Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

first post, so please be gentle if I'm in the wrong section

I'm wondering if anybody can lend me a hand with my HD-A2 and HD-DVD playback, got the player itself after the "format war" was over (decent enough price), and its worked great for DVDs

picked up a few HD-DVDs on amazon, and surprisingly, none of them would play properly, no audio would pass (except a wonderful high pitch tone that sent my dog into hiding), and the player would eventually just freeze

called Toshiba (how wonderful their support was ), the suggestion was a firmware update, or buy some product that Toshiba currently supports

well, with a firmware update (as I recall version 3.0), it no longer crashes with HD-DVD's inserted (it also boots faster and has improved DVD performance overall (more options for color/black level, faster operation, etc)), but audio is still a problem

so!, any hot ideas for getting some form of audio (at this point I'd honestly settle for stereo) going with HD-DVDs?

currently I've got it hooked up as such:
HD-A2 -> HDMI -> Gateway XHD3000
HD-A2 -> Optical -> Technics SH-AC500D (which is then connected to a pair of quite old receivers)

is it just the age of my other hardware at fault? or is it the unit itself?

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

I'd send it back to Amazon. You'd be suprised how many opened things they will take back to make a customer happy. Call them up and I bet they will refund your money if you explain the problem.

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

You can try setting the SPDIF out to PCM for stereo. Or use the analog outs!

Could be the age of your processor. Hard to know for sure which is at fault without getting/borrowing a different receiver and testing.

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

I didn't buy the player from Amazon (sorry if that was unclear), so it can't be returned (and I can accept it as just a DVD player, even if its annoying to know it should play HD-DVDs)

Stephen:
the analog outs don't give me any sound, PCM over SPDIF gives me stereo from DVDs, and nothing from HD-DVDs

I might try finding another receiver to plug into, generally what am I looking for? HDMI audio capabilites?

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

HDMI audio capabilities, yes. But no sound from analog/PCM is a bad sign, your player is most likely seriously broken. I think you have to give up on HD-DVDs. Dead format anyway ...

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

You mention that you have an old receiver. For HD-DVD audio, the output over coaxial or optical is DTS. If your receiver doesn't decode DTS, you might hear something similar to what you report.

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

YOu may be running into the Newer Dolby Digital PLUS compatibility issue. If your reciever is an older one, it may decode there AC3 variation.

Try it in a newer model. I have the same player and my Denon 5600 wouldn't play the audio. I had to use a newer Sony that would.

Good luck.

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

It's not using "AC3 variation". The output from optical on that model is DTS, for HD-DVDs (even for Dolby DD+/TrueHD titles, it is decoding, mixing any menu/secondary audio, then reencoding to DTS). The DTS is at a high bitrate that some old receivers/processors may not handle. But to me, the observations that the analog audio & transcode to PCM options don't work, are strong evidence that the player is broken, and a new receiver won't do anything. It won't hurt to get a new receiver to test it, but really I think the options are repair (if Toshiba will even do repairs anymore), or give up on the HD-DVD and just use for DVD.

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

Toshiba basically told me to sit and spin regarding sending it back for any sort of repair (like I said, lovely support), because "its dead and doesn't matter"

my receiver will decode DTS, however its limited to 16-bit and 48khz (gurantee on the 16-bit part, fairly certain on the 48khz (don't have any 16/96 to drive into it to find out, although 24/96 assuredly won't work))

the analog outputs give me sound from DVD, and I can get AC-3 or DTS output from DVD, everything there works like you'd imagine it to, including DVD audio over HDMI (the XHD3000 can pass S/PDIF back to the receiver)

the manual said it would downmix anything from the S/PDIF to DTS (from the DD+ that my HD-DVD's have, don't have anything with TrueHD or DTS Master Audio, one of them has a "DTS 5.1 Soundtrack", and even that gives me trouble), so what bitrate/samplerate is the DTS output on this thing supposed to be? 24/96? (because that would probably explain a lot regarding "no sound at all" (the receiver just wont even try if 24-bit audio is passed to it (confirmed with my computer))

the high pitched noise is what I'm a bit more curious about, it does that when its set to PCM over bistream (bitstream gets me no audio at all, PCM gets me screeching high pitched noise), but again, only with HD-DVDs, so my confusion is: how could the player be "seriously damaged", from opening it up, nothing looks shorted/fried, and unless its using a 100% separate path for the HD-DVD audio (As in, none of the components are in common with the DVD audio path), wouldn't DVD playback be equally screwy? or wouldn't it have stability issues? (like it would overheat or have trouble turning on consistently?)

thanks for the help so far, nice to finally hear someone willing to take a shot in the dark, vs Toshiba's "throw it in the trash nobody cares about HD-DVD its worthless" line (yes I realize the format is dead, but discs are a few dollars, so why not grab a few while its on the way down? excepting the player being a pain in the rear with getting them to actually play right)

Re: Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Issues

HD-DVD audio is a lot more complicated than DVD audio. With DVD all it has to do is pull the bits off the disc then send them down the optical. With HD-DVD, it has to decode the audio to PCM, send it to a mixer to combine primary audio with secondary audio streams (commentary/menu beeps etc.), then reencode this to DTS. So there are more places for there to be a malfunctioning chip/circuit, that would not affect DVD.

It is not very productive for you to just sit here & throw out random guesses as to what is wrong. Go find a receiver & test. You may want new receiver for Blu-ray eventually anyway. I am betting that the player is broken, you may feel otherwise, but I just don't see how analog would be broken if other parts of the chain are all fine.

Oh, also try with HDMI disconnected, I doubt it does anything but sometimes HDMI does some screwy things.