***Official HD-DVD Player Thread***

The local Best Buy got in 3 today. One went up for display (they were hooking it up as I walked in) the other 2 were for sale. Bought their first one. I added the 4 year service plan for $40. Picked up an AR HDMI cable to hook it up. Here's a couple of pics.








More to come as I play around with it this weekend.

Ron you surprise me. Didn't realize you were a bleeding edge consumer. Will you be getting a Blu-Ray as well?

Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Let us know how you find upconverted DVDs.

See it has one of those annoying Toshiba cardboard things on top! Have fun and please let us know what's what with this player.

when will you get some discs and let us know what you think?
Rob

I would definitely like to hear how it upconverts.

I had to buy an HDMI cable in the store. To put this in my rack I need a 35' HDMI cable so I'll have to shop around, just using a 6' AR (Acoustic Research) for now.

I played scenes from several films (King Kong, LotR: Fellowship EE, Animatrix and The Phantom of the Opera).

Before I get into image details please note that I am no pro at this and no videophile by any means. There is a slight improvement with upscaling to 720p, if I were to put a number on it, Id say about 15% over 480p, not a huge leap but enough to notice. My wife walked in during the scene when Kong was being captured and she said right off, "the image looks sharper". That comment even surprised me.

I used the same settings I had for my component connection and right off I noticed a slightly sharper image, mostly close up shots, distance shots really didn't benefit much. The colors were a bit more vibrant and blacks were deeper with more detail. The improvement in blacks caught me off guard as I was not expecting that.

It hung up a bit trying to load the Animatrix disk, took about a minute or longer to get that one to load, the other 3 were up in 15-20 seconds. It had no issues at all playing the disks, FF, RW skipping chapters, no navitation issues at all.

The fan is a bit noisy. More so then my Z3, it is noticeable but I had it sitting right behind my head on a box on the couch, once up on a shelf or in the A/V rack I doubt it will be noticeable. I'd say it was around 25db. It sounded close to what my old Panny PTL-200u PJ was like.

The machines menu set-up is very easy to use and navigate, set-up took only a few minutes. The remote on the other hand, a pain to use. Small buttons with very hard to see descriptions. Not a very user friendly remote at all.

These players need a fan? Wow, haven't really been following the hardware that closely. Is this true for BluRay as well?

Seems like a step backwards.

Your upconversion experience is interesting. I have a LG7832 - same as the Zenith318 - that upconverts to 720p or 1080i. Your results are in the same ballpark as mine.

Ron,

Congratulations! I am waiting for mine, to be shipped to me mid next week, so I've been told.

Sounds like upconversion is at least adequate. Please come back and tell us more of your impressions, particularly when you pick up the hd titles.

Stan

Congratulations indeed Ron, sounds like you could be the first on HTF to have HD-DVD, Maybe the Western World!!!!!

How does it feel?

It sounds great Ron. Continue to keep us posted as you experiment. As with many others I’m interested in how well this upconverts DVDs, as well as the technical aspects.

Interesting news on the fan—I suppose that is no big deal, but a bit surprising nonetheless.

Your impressions of the software will be most interesting.

While I don’t wish to direct your time and effort, there will be many of us who would be interested in come comparisons of HDMI/component connections. Do you plan to try both ways? (Just a bit of the geek in me, I suppose).

A comparison that really takes no time or effort, and which would be much more fun, would be to see if you can determine the sharper image via upconversion after a couple of ales.

Cool thansk for the info! I like what i hear so far about HD-DVD players!

I was quite surprised to see that back there as well Lew.


Yes, I will, but it's looking like that won't happen until tomorrow, today is getting booked up fast with family stuff.


Lew, I'm surprised at you, asking a question like that, everything looks better after a few ales...

More will follow. It's going to be a long wait for Tuesday.

Congrat, Ron! Can't wait for your evaluation.

What is the sticker on the box, something about a free offer? Is that for the mail away disc? And that box is huge!

I stopped at my local Ultimate Electronics yesterday and they said they had gotten 2 in this week and both went out as special orders. Between our two UE stores in town, they are expecting around 50 of them. They have not hit their warehouses yet, which is odd seeing as they're supposed to be out in the next week. They also said any they get out of the first shipment will go to special orders. Then they guy I'm talking to tries to sell me a Denon 5910. Gotta love salesman.

Sounds pretty cool!

Congrats, Ron, I can't wait to get mine! Enjoy!

Pat, no free offer, just an add. The box is huge as is the player itself, big and heavy.

I literally ran out the door when I saw this. My local BB doesn't have them in yet. Three on order, they'll be in on Thursday.

I was looking at HDMI/DVI cables yesterday and Blue Jeans Cables has very good prices.

Congrats, Ron! How cool!

Forgive the basic question: But, am I correct that with the component connection you don't ge the upscaling to 720p? That you'll only see that with the HDMI cable?

Exciting times. Makes me think back to the early days of DVD. I'm going to establish this as the official HD-DVD player thread and am moving it to the hardware section for further discussion. Screenshots when available will be appreciated!

i posted this in the software thread that looks dead so i guess i'll put it here.


" how about a thread that is a faqbot(thats a Q)
of sorts or is there one already?
i ve been sitting back, up till now due to the overwelming am't of discussion on high definition dvd palayers.

i have no idea what would work for my tv and what i would need to get.

....

were can i go to find info on what i need to get to watch hd dvd one format or both on my tv?"

that a good question mike, i was also wondering that.

UPDATE:

A farther BB had them. Picked one up. Now I need an HDMI->DVI for my Yamaha LX-500.

Unfortunately, the machine wouldn't let me upscale Sith to 720p since I'm using component to connect to my LX-500. I'll stick with my PC-DVD player for those until I get the correct cables.

Jay, I agree, these are exciting times - we are such HD junkies it is great! I'm going to Toshiba on Monday to check it out again, since this time they will be final products rather than the prototypes I've seen thus far...

Mike

I thought it was well known that the Toshiba players have fans. These pictures of a disassembled HD-XA1 have been online for at least a week: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/do...407/hddvd2.htm
If anyone was wondering why these 1st gen players are so expensive, those pics demonstrate it pretty well: they're basically an HTPC in terms of construction. Of course they're missing most of the capabilities of a real HTPC.

Personally I try to avoid any components with fans in them in my living room, as I find it pretty distracting while watching a movie. Just one more reason to wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation players.

-- Dave

These first generation players are cobbled together Frankenstein monsters and that's why they need the fan(s). They are basically PC's with a computer disc drive and basic infrastructure software OS's.

Second and third generation units will probably use dedicated hard ware DSP chips that run cooler than these "stealth" PC's.

As exciting as these first players are in the sense that we now have pre-recorded HD, I will still wait to see how things work themselves out... and the features (or lack thereof) on these first players leave a lot to be desired.

As for HD-DVD, only one title for the U.S. has a lossless audio track, Phantom of the Opera. The bulk use basically standard lossy DD tracks as before.

Dan

Very exciting.

Can anyone try to play a region 2 sd dvd disc on the hd dvd player? Does it work?

Pall F

I tried my R2 Final Fantasy VII DVD and it didn't work

Ok, I don't have a lot of time to play with this thing today but here's what I can tell you so far.

It's slow. Not VERY slow, but it could be faster. This pertains to everything (disc loading, menus, etc.)

Component output's nice, but all I had to work with was 480p the first time since the unit doesn't allow upscaling on component output. It's not as nice as my HTPC with 720p upscaling and it's been sooo long since I used 480p that I can't even tell you how it compared to standard DVD players since I haven't used one in my theater room for years.

I ran out to 6th Ave. and got an HDMI->DVI cable. My Yamaha projector kept saying "NO SIGNAL". I got REAL nervous. That's when I....READ THE MANUAL . Turns out that you can switch the output between HDMI and component, and then you can change the resolution to 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Apparently, my LX-500 doesn't like 1080i over DVI (but does seem to work over component), so I had to put the HDMI output to 720p for the LX-500 to work with HDMI.

I went back to standard DVD and now I was able to upscale to 720p. A noticable improvement, but colors seem a little muted compared to my HTPC.

As I stated above, R2 discs don't work.

The menu system is nice and intuitive.

I have not tried analog outputs, just the standard Dolby Digital.

I haven't run an ethernet line to the machine yet.

Unfortunately, I don't have any HD-DVDs to try until Tuesday when they're officially released. I went to a bunch of stores and none of them even had them in stock according to their computer systems.

That's all I can tell you for now.

Mike