Official FAQs For Toshiba & RCA HD Players (1 Viewer)

[Cees Alons]

(1) For Audio 5.1: the usual shielded cables (often "stereo", banana plug) are fine. You could use three pairs (L - R, C - S, RL - RR). It's audio at the normal pre-out -> amp-in level.

(2) For video: set your player to the physical ratio of your TV screen (4:3 or 16:9, whatever way it is called).

Then, depending on your TV-set, it may be necessary to switch the TV-set by hand (if your TV has an "auto" setting for image ratio, try that one).
Mine (a Samsung 42" 1920x1080) has "4:3", "16:9", "zoom", "4:3 wide". I NEVER use "zoom" or "4:3 wide". The last one distorts the image; the zoom will blow-up a 480-image, but not as beautiful as the HD-A1 does.

I only need to use the 4:3 setting with my cable set-top box, not with the player, now I'm using HDMI, because the player will output an SDVD image upscaled (and very good upscaled) to 16x9.
If you don't use HDMI, it could be necessary to switch the aspect ratio of your TV-set manually (with the remote).

If your TV generates grey bars next to 4x3 images, that's bad (they do it to avoid burn-in if much of your programs would be 4:3). Mike Knapp once published a simple solution: he used two (or even 4) black foam mattes, fixed to the TV with velcron and I remember several members reporting visually very pleasing results (even the image looked better - more brilliant - that way, they said). (Of course, this may mean that you have to get up from your couch between different programs.)


Cees

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

Thanks, Cees. I was surprised by this problem, which seems to be the ugly side effect of not using HDMI. Experimenting, I took one of my daughter's DVDs, and reburned it, removing macrovision. This meant that I was running 4:3 material that could be upscaled to 1080i via component. It worked fine, with a properly pillarboxed image.

Still, I'm hardly going to reburn all my 4:3 discs. As I need to keep my Malata 996 active anyway, for all my non-R1 DVDs, I'll make that my 4:3 player.

This does bring up another issue. My TV has only 2 component inputs. I want my Toshiba D2 to have one to itself. I am thinking of a component video switcher so that my Malata DVD, cable (with HD) and Wii could share the 2nd imput.

I have been reading about video switchers, but some of the posts are quite old. Also, I seem to see a lot of complimentary words about monoprice. I found this switcher there...

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...ormat=2&style=

Would this work for me with the Tosh D2? I know there are much more expensive devices out there, but do I really need one? The older threads have come up with more expensive devices, but times change and technology gets cheaper...

Any comments very welcome!

 

[Cees Alons]

Not from own experience, I haven't used these switchers, but from the description it looks good. IR-learning: you could learn it to switch to the player's channel when you put the player on (or hit "play") on your remote. The price seems very reasonable too.

Hopefully someone on the forum who bought one of these could even say more about it.



Cees

 

[Bleddyn Williams]

Cheers, Cees. I have posted in one or two threads without success, and no one has answered here, but I haven't found any negative feedback so far, so think I will give it a go!

 

[Mark_TB]

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but this thread seemed like the best place for me to ask:

What are the differences between the Toshiba HD-A2 and the HD-A20 (besides price)?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

 

[Tim Glover]

HD A20 can output 1080p whereas the A2 is 1080i. There's really not any difference in image quality. Some of the neglible differences are probably according to what monitor you are using too.

The other difference is that in September, Toshiba will update the firmware for the top of the line XA-2 and the A20 for 1080p 24 fps. Others here can explain this way better than me but if you're display can accept this, the info you're getting is straight from the disc-no deinterlacing of any kind. I hope I said that right.

Good luck Mark.

 

[Mark_TB]

Thanks, Tim. My monitor "only" displays up to 1080i, so I went ahead and picked up the A2 tonight. It was a hundred bucks cheaper and I didn't see any other differences. My first impression? The HD of KING KONG looked incredible, and the SD upconversion is worth the price by itself!

Mark

 

[Tim Glover]

Awesome Mark. Awesome! Hide the credit card from yourself because you'll be buying ALOT of HD DVDs.

Congrats on the purchase and welcome to the world of HD DVD.