Picked up my HD-DVD player today

Tour2ma

One out of three ain't bad...

I wonder if the plan is to release a bunch of turkeys while everyone's HD blood is boiling...

Sami

I was at Fry's today checking what most likely will be my next bedroom TV set, Samsung HL-R5688W, and got a preview of HD-DVD. That Toshiba was hooked into a 720p Samsung DLP screen and quite honestly I was not impressed on how Serenity looked. I don't think there was that much improvement over regular DVD for me to shell out $500 for the player. If I needed a new DVD player then maybe but not at this moment.

Picture was not nearly as sharp as TNT HD for example over Verizon FIOS, and lots of blurry scenes. I am not sure if it is the fault of the movie itself, poor compression or the fault of the format. Unfortunately they didn't have any other movies in HD-DVD available for review.

That being said, I might Netflix some of the HD titles and get the player from Fry's for a few weeks to see if it is worth keeping. My initial impression just wasn't positive but like I said, the reasons might be somewhere else than in the format and the player.

Ron-P

Trust me when I say a big box store, like Frys, is filled with people that don't know how to set-up a display correctly. Serenity on my 85" screen looked stunning, extremely sharp and detailed. The scenes in space were so dark and detailed it was awesome.

Most comments I'm reading are saying that HD-DVD is superior than anything you see on your HD TV channels.

Demiurge

Tour2ma wrote:

One out of three ain't bad...

I wonder if the plan is to release a bunch of turkeys while everyone's HD blood is boiling...

I was wondering the same thing. They're releasing a lot of bad HD-DVDs right off the bat. You'd think they'd have some more appetizing titles out there to get more people to impulse buy at the stores.

Sami

Ron-P wrote:

Trust me when I say a big box store, like Frys, is filled with people that don't know how to set-up a display correctly.

I took that into account and my concerns were about the quality of the movie itself, nothing really to do with the screen setup. Blurry image for example, the background wasn't sharp at all, that's why I had concerns maybe it's the movie. Anyway, I'll propably get the player and return it if I find it not worth it at home setup.

Ron-P

They're releasing a lot of bad HD-DVDs right off the bat.

I consider Phantom of the Opera, Serenity and Apollo 13 some of my top favorite films. So, out of the 6 I have I cannot agree that their releasing bad titles right off, I am very happy with what has come out so far. I have yet to see Million Dollar Baby but it does look good from the trailer.

Anyway, I'll probably get the player and return it if I find it not worth it at home setup.

Good deal Sami. It's a shame more would not do this rather then see a display at a store and then jump on the forums and trash the format with no other experience with it.

I was going to do the same, if I didn't like it or the player had too many issues I'd just return it, well it's not going back and the majority are in the same camp. Some of the most difficult hard-core enthusiasts are over at AVS, here's a current poll running on HD-DVD.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=670945

venomclan

Tour2ma wrote:

I wonder if the plan is to release a bunch of turkeys while everyone's HD blood is boiling...

The next 3 HD-DVD's set to be released are:
Catwoman
Charlies Angels-Full Throttle
Electra

Better get your pre-orders in early guys...

wingnut4772

I am confused about the audio with these things What are we really going to need to reap the full benefits of Dolby True HD et al???

Emlyn

wingnut4772 wrote:

I am confused about the audio with these things What are we really going to need to reap the full benefits of Dolby True HD et al???

The $799 version of the Toshiba supports full HD-DVD audio formats (7.1 uncompressed digital audio capability for movies). I'm not sure if it's available in stores yet. Crutchfield has it listed though.

Edit: The specs look the same for both versions.

sickicw

wingnut4772 wrote:

I am confused about the audio with these things What are we really going to need to reap the full benefits of Dolby True HD et al???

well from what i have read, you can get the uncompress pcm over analog multi outputs, or digital over the hdmi. The problem is in order to use your receivers/preamp bass management, DAC, and auto setup features, you will have to have a receiver or pre-amp that supports multi channel pcm input via hdmi. I haven’t been able to find one that can do this.

Ron-P

Not yet. The new audio format for this is HDMI 1.3, we might get to see it at CES next year.

PolkThug

Ron, what are the resolutions of the HD-DVD's?

sickicw

Actually hdmi version 1.3 is only from the encoded HD audio. This will allow your receiver to decode it. If you only want PCM, you can use any hdmi version. There are not too many companies that are taking advantage of this right now though....

From
http://www.hdmi.org/about/faq.asp
....

Does HDMI support Dolby 5.1 audio and high-resolution audio formats? Yes. From the start, HDMI was defined to carry 8-channels, of 192kHz, 24-bit uncompressed audio, which exceeds all current consumer media formats. In addition, HDMI can carry any flavor of compressed audio format such as Dolby or DTS. (Such compressed formats are the only multi-channel or high-resolution audio formats that can be carried across the older S/PDIF or AES/EBU interfaces.) Additionally, most existing HDMI sources can output any compressed stream, and the newer sources can output uncompressed 6-channel, 96kHz audio from a DVD-Audio disk. There are A/V receivers on the market that can accept and process the 6- or 8-channel audio from HDMI.

wingnut4772

So you just use the 7 analog outputs? Is this superior to Dolby PLII for example?

sickicw

I am not sure about hd-dvd, but i "think" for blu-ray the analog ouputs are the same as dolby true hd. For hd-dvd, i think that only two channels are uncompressed (dolby true hd) and the rest are compressed. Either way, the analog output for any hd-dvd or blu-ray player should be better than 5.1 dolby digital. The only problem is that now you are using the players DAC and have to worry about bass management and other things like eq, level, delay, ect....

Emlyn

Both the Toshiba units only have 5.1 analog outputs. Seems like Toshiba rushed the players to market to beat the Blu-Ray players, but did so by leaving out the maximum performance features like 1080p and full uncompressed audio capabilities the formats are supposed to offer.

I'm waiting a couple of years to jump on either ship this time around even though I was first in line for a CD player, a DVD player, and an HDTV tuner when they first came out.

polksda

As with everywhere else, there are all sorts of erroneous or distorted "facts" here.

HD-DVD currentlys supports DD+, DTS-HD, and TrueHD, although the output ability depends on how you have the player hooked up. Considering that there are no receivers as of yet that can decode DD+ or DTS-HD, any digital connection outputs DTS. The HD-A1 actually has a DTS ENcoder onboard to take the native high-resolution audio contained on the disc and converted it to DTS for digital output. If you are using the 5.1 analog outputs you can get the high-resolution audio.

The first Blu-Ray players will also have 5.1 analog outputs (not 7.1). However, the only high resolution audio contained on the first Blu-Ray releases will be LPCM 5.1. No DD+, DTS-HD, or TrueHD.

There's a lot of speculation that Sony is (ultimately) trying to force people to double-dip by later rereleasing the same titles with the other audio formats.

The 1080p business is a bit of a red herring. Over 95% of HDTVs in use today cannot accept a 1080p signal. More importantly, even though the Toshiba cannot *currently* output 1080p, there have been statements that later this year there will be a firmware update that will allow this functionality.

Keep in mind that the Toshiba unit is basically a Linux box. It has 1GB of PC2700 DDR, a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4-M processor, and an ethernet port to connect to the internet for firmware updates. In fact you can connect the unit to Toshiba's update site now, although there are not any updates available yet...

I wouldn't get too hung up on what the unit can't do *today*, especially when it comes to formats or features that don't really have a market presence yet.

Oh, and Apollo 13 looks and sounds wonderful.

Batman Begins is slated for HD-DVD on 5/2 (next week), and just yesterday the first day-and-date HD-DVD simultaneous releases with DVD were announced: "Firewall" on 6/6, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" on 6/13, "16 Blocks" on 6/13, and... (drum roll please)... "V for Vendetta" on 7/25. That one should look incredible!

(Those aren't the only releases, just the new releases on the same day as DVD).

Many retailers don't have a clue on how to connect or configure these decks. Quick tip: Regardless of whether your display is 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, you want to have the output set to 1080i. The Toshiba doesn't do a good job of donwrezzing from 1080p to 720p, so you get a much better picture by outputting 1080i and letting the set convert to 720p if necessary...

Sami

As this Toshiba is a Linux box, how long away are computer HD-DVD readers? Is there any indication out there yet? Instead of HD-DVD player I would just like to update my HTPC with a HD-DVD-ROM drive but most likely that's not happening anytime soon.

polksda

I've seen reports of impending releases withing the next month or so.

If you take the NEC HD-DVD drive out of the Toshiba and mount it in a PC, I believe it shows up, but will not play HD-DVDs (needs Vista I think).

If you want to see a breakdown of what's inside the unit (including a 6-minute video of disassembling the unit), check out the link below.

http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2006/04/21/75795.aspx

PolkThug

PolkThug wrote:

Ron, what are the resolutions of the HD-DVD's?

OK, I'll open up the question to anyone who is 100% sure of the answer.

polksda

PolkThug wrote:

OK, I'll open up the question to anyone who is 100% sure of the answer.

Well, I'm never sure of anything I type , but I believe the discs themselves are encoded at 1080p, which is 1920x1080 resolution.

Ron-P

Yup, 1920x1080.

Sami

And that Toshiba currently plays 1920x540 x2 (1080i), IIRC.

Tour2ma

venomclan wrote:

The next 3 HD-DVD's set to be released are:
Catwoman
Charlies Angels-Full Throttle
Electra

Better get your pre-orders in early guys...

Well, that certainly put Demi and I in our place...

Ron-P

It's been 3 weeks to the day with the HD-DVD player and so far I am nothing but impressed with it. Only once about a week ago during Apollo 13 I got the blue screen of death and I had to unplug the player to reset it. That's the only one problem I've had with it.

It's spun every disk I've thrown at it both SD and HD-DVDs without issue. There are no layer changes on HD-DVDs and the layer changes are quite quick with SD-DVDs. I'm running the audio via the 5.1 analog outs into my Outlaw 950, the DD+ sounds better then the best dts track I've heard.

It takes a little over a minute once the machine is powered on before you'll get an image on screen, not bad but something that may come as a firmware upgrade later. It takes over a minute for my Z3 to get warmed up so it's no big deal at this point.

The upscaling is fantastic for SD-DVDs which was a nice bonus and something I was not expecting.

All-n-all I cannot be more pleased with this. It all comes down to picture and sound quality and this thing delivers!

Sami

My biggest complain about the PQ was the noise which IMO shouldn't be so bad with HD but then again, it needs to be compressed so I guess we have to live with it. I think I will shortly pick this up from Fry's to test it myself, I already have Netflix'ed Phantom of the opera and that Firefly movie (I haven't watched Firefly so I didn't like the movie but hey, it's one of the few available HD titles...)

It should play home (burned) DVD's quite well being a computer based solution but I don't think it is region free so I need to keep my old DVD player at the rack.

millerman 3732

I tried playing a dvd that I made on my computer and the player just flashed no play on the display

millerman 3732

Ron-P wrote:

It's been 3 weeks to the day with the HD-DVD player and so far I am nothing but impressed with it. Only once about a week ago during Apollo 13 I got the blue screen of death and I had to unplug the player to reset it. That's the only one problem I've had with it.

It's spun every disk I've thrown at it both SD and HD-DVDs without issue. There are no layer changes on HD-DVDs and the layer changes are quite quick with SD-DVDs. I'm running the audio via the 5.1 analog outs into my Outlaw 950, the DD+ sounds better then the best dts track I've heard.

It takes a little over a minute once the machine is powered on before you'll get an image on screen, not bad but something that may come as a firmware upgrade later. It takes over a minute for my Z3 to get warmed up so it's no big deal at this point.

The upscaling is fantastic for SD-DVDs which was a nice bonus and something I was not expecting.

All-n-all I cannot be more pleased with this. It all comes down to picture and sound quality and this thing delivers!

Ron did you have to reset any of your setting in your preamp or amp, I tried using the analog outputs to my hk 635 and it droped the volume way down from where it was with the digital output and you the sub hardly played at all.

Ron-P

Did you play either Phantom of the Opera, Million Dollar Baby or The Last Samurai? Those 3 films were authored with low audio.

I had no audio issues with the analog connections. Also, make sure your setting in the players are set for the correct output.

millerman 3732

Apollo 13 and Swordfish, and yes I went through the setup and even got out my SPL meter and calibrated the dvd players test tones but the volume drops way off during movie playback, and again there is hardly any sound from the sub even in the test tones from the dvd player.