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Toshiba HD DVD player as Transport

Anyone consider using one of the Toshiba HD DVD players as an inexpensive transport with an external DAC. My understanding is that it uses a RAM buffer which may go a long way towards minimizing jitter and timing issues and considering that you can buy these things for around $500 new it might make sense to do something like this and put most of your money into a high quality DAC. Any thoughts?
sw23
peak
26 posts
 
I'm thinking that going with an internal DAC with an inherently low jitter stream is preferable to sorting out the new jitter issues arising from the SPDIF receiver in you external DAC (3 ext DACs to my name). Give a listen to the Toshiba SD-3990

I hear the HD DVD players are Linux based and that means booting/slow.
avguygeorge
2,300 posts
 
Just about everything in life can be measured against---what you had before--and how that compares to what you replaced it with.--My AX1 via a WireWorld hdmi--going into a Ruby; with HD-DVD material is better than anything I've seen. --However on SD material, my Arcam 27 is much,much better.---(Not to mention its stellar CD performance)--4/5 years ago this player was a killer in its price range--($3,000)---Most are probably comparing their Toshibas' upconverting of SD; to a lessor player. All in all these Toshibas are breakthrough players and for the money it does a lot, really really well.
sw23 OP
6 posts
 
Well, the original question posed by the post concerned audio. That is the idea of using the player as a transport for use with a high quality external dac. The thought was that perhaps with the ram buffer, it might be a relatively inexpensive way to achieve a low jitter result but perhaps that is being naive. Maybe the fan noise rules out even attempting this, but for $300 - $500 this is a ridiculously cheap experiment when one considers the cost of traditional high end digital transports. The video could be looked at as a free bonus.
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