You get what you pay for

The 1080P playback doesn’t quite measure up to Blu-Ray. I'm not a fan of Sony but Blu-Ray is more impressive in 1080P. I'm not sure if this has to do with the player or the format. The picture is still “High def” and really high-quality. It’s nevertheless largely superior to standard DVD's so in that sense it's not disappointing. But, if you don't update the firmware right from the start you'll have freezing picture and error code issues. Fortunately you can download the update from the Toshiba site and burn an ISO image on a CD to upgrade yourself. Here’s the link "http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/dvd/product.asp?model=hd-a30". This is still fresh technology so I'm sure it will improve. If you don't mind watching movies in 1080I or if you don't have a 1080P TV and you don't plan to change soon save yourself a few bucks and get the HD-A3 instead.
I already have a Blu-Ray player and bought this one because I wanted to watch the movies not available in Blu-Ray. I'm still happy with my purchase but I didn't expect to have to fool around with the firmware straight out of the box to be able to watch my first HD movie without any problems. I do like the fact that it's small, and it decodes True HD at this price. In due course I know that the new players that are shipped will already have the new firmware installed so it will resolve having to upgrade the player yourself.