular structure made of cardboard' (ah, that's it! ), and sure enough, it was my XA2!

I said, 'WOW! Now That's early! Hey wait a minute! Did you come by special just for little ol' me?', and he said, 'Well, I couldn't have ya waiting around all day...like the other day', and I said, 'Good Gawd, Man! Thanks a lot! You've gotta know I really appreciate that!', and he said, 'Don't mention it. It was no problem', and I gave him my signature, and that was that!

So I brought the box inside and I noticed it had a large 'TOSHIBA' printed on the top, which made me feel pretty good. I got a razor blade and sliced through the packing tape and when I opened the box I could see everything was neatly wrapped and taped nicely.

I found the bag with the remote control, a pink refurb/warranty page, manual, power chord, and a standard 3-dealy RCA patch cable.

The remote right off looked like it had seen better days, as it had scratches and marks all over it, but looking closer I noticed that it was still wearing that protective 'skin' sheet thing, so I pealed it off and many of the scratches and mars disappeared!

Now to the unit. It was wedged in-between 4 corners of Styrofoam and wrapped & taped tight with a white foam sheet, and upon removing it, I noticed it had finger prints and smudges all over the damn thing!

(Not unlike the XA1 I got from Overstock.com. For one reason or another, no one seems to want to clean these refurbs up before shipping them out...I mean, dust 'em off at least for Pete's sake! )

So I instantly got one of my yellow micro-fiber towels out of the bag of 36 (that clean anything, and are available at Costco, BTW), and my bottle of Turtle Wax spray-on/wipe-off polish, and I proceeded to give it the once over.

It had a few minor scratches and some tiny dings on the corner of the brushed aluminum case, but all-n-all it cleaned up very nicely. I noticed it was also a December 2006 build, like Voids.

I plugged it in and turned it on. I popped that Transformers disc in it and after a moment the sound came on (and sounded mighty fine), but YIKES-SAKE!!! There was NO picture!

I checked the cables and the switcher to see that all were tight and secure, and they were, but still no friggin' picture!

That's when I started a mini-freak-out-party thinking about what a pain in the arse shipping & then waiting twice as long - all over again...it was going to be, and shaking like a tazered Don Knots (Hey! Don't taze me bro!), I grabbed the manual and flipped over to the troubleshooting pages!

It mentioned something about a switch on the front...and that's when I remembered when cleaning it, under the door, there was a small little switch, and it was set to '2'. I flipped it to '1' as I thought, 'What's this doing at '2'? This is America! Everything starts out at 1', and Man, oh Man, was I ever wrong about that!

I stopped the unit, flipped the damn switch and turned the thing back on, and YA-HOO FOR SUBARU!!! The picture came on and all was well with the world and all the townsfolk rejoiced!



So there ya have it!

Thanks again, bretski for all your help securing this Lovely One!

All's well that ends well I always say!

-Paul