Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn - Page 5  

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert:

Have any HD-D1 owners reported back to you that their machine is turning OFF during playback? No stuttering, pixelation or audio dropouts beforehand, and not even during advanced feature (i.e., U-Control) playback. Just all of a sudden after approximately four minutes of playback of The Bourne Identity, the player shuts off.

I know Identity is a very recent title with advanced content; I need to do the firmware upgrade. I'm on fw 2.0 and am variously trying to update it: The player is not connecting to the 'Net (after trying various configurations of the Ethernet port: DHCP and DNS on, then off and manual entry of IP address, subnet mask, etc.). The player similarly shuts down between 20 and 40% completion upon attempting to use the 2.2 disc I have. It's possible that the disc is corrupt so I've requested another from Tosh; I was informed this morning when I called to follow up on my request yesterday that 2.2 (the latest fw available on disc; 2.3 is only available online) is on backorder.

And I'm about to try my third program (ImgBurn, NTI DVD-Maker and now Nero) to create an image of the 2.3 ISO after downloading it.

But I'm concerned any upgrade discs will cause the player to shutdown the same way Identity--and, curiously enough since it is not an advanced content title, Supremacy--did.

Any of your clients reporting player shutdown issues?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Ok, thanks

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Hi Robert;

I have a Sanyo PLV-Z5 [native 720P] projector and am currently evaluating HD and up-converting DVD players. Since I have a large SD DVD library, my primary concern is the picture quality of these titles in the new player.

I have tried the Toshiba HD-A2 and the Sony DVPNS75H up-converting players with unimpressive results. I suspect this is because my projector already includes a quality scaler that does just as good of a job as that built into these DVD players. My question is this. Should I expect significantly better up-conversion from the Toshiba HD-XA2 [or A35] than the PLV-Z5's internal scaler can produce?

Thanks in advance

Gunny

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Gunny ^^ Yes, I would think you would get better up-conversion on the HD-XA2, however, not with the HD-A35 as the A35 does not share the Silicon Oprix, Reon video processor that the XA2 boasts.

I'll stand behind my good guess and guaranty your happiness with the SD up-conversion of the XA2.

Let us know if I'm right. I know you'll be telling me if I'm wrong

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert,
When will you have the Samsung combo up for preorder?





Crawdaddy

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert, Sorry to say, I'm not sure. We are Samsung dealers and will have a Home Theater Forum offer, but I do not have any information to share at this moment. Soon hopefully as I would like to see this offer available as well.

BTW, I am expecting to have an aggressive HTF deal for Sharp's low profile, BD-HP20U BD player.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert, I have a question about DVD players. I am getting ready to purchase either the Sony KDF46E3000 or possibly the same model in the 50" size. As you probably already know, it is an LCD rear projection, 1080p. I'm considering the Sony upconversion DVD player at $99.00 while waiting for something more definite with the format war between HD and BluRay.

My question is this. Will the picture from the upconversion DVD player be nearly as good as BluRay or HD? How will it compare? I read things that say the pic will be upconverted to 1080p. Is this possible with a standard DVD?

Also do I even need a player that good since the TV itself will upconvert to 1080p? Would a $59 progressive scan player give me the same picture as the upconversion player, eventhough they don't have an HDMI output?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert, I have a question about DVD players. I am getting ready to purchase either the Sony KDF46E3000 or possibly the same model in the 50" size. As you probably already know, it is an LCD rear projection, 1080p. I'm considering the Sony upconversion DVD player at $99.00 while waiting for something more definite with the format war between HD and BluRay.

My question is this. Will the picture from the upconversion DVD player be nearly as good as BluRay or HD? How will it compare? I read things that say the pic will be upconverted to 1080p. Is this possible with a standard DVD?

Also do I even need a player that good since the TV itself will upconvert to 1080p? Would a $59 progressive scan player give me the same picture as the upconversion player, eventhough they don't have an HDMI output?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

And if I might piggyback off of Randy's question to pose a related one: Robert, would you mind commenting on whether the kind of upconversion available via HDMI from high def DVD players is only possible with certain kinds of displays. I've read that that kind of upconversion is not possible with fixed pixel displays. Is that true? Can Randy get the benefits of HDMI upconversion with that Sony LCD, or must he be watching a CRT or projector? Plasma?

Also, how does any internal scaling a display might do work with (or not) HDMI upconversion?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Randy, HD DVD and Blu-ray (BD) are HD optical disc technologies that are authored and replicated from their original sources (film or video) to a digital fixed pixel array with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. An HD DVD or BD player passes the native 1080p signal directly off the disc and passes it to your modern 1080p HDTV so no video processing is done to the signal and it is kept in its pure HD quality with most of the original cinematography detail of the original film.

SD DVD discs have a maximum resolution of 720 × 480 pixels. So a standard definition DVD does not have the data (information) on the disc to provide a image with the fine resolution, detail, and accuracy that can be rendered from the very high resolution of a full, true HD signal.

Some up-converting DVD players do a pretty good job of enhancing a standard definition signal, by smoothing out lines through an edge enhancement process, increasing the resolution and some can actually do a frame rate conversion. But no SD DVD can be up-converted to the same image quality of a HD DVD or BD disc; the information is just not their on the 720 x 480 resolution SD DVD disc. You can't create what not actually there and SD discs are missing the fine detail that is present in the HD medium.

Your second question is hard to answer. Most experts would likely say your best SD DVD up-conversion would come through a good up-converting SD DVD player's HDMI output, but that may not be true. A good progressive component video DVD player might do as well or even better as you would be using the video-processor built-into your TV to scale and up-convert the image to your maximum screen resolution.

Randy, I strongly recommend paring your beautiful new 1080p HDTV with a new HD-A3, because for $249, free shipping, no tax and 7 free HD DVD titles you get a great up-converting SD DVD player and a heck of an full tru HD player to boot.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Paul, fixed pixel displays are LCD and plasma. Fixed pixel displays are digital displays. CRT is an analog device that is made up of vertical and horizontal illuminated scan lines. All HD DVD and BD players do a good job of up-converting SD DVDs and work equally well for CRT, LCD and plasma technologies. What you may have heard is that up-converting players can pass a signal above 480p through the HDMI connection, as no 1080 signal can be passed via component video to protect the copyrights of the recorded discs.

Some HD DVD and BD players do a better job of up-converting than others. In fact, Toshiba's flagship model HD-XA2 has the best SD DVD up-converting video processor and an excellent set of image enhancement tools to peak the SD image quality. Samsung's BD players use the same high quality video processor that Toshiba's XA2 employs, but unfortunately, lack the excellent image enhancement management tools of the XA2.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Quote from Robert:
"Your second question is hard to answer. Most experts would likely say your best SD DVD up-conversion would come through a good up-converting SD DVD player's HDMI output, but that may not be true. A good progressive component video DVD player might do as well or even better as you would be using the video-processor built-into your TV to scale and up-convert the image to your maximum screen resolution."

Thanks Robert. I understand what you are saying. I would really like to wait until Christmas to see what prices do on the HD and BD players, but in the meantime, it sounds as if you are saying that I might be just as well off paying $59 (Sony) for a progressive scan (component) player while waiting to decide on the HD and BD, right?

This of course brings up another question, HD or BD; will they both survive?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

BTW,

regardless of where you do your "upscaling" (ie, the player or the TV), I'd recommend going HDMI as it avoids an intermediary d/a/d cycle for the video signal and should therefore result in a cleaner image (all things being equal, of course).


Not an appropriate question for any thread other than the threads approved for HD-format discussion.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Thank you, RZ. I'm (still) looking forward to the arrival of my XA2 from HME (where we met, incidentally).

Any comments on my other question regarding how a display's internal scaler interacts with a player that upconverts via HDMI? Specifically, I'm curious about what a scaling display's internal processing circuitry does when presented with an HDMI signal that has already been upconverted via one of the high def players. Must the display's internal scaling circuitry be turned off if one wishes to use the player's upconversion capability?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Paul S,

The TV's scaler will "rescale" any image coming into it that doesn't EXACTLY match its pixel resolution. I'm assuming we're talking about digital "panel" or chip-based displays that have a fixed pixel resolution here (not older CRT HDTVs).

For instance, if your display has a resolution of 1280 x 720, than ANY incoming signal that's not exactly 1280 x 720 gets scaled to match the TVs panel. This would be true for 720 x 480 SD signals as well as 1920 x 1080 HD signals. In theory, native 1280 x 720 images would bypass the TVs internal scaler if the set was properly designed.

Same concept with a digital 1920 x 1080 TV: anything other than 1920 x 1080gets scaled to the native resolution of the TV.

So in addition to finding out which device does the best quality scaling (your player or your TV), you certainly want to scale your signal only once! For instance... you don't want to upscale your DVD to 1920 x 1080 only to have your 720P HD set re-scale it back down to 1280 x 720. If you get an HDTV with a non-standard resolution (some sets are 768p), then unless you have a player that can be customized to scale to the non-standard pixel resolution, you'll definitely be re-scaling when your 720p or 1080i/p signal hits the set... in which case you'd probably get a better image going 480 into the set.

Anyone buying a new TV should make sure of a few important things:

1. your set delivers 1920 x 1080 native resolution.
2. your set can accept a native 1080 *progressive* signal to avoid having to use the internal deinterlacing algorithm since you'll get a better image bypassing it with native 1080p images from new HD media.
3. your set can accept and display a 24 fps-interval refresh for film-based HD content from BD/HD DVD.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Thank you David, ^^ well said. I would like to add that if your source is a HD DVD or BD 1080p signal at 24fps and your TV can natively display a 1080p image at any multiple of 24fps, e.g., 24/48/72/96/120Hz your TV will not process the video signal and just use it as it's sent from the optical disc and player.

Regarding Randy's question on the BD vs. HD DVD I expect both to co-survive for a long time, like 2 to 3 yrs, and possibly even longer. Just my educated guess that I have maintained for quite some time.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Hello Robert-----The upgrade fairy whispered in my ear to get a Toshiba XA2 for my new projector. Usually I ignore her but she kept chanting REON CHIP REON CHIP----hard info to bypass.----lol

I live in western Canada----it looks like the 5 free hi-def discs are only available to the American market. TRUE?

Bill

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Bill, not sure what promotions HD DVD has in Canada. Check out their site here. Looks like you get three titles in the box.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

My LG Superblu player is in need of a firmware update as it will not play the "Fantastic 4:Rise Of The Silver Surfer" Blu-Ray disc.

There doesn't seem to be any available updates on the www.lge.com website, the model of my player is SMB-007.

Any idea on when LG is supposed to realease an update for the Superblu player?

Another question is since my player the SMB-007 is canadian would the firmware update of the US equivalent the BH100 work?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Not 100% sure, but I believe the Canadian version of the BH100 could use the same updates, but it's always best to use the updates furnished by the country where the player is used.

I don't know when the next "first gen LG combo format update" would be available. I would recommend contacting LG Canada to request automatic upgrade information.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert,

At any update on the Samsung combo unit ?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Mark, Samsung and I don't see eye to eye on a few business issues so I just may not be the best source for Samsung products these days.

I'll call them again next week to get another update.

-Robert

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Bula Robert,

Does the A35 have analog 5.1 outputs ala the AX2?

ps. still waiting for tracking on our order.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

I'm not Robert, but yes, the A35 has analog outs like the XA-2.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Hi Tim,

not just 2 channel as per the Toshiba site, but actual 5.1?

Thanks

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

yes, 5.1. The only feature the A35 lacks from the XA-2 is the Reon Chip for sd-dvd upconversion...

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Great!

Is it also faster loading?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert, have you heard any confirmation as to whether the XA-2 with the Reon chip will still be the flagship model or will it be replaced with a XA-3 model?

Thank you in advance.

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

Robert,
I have you heard anymore about the Samsung-5000?

Re: Got Questions? Ask our resident expert, Robert Zohn

I am also wondering Robert if the nex XA-3 will be capible of bitsteaming Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver? I might upgrade my HD-A1 if it does.

Thanks Robert.