EEVblog #1011 - Retro Teardown - World's First HD DVD Player

What's inside the world's first HD DVD player?
The Toshiba HD-XA1
It was the 2006 version of the BETA vs VHS war.
Includes a detailed look inside the triple wavelength blue laser optical drive mechanism.

Support the EEVblog through Patreon!

EEVblog Amazon Store (Dave gets a cut):

[expertmax]

This main motherboard was basically an x86 platform with custom circuitry and the standard IDE connector for the HD DVD drive. It is so much easier to develop software on this kind of platform since there was no reference for this kind of hardware.

[AintBigAintClever]

I've still got HD DVD players (Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, Toshiba HD-EP10, HD-EP35 plus several HD-EP30s) plus about 170 HD DVDs, mostly picked up for peanuts thanks to Blu-ray winning the format war.

[satin]

the first HD DVD player was a Pentium 4 PC in disguise how deliciously deceptive

[thesaurus]

Editing glitch from like 10:30 till 11:00 ish. Cut is faded out and then the title card from the beginning over the IC.

[toddberg]

10:24 - nice slow fade in for cinematic effect! Eggcellent!

[JackS]

My dad was one of the first people on the block to have bluray and HDDVD, so I got to see both formats in their infancy. I remember the bluray player was way slower in every aspect to the hddvd. It took forever to get to the main menus of disks and took forever to eject them. They also seemed more susceptible to fingerprints and dust.

[emmettturner]

The shift of alliances actually happened a bit differently. In a last-ditch effort, Toshiba outright paid for Warner Bros and Paramount's support. Their support was so short-lived and inconsequential (happened at the very end) that they never really joined "war." They both supported both formats until Toshiba paid millions for temporary exclusivity. Famously, this led to Paramount canceling the release of Blades of Glory on BD after the BDs were in production. This did not last long. A short time later Sony put the nail in the coffin for HD-DVD at CES and it was clear that the format war was over.

[llhand]

At around 32:00 you point out "the laser power monitor." I think that is the sensor that reads the reflected beam returning from the disc. If you look at the beam splitter, you'll notice that it doesn't reflect light from the laser into the sensor, but from the other end, where the modulated beam is returned. Also in many laser modules, the power sensor was part of the laser module. Not sure about that one specifically, though.

[LutzSchafer]

Dave I think what you call a controlled filter is in fact a spatial light modulator (SLM ). They are used to compensate for spherical aberrations adaptively depending on the different layer's foci.

[JasperWaale]

I got a HD-DVD for 99USD with 3 films and after that some 100+ film each about 3-5usd each, as I needed a new DVD player and this do DVD and HD-DVD and MP3 and was Internet linked, so happy HD-DVD owner and still happy

[mikesradiorepair]

LOL, "Thanks for all the fish." One of my favorite movie quotes from Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.

[shmehfleh]

I had to fix my Laserdisc player about a year ago. It's one of those Pioneer models that moves the entire laser assembly to the opposite side of the disk, so you don't have to manually flip it. Once I got it working, I got to watch the laser assembly in action, and it's pretty neat: The stepper motor moves the pickup to the beginning of the disk, and then the lens aims at the furthest track that it can see. It slowly sweeps across its field of view until it reaches the other extreme, then the stepper motor moves the assembly a fraction of an inch while the lens snaps back to read the furthest track again. It's a pretty impressive feat of engineering to keep that laser focused on a tiny little spot on the disk while the entire pickup assembly moves, without causing the playback to skip. Laserdiscs are analog, after all, and don't have anything resembling a read-ahead buffer to deal with skipping.

[davepedu]

That strange wire mount around 23:00 - the wires all had heat discoloration, is it possible they used power to heat the wires differently for ultra-fine adjustment?

[publicmail]

When his voice goes high 12:40 he reaches the upper limit of my hearing and it attenuates 30db. at 10khz.

[Darryl]

Surprising to see Pioneer chips in there since they were listed on the Blu-Ray side of the ledger. Thanks Dave

[seeindarkness]

M-Systems module is actually a regular USB drive, with standard USB pinout you can put it in any USB socket on new motherboards, they are used in Some IBM servers still and Blade servers.

[CoolDudeClem]

Blu ray is retro now? Dam I feel so old!

[muhammadshahzaib]

At 21:18 those pads are for lens adjusting and focus mechanism. Inside are small coils and magnets to adjust focus etc.

[joetri]

Talking about 1st ones out i remember buying my first dvd player when they came out it was a little over 900 dollars now you can buy one just about anywhere for 20 dollars its hard to believe how much prices change over the years and technology.

[anononomous]

I remember thinking HD-DVD would win simply because it had "DVD" in the name and people would find that more comforting :-)