Ron's HD DVD Review - Page 2

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Ron,

Others have raved about this unit's quality on sd-dvd. What's your thoughts...better than your last dvd player? And what was the last dvd player you were using?

Thanks,
Chris

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Yes. But by the same token, if I'm sitting 10 ft away from a 42" plasma where I can't see the difference between 480p and 720p, HD isn't going to do anything for me.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Say no more. No reason to rush. You should focus on upgrading to a 1080 projector first. Then you will be in a position to reap all the benefits of a 1080 format. Until then, I can believe you are fully satisfied with your Bravo.

Ted

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

I sit 8ft from a 40"LCD and see a huge difference between 1080i upconverted from a Denon 3910 and 1080i from the Toshiba A1. In my eyes 720p isn't on the same level as 1080i.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

A 1080 projector will be out of my price range for some time, but I am looking at the IN76.....

Plus, there's always the trusty 43" HDTV to plug high def goodness into in the meantime.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Did the HD A1 come with an HDMI Cable?

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

8 ft isn't 10 ft, and 40" isn't 42".

I did this extensively myself, by the way. Many showrooms and plasma vs plasma (different manufacturers), and plasma vs LCD; SD vs HD sources and ED displays vs HD displays. I know what I saw, and I did not see a significant difference between ED vs HD displays *and* SD vs HD sources on either ED or HD panels.

And, by the way, I would never go for 1080i. When I go HD, it will be with a player that plays both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and outputs 1080p to a display that accepts 1080p. When either I moved close enough to see a difference or viewed a larger display, I always preferred 720p (or 768p) to 1080i. I couldn't live with the motion artifacts created by modern displays deinterlacing 1080i to 1080p. And no, I don't plan to get an external scaler.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Christopher,

My last DVD player was the highly touted Panasonic RP91. I have only
played *seconds* of standard DVD on the player just to compare it to
HD-DVD. It wasn't long enough to judge it on its merits of SD capability,
but I certainly did see how lifeless the picture looked compared to HD-DVD.

Craig,

Surprisingly...and I did not expect this...the player came with an HDMI
cable.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Nice review Ron. I have been fighting the itch to get a HD DVD player and reading your review does'nt help!. I have a 6 year old Pioneer Pro-510 HD RPTV that has been ISF calibrated every two years and am very curious to see how a HD DVD would look on it.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

You are confusing the deinterlacing of VIDEO sources captured on interlaced cameras with the deinterlacing of FILM sources captured on progressive devices such as telecines and film scanners.

There are NO artifacts created when deinterlacing two fields that originated from the same progressive frame. CRT displays can have problems with line twitter when displaying interlaced source, but modern solid state displays are all progressive.

As an example, The Sony Qualia 004 can be fed a 60I or 24PsF (which IS an interlaced transport with both fields originating from the same film frame) from film based source and reproduce a perfect 1080P image with no loss of resolution and no deinterlace artifacts.

Ted

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

yes.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Welcome to the new HD DVD format Ron.

Ive had my player since April 22 and have had zero problems.

The only "issue" I have is not ENOUGH HD DVD content available.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Travis,

There isn't, and it's a shame. I could really use the help in pushing
the benefits of this format amongst those of you waiting for some
"killer apps."

...but it's coming!

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Most sports broadcasts are from video cameras, not film sources.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

True, if you're watching NFL Sunday Ticket in HD, you will see more of what you're talking about than if you were viewing an HD disc.




Crawdaddy

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

How many HD DVD's are made from sports broadcasts?

This is a discussion about HD DVD, and you gave deinterlacing artifiacts as one of the reasons you haven't bought an HD DVD player. BTW, 1080P is not a supported broadcast format.
If you buy a display / projector that supports 1080P, and you have to feed it 1080I from the HD DVD, you are not going to see any artifacts due to the 1080I feed from the HD DVD.

Ted

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

So yours is bigger than mine. Lucky devil


Did the same thing myself. Definitely saw the difference between ED and HD, sending both SD and HD signals. HD sets were much more detailed(wether sharper picture or better color saturation. Too each his own.


Guess your going to be waiting till late next year to get into the new format? As far as your motion artifact problem, could it be the refresh rate of the set you were watching it on? Both my LCD's offer 8ms refresh and I've never notice the artifacts you talk about.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Even though my Sony Grand Wega down converts to 788p from a 1080i source, you WILL NOT notice ANY motion artifacts at 1080i/788p on HD-DVD (using Swordfish HD-DVD as my example).

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

My comments about deinterlacing 1080i sources is a general comment about why I won't go HD for *anything* right now. I specifically stated that I won't go HD-DVD until there is a universal player that plays both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

That's fine if that's your position, but this area of the forum is mainly for those of us that actually own an HD DVD player or for those that don't, who are thinking of buying a player, but might have some questions about this format. It appears that you don't have any questions and have made up your mind not to buy a player anytime soon.





Crawdaddy

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Ron, thanks for a great review.

The Toshiba HD-DVD player combined with my CRT projector is one of the most pleasureable purchases I have ever made, and for a mere $500. I had planned on waiting for a universal player, but one title made it irresistable for me. I couldn't be more thrilled with HD-DVD.

Everyone's taste in films is different, but I am impressed with the titles available on HD-DVD. Two Best Picture winners, some new releases, a musical, some high quality films (Cinderella Man, Full Metal Jacket, Goodfellas) some comedies including an older catalog title that looks like it was made yesterday on HD-DVD (Blazing Saddles), as well as the one title that made me jump off the fence (Serenity). All in unmatched picture quality that is better than I ever hoped.

When I look at BluRay titles I don't see one film that would make me want to jump at this time. The one killer app for HD-DVD for me would be King Kong, it's coming, but I hope they don't hold it up until Christmas!

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Oh, I'm still on the fence! (I was about going from LD to DVD as well)

Great to hear from you Ron! I really appreciate your review, and I'm glad you weren't given a unit, so that you would be able to provide an unbiased review and decision making regarding the purchase.

How do your regular DVD titles look on the player? Do you think the firmware is going to fix the long start up time and not starting the movie from the beginning when you stop it? Is anyone else bothered by these niggling issues, or does the picture quality and better menu system weigh more heavily for you? C'mon, I might just get one of these puppies this week!

Currently playing on an Electrohome Marquee 8500 with a 78 inch 16:9 screen

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

The A1's upscaling is some of the best you'll find for the price. It's simply fantastic.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

"Do you think the firmware is going to fix the long start up time and not starting the movie from the beginning when you stop it?"

Not to much they can do about the 70 or so boot times imo as the player is a computer and needs to load Linix then deal with all the copy protection stuff. Also the NEC disc drive takes around 25 seconds to recognize a disc. It really is not a problem for me since my 1080p DLP takes it's time to warm up anyway.

The starting a movie issue as I understand is not a player problem but a studio thing. Seems they have the ability to enable the option when authoring the discs. Why they don't do it is beyond me.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Yes, the picture quality, sound quality and better menu system does weigh more heavily for myself. The boot up time you get use to after a few runs, once the movie is spinning, you don't give a damn about the boot time.

If you decide to invest your money into an HD-DVD player, you won't be sorry. Hope this helps with your decision!

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

It takes longer for my Z3 to warm up so the boot-up time for the A1 was no big deal. It is a very small price to pay for such awesome PQ.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Yup, you're the only one because if SW was announced for HD-DVD I'd go out and buy a player tomorrow. I want the 6 film saga on HD more than any other release out there, but I know it's not going to be happening anytime soon.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

He's far from being the only one and this comes from somebody that watched the original Star Wars film several times during it's initial theatrical run.

By the way, did you missed this warning, you don't own a player so why are you posting in this area unless you have a question about this format?






Crawdaddy

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

If I'm not mistaken Ron, like me, has a 57" crt based rptv (his is a Toshiba, mine's a Sony) that's about 4 years old and doesn't have hdmi inputs. His has been isf'd, mine just tweaked a bit by your's truly.

Since the player won't upconvert over anything but HDMI neither of us can comment from personal experience about it's upconversion of SD discs.

That being said, those who do have HDMI are reporting that it does an excellent job of upconversion, on a par with the best non-HD upconverting players out there.

The "no resume after stopping" issue definitely is dependent on the disc encoding. The demo disc at my local Best Buy will resume after stopping right where it left off, I've verified this myself by trying it. For whatever reason none of the movie discs available will do this.

The bookmark feature will allow startup from wherever you bookmarked, and a bookmark can be set simply by pressing the "B" button on the remote while the disc is playing. One can resume from a bookmark even if the player's been turned off, and even if the disc has been ejected as long as no other disc has been loaded.

That being said, the bookmark feature is also disc dependent--Warner discs have it, Universal discs do not.

For me the pq more than makes up for the relatively slow startup. Speaking of slow startup, I own a Sony upconverting player that I'm using in the bedroom--it takes twice as long to load disc 1 of LOTR EE than the total boot-up and load time of the Toshiba player.

Re: Ron's HD DVD Review

Well, I have been a regular visitor to HTF but I finally had to register and leave a comment. Toshiba should be happy with you folks. I was a fence-sitter until today. I happened to stop at a Best Buy store here in Phoenix that had just received two HD-A1 units. Well, I just couldn't resist, I am now the proud owner of a Toshiba HD-DVD player. The positive feedback regarding the firmware updates and the overall quality of the unit moved me to a buying position. When inspecting the shelf tag I noticed that the extended service plan was just $39.95 for 4 years. Generally, I feel those things are a waste of money, but considering this is first generation technology and just ten bucks a year, I decided to go for it. Well, it seems that the service plan should have been $79.99 so the manager honored it by discounting the HD-A1 $40. So, for $540 I got a new HD Player and piece-of-mind for 4 years. My good fortune didn't end there...they did not have the 8 ft HDMI-DVI cable I needed to hook up my Hitachi (57SWX20B) rear projection TV. So I headed across town to Fry's Electronics and I was surprised to find that they had a few HD-DVD and Blu-Ray titles on sale for just $14.99! I picked up "The Fugitive," "Goodfellas," and "Constantine." I have only had time to view "Constantine." However, I agree with Ron that the improvements at first seem subtle but become much more apparent when you view the HD version and then switch to the standard version. The colors are more vibrant, the image seems sharper and details like facial hairs and blemishes are more defined. The image has improved depth and makes the standard DVD look a little flat and not nearly as dimensional. So far, so good… I am very pleased. My player has demonstrated absolutely no glitches during its first run. I am going to send for the firmware update disc this morning. The set-up menu conveniently reveals the firmware status so that you can check for recent upgrades on Toshiba's website. I am one happy camper!

By the way, the only 8ft. cables I could find were Belkin's Pure AV cables. Does anyone know how these cables stack up? Everything looks fine but I am wondering if I could have done any better....