NEW HD-DVD owners: Please post your reviews here for members considering purchase! (1 Viewer)

[Vader]

I was (am) blown away by the increase in sound quality from DD+, and that is still lossy at 3Mb/s. I can't wait until I hear DolbyTrueHD! I may just have to go out and buy "The Perfect Storm" just to hear it (I have not seen it yet). Michel, would your recommend it solely based on the sound, or is it a good movie too (I have trouble imagining 90 min of being tossed around by waves being engaging for very long)? As many others here know, I am very easy to entertain (I liked Van Helsing, etc).....

 

[mfabien]

Vader,

I saw "The Perfect Storm" both in standard DVD and on HD broadcast. For having owned 3 sail boats and one Trawler, understand that I am a sea lover.

I found the movie to be a good watch because of:

- The story which once again puts people in conflict between "gain of money" and the safe and logical thing to do in dangerous circumstances

- The ocean scenes are very good and am anxious to see this picture quality in all its glory in HD DVD (I expect the PQ to be much better than Serenity, which I have, and certainly as good if not better than Apollo 13 (which I also have).

- The hurricane conditions of two major storms colliding is fascinating and perhaps with global warming, and its impact on sea water temperature, it is something that we will see coming about at times.

- A movie featuring George Clooney is a good start in deciding to see or buy a movie.

Note: I'm not a movie buyer, preferring Concerts in DVD, but I have 4 movies including the above 2 HD DVD. To test my 5.1 multichannel analogs for TrueHD, I just might buy that one. In fact the odds in favor are great.

 

[Vader]

Sold!...

 

[Chris Dugger]

Just a quick note:

HD-A1 connected via HDMI / DVI-D to Viewsonic PJ862 3100 lumen LCD projector...

Location: Backyard screen 149 inch (12 foot diag) 16x9 screen.

HD: Constantine / Pitch Black / Troy
SD (upconverted): Charlie & Chocolate Factory / The Incredibles / Jungle Book / Wizard Of Oz / Matrix

Overview:
HD presentation was visually awesome..... all people in attendance were simply blown away by the overall clarity and sharpness of the color and images..... SD upconverstion was much of the same.... The upconversion was so good that I don't see myself replacing allot of SD titles with new HD versions unless they offer something more than the SD.

Dugger

 

[Tim Glover]

Thats a HUGE screen Chris!

 

[JonZ]

"the upconversion was fantastic"

I threw X2 in my girlfriends player and was really suprised.

Im trapped at her house tonight and just hooked it up to her Sony 51inch(I think)by HDMI to take a look. Tomorrow night Ill be home and can set it up there.

I have the 2.0 firmware disc on the way through the mail. If you get the firmware through the mail you go on their mailing list and all future updates will be sent out automatically. Nice.

Full Metal Jacket froze on me. I threw in Unforgiven, Million $ Baby and Apollo13 briefly to look at them and they all looked great.

edit fyi: Also thought Id mention that when I turned on the player I got nothing, a black screen, no logo or anything. I presses the V output button a couple times and eventually the picture came up. I turned the machine off and back on a couple times afterwards and it always came up. Just a FYI for those who pick one up,not to panic if they get a black screen.

 

[Brian Sallot]

having just purchased an HD-DVD Player (the HD-A1) and 2 titles to start with one being Terminator 3 the other being Serenity I have to say that it is a huge difference in clarity from SDVD. Serenity was amazing as the transfer was very sharp and the detail just popped off the screen. Terminator 3 was a bit soft as far as transfers go but still a major leap over the SDVD although the end credits seemed to be taken from the standard def release they were not nearly as sharp as the opening titles and the smaller letters seemed to be less defined as to the letters shown through the Terminator's point of view which were very small and easy to read. I just thought that was odd.

Still great to finally be seeing HD on my projector. I am very satisfied with my purchase.

Equipment being used:
Sanyo Z3 LCD Projector at 720p using HDMI
Pioneer DD & DTS Receiver
Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player set at 1080i output
100" Screen

Later everyone

 

[Cees Alons]

Because I have to import the machines from the US, I decided to start with a Toshiba HD-A1.

The shipping costs alone are formidable already, add to that Customs and (19%) VAT calculated over total of the price of the content of the package and shipping costs.
In case of a repair or a replacement if the machine would be DOA, shipping it back would be as costly again and getting Customs and VAT back is practically impossible.

So I decided to start with the least expensive and most practical machine first and I'll make a plan later about adding Blu-ray (perhaps I'll wait for the PS3 to be sold in Europe).

The advertiser on our forum, TV Authority, although they normally don't ship overseas at all (and indeed it appeared to be less than a simple matter), was willing to make an exception and here is what arrived this morning at my door:



Currently I don't own a HDTV yet, caused by the fact that I'm in a reconstruction + upgrade phase in my home (including a dedicated HT and a new living room), which has slightly been delayed. But I plan to upgrade to HD in the "smartest way possible", and I will tell about it on this forum.

For now I can already say that the machine works ( ), I played part of T3 and an old SDVD (Maverick) on my 7-year old TV (480i using S-Video) and the images are already stunning compared to my old Pioneer DVD player. Apparently some gain in color depth and horizontal resolution already improved the PQ a lot.

Personally, I find this Toshiba a beauty, both technically and visually (and sturdy as well!). The relatively slow boot-up time didn't bother me very much. The direct result on my TV screen was a surprise. I had only two connections for my initial and direct test: power (I bought a 240V -> 120V converter with US pins) and the S-Video cable.

Of course this is absolutely *nothing* compared to the real 1080-vertical thing, but at least I know now the HD-A1 is not DOA.


Cees

 

[mfabien]

You're a brave one, Cees Alons, and good luck with your new HT setup.

 

[Cees Alons]

Thanks!
Speaking of Montreal: the other side of the box has the name of the player in French (and the second user manual inside is the French one): it's from Toshiba Canada (or perhaps all Toshibas are shipped from Canada?).


Cees

 

[Matthew Ploor]

Well, I got me an HD-A1 a few weeks ago (between the positive reviews and the great price at Amazon I couldn't resist), so here's my opinion on the thing.

Set up went smoothly. Connected to my TV (a Toshiba 73in 1080i DLP) with the included HDMI cable, and to my receiver with 6 audio cables and I was off. Firmware version was 1.4, and I upgraded to 2.0 a few days later with no problem, although it took 20-30 minutes. Haven't noticed any difference after the upgrade, but I don't have any discs with HDAudio yet.

I started with my TV settings the same as for my old DVD player, but after seeing Serenity looked really dark I popped in Avia for some adjustments. I was surprised that I had to turn up the brightness to maximum, and would probably have gone another couple notches if they were there - I still can't see the moving bars on the brightness pattern! But after adjustment Serenity looked great. Beautiful, lovely, clear as all get-out great. THIS was real HD, and better than any broadcast HD I've seen. The other 4 HD DVDs which I have watched have also been wonderful to see. I am quite happy with the quality of this HD stuff. On audio I don't notice any real difference from my old player, but I don't claim to have great ears, and I haven't heard any HDAudio discs yet.

Other cool stuff: those in-movie menus which you can pull up while the movie continues to play are very nifty. The upconversion of anamorphic SD DVDs is very nice, they definitely look sharper than on my old player (which is rather old - vintage 1998). The pillarboxing of academy ratio disks works quite nicely, and it is very nice to have it done automatically.

Negatives: Dang this thing takes a long time to boot up! And when you pop a disc in it takes forever to load. Not such a big deal for a movie since I'm probably making popcorn anyway, but if I'm going to watch a quick 30 minute TV show on DVD, waiting 2 minutes just to get going is kind of annoying. But it is just a couple minutes - we don't have enough patience these days. At least it's shorter than commercials + previews at the theater. Also, it has frozen up on me twice - once with the 1.4 firmware, once with the 2.0. To get it going again required powering down and back up again, quite annoying. Oddly, both times have been while watching full-frame material, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. It's only been 2 incidents in quite a bit of viewing, so hopefully it isn't a big problem, but it would be quite annoying if it happens frequently.

The remote is a pretty crappy design, particularly the unreadable button labels, but I find this doesn't bug me much. The important often-used buttons are in easy to find and remember spots.

Overall verdict: I'm happy I bought it. The HD picture is really gorgeous, and even my old anamorphic discs look better, making the slow start times a bearable trade-off. The format war worries me some, but I'll definitely enjoy getting the most out of my HDTV now regardless of the outcome. So from me, a thumbs up.

 

[mfabien]

The HD DVD players are boxed for both Canada and the US. No difference. It is surprising but that is what it is in this instance.

 

[Cees Alons]

No complaint about that.
In fact, because we were just returning from a short vacation in the south of France, I couldn't resist grabbing the French User Manual (Lecteur HD DVD: Mode d'emploi) first.


Cees

 

[JonZ]

"but if I'm going to watch a quick 30 minute TV show on DVD, waiting 2 minutes just to get going is kind of annoying."

I still have my Pioneer set up via component. So Im using 2 players.

 

[RalphJR]

Well finally got my Projector going and invited a few neighbors to look at the DVD-HD player when compared to the Oppo. The movie in question the Last Samurai, one in HD-DVD the other regular dvd.

The conclusion was that the HD-DVD was about 20% better if that, but that the colors were more vibrant. Both players setting as far as brightness etc was to zero.

One of my neighbors stated that he felt that It was not High Definition, and that it did not display as Hi. Def as my Hi Def channels that it is just another ploy to sell players and the same DVD as a High definition thus more revenue and more then likely within a few years another ploy.

He compared the whole thing as the HP printers cost just a few bucks, then the Inject cartridge will bring more revenues as will HD-DVD Disk.

Was shocked at his response, but to a degree agreed with him, was not really blown away like the Discovery channel on Direct TV etc.

 

[mfabien]

RalphJR,

Did you set the HD DVD player at 1080i resolution?

 

[Sami Kallio]

Ralph, there are several reasons why you got the reaction you did.

1) Discovery HD material is one of those with the WOW factor; bright beautiful colours, great scenenaries and historical places. Film material is going to be very hard time living up to that, almost impossible if you still want to keep it as a movie. Especially if you get Verizon's FiosTV feed of DiscoveryHD, it is miles ahead its competition (I unfortunately was forced to switch to a different provider after my move)

2) Your displays are 720. While still a big move from 480, they are far behind 1080 in the PQ that HD can provide. 720 still looks good but doesn't really have the WOW factor that 1080 has, especially now that a lot of people have gotten used to 720 and not a lot have seen 1080.

 

[Cees Alons]

Ralph,

As implied by Michel and Sami, even if your displays are 720, you should still set your player to 1080.


Cees

 

[RalphJR]

Yes I did set the resolution to 1080I and tried the other's setting also and no luck.

 

[mfabien]

RalphJR,

Keep in mind that most of what you see on HDTV is Video and not film. You should compare movies as seen on TV vs HD DVD movies.

One day there will be TV program series offered on HD DVD, as they are today in SD DVD, and then you may compare broadcasting, as you remember seeing these programs, and HD DVD for Video. "Smart Travel" on PBS comes to mind.

Movie producers love to play with dark scenes and film is much better than digital Video to capture these scenes (often on Dave Letterman, you get a shot of the audience in the dark and you see a whole lot more grain than when film is used). And digital Video is great for sunny outside scenes like CSI Miami. In my book comparing CSI Miami to a movie on HD DVD is like comparing apples to oranges.