Customer Loyalty, Toshiba Style

Wow. I say again, wow. In this era of rapid technology obsolescence and general early-adopter screwing-over, I about fell off my chair this morning when Engadget fed me the news that Toshiba’s matched month-back Microsoft and just released a firmware update for the HD-A1 HD DVD player series. Consider:

• HD DVD the format has been officially dead for 2.5 months (and unofficially dead for four), and
• The HD-A1 is over two years old.

The list of patches includes networking and HDMI handshaking fixes; perhaps the latter will resolve longstanding digital display interface issues (though I’ve already passed on my player and its plasma companion to a friend, so Terry will have to fill me in on the post-upgrade results). Head here for the documentation and here for the burnable ISO image if you don’t have your player’s Ethernet port hooked up. And let me know how it goes.

Kudos, Toshiba. Big-time kudos. May your competitors follow in your enlightened footsteps.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?