I'll apologize in advance for any redundancy here.
I am strongly thinking about getting an HD-XA1 and the Samsung BDP1000, as there are pretty great deals around on both at the moment.
I was originally thinking about waiting for the 1.3 equipped players, and I realized I would spending nearly twice the money to get 1.3.
Some background:
I have a Toshiba 57H83 display, which has two component inputs and one DVI-HDCP. My receiver is an Onkyo TX-NR801. It does not have HDMI.
My first question is-what specifically would HDMI 1.3 be able to improve for my current setup? I expect to get at least 2 more years out of both my display and receiver.
Also, were there still issues with BTB being clipped over HDMI? Either way, I will likely be using component for both players.
Next, assuming I get these two specific players, since the Samsung does not have multi-channel analog outs, I would likely hook up the Toshiba to the analog and use optical or coaxial for the Samsung. Is one better than the other for the Samsung? I assume the Samsung will have to downconvert any audio for the optical/coaxial out. Does this still sound better than what is on an SD DVD?
I held off getting the Samsung player due to the reports I had heard regarding filtering of video being handled improperly. I thought I had read this can be corrected only at a service center, but now it appears it's being fixed by a user-installable firmware upgrade. Just wanted to verify that info.
On the HD-XA1, firmware upgrades on that should make it a more stable than it was at launch I assume. I'm not really too worried about the load times, as I generally warm up my RPTV for 45 minutes before viewing anyway.
Is there anything I missed?
I'm still very unhappy about the format war, but I do want to get into the next gen stuff.
Sounds like I'll have a lot of work to do figuring out which WB and Paramount titles to get on HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray. In most cases I would guess HD DVD, but it depends.
Thanks for reading-I look forward to comments.
