THIS POLL IS PUBLIC. Please be honest with your vote. Thanks.

I'm going to try a different approach with this poll, to see if Universal has solved its issues.

THIS POLL IS PUBLIC. Please be honest with your vote. Thanks.

I'm going to try a different approach with this poll, to see if Universal has solved its issues.
Do you have any problems with yours?

Do you have any problems with yours?

Still haven't been able to rent it. Maybe next week.

It must be my turn to be lucky. My A2 hasn't had any problems with disc playback.

Watched it last night issue free
Have watch CoM twice with no issues

Still haven't been able to rent it. Maybe next week.
fwiw I agree in general on your assessment of CoM in the other thread, seems to be a gen-two issue as I have a XA1 and had no problems, take the same disc to the store (A2) and it hung-up.

The weird part however is that another copy of the same title; in the same player played w/o incident. Combination of player-generation and or disc manufacturing issue manifesting at the same time?

Smokin' Aces and Children of Men have both played fine on my 360 - two very good discs.

I got the disk from Netflix and tried playing it on my XA2 running 1.5 firmware. It wouldn't play, so I cleaned the disk. It still wouldn't play when I tried it after cleaning.

I left the disk in the player and the next day it played. The next three times I tried the disk on different days it would play. I don't know why it wouldn't play at first, but it did eventually.

fwiw I agree in general on your assessment of CoM in the other thread, seems to be a gen-two issue as I have a XA1 and had no problems, take the same disc to the store (A2) and it hung-up.

The weird part however is that another copy of the same title; in the same player played w/o incident. Combination of player-generation and or disc manufacturing issue manifesting at the same time?

Probably. Errors would be a case of tolerances aligning for worst effect.

I had problems with my first one which was purchased from amazon about two weeks ago. It just froze on chapter 17. So I returned and got my new copy last night and played flawlessly !!

Had no problem with Smokin' Aces or any other HD DVD i've watched on my player (HD D1).

I'm not sure how to answer this poll. Probably should indicate that I do have problems, although I have been able to isolate the problem with the recent Uni combos, and my problems are NOT with nornal playback.

I don't have a problem with skipping, pausing, locking up, or anything like this when playing a movie. I have been able to determine what DOES cause at least the XA2 to lock up on one of these discs. Selecting one of the later chapters from the scene selection menu then hitting chapter skip will lock this sucker every time.

I consider this an authoring issue, or perhaps a firmware issue with the XA2.

poll seems to be not so well thought out or intentionally misleading.

the title of the thread asks a specific question ie: smokin aces.

the poll with the statement in brackets opens the question up to include all
uni combos.


seems underhanded to do this if it was intentional.

poll seems to be not so well thought out or intentionally misleading.

Basic requirement for a poll is that the options must be (a) exhaustive and (b) mutually exclusive. I think that requirement is met there.

the title of the thread asks a specific question ie: smokin aces.

the poll with the statement in brackets opens the question up to include all
uni combos.

Both here and in the previous Children of Men poll, I have tried to garner some more specific answer than a yes/no.

With the CoM poll, we could see that all players were affected, but some more than others.

Now what we need to know is whether Universal is correcting the problem. That's why we need to disaggregate the Yes and No categories, which would be of little use to us.

So far, it seems that a large proportion of those who have had issues with other recent Universal combos now don't have problems. Others still do.

seems underhanded to do this if it was intentional.

Sure. Call me hydra-head. :rolleyes:

Anyone else didn't understand the rationale?

Had no issues with Smokin' Aces on the 360.

Now what we need to know is whether Universal is correcting the problem.



which is a good intent. no prob. your title seems fine





That's why we need to disaggregate the Yes and No categories, which would be of little use to us.


which is why opening the question to inclued all uni combos confuses the issue ie: your title question ie: smokin aces/any problems

your bracketed description in the poll changes the intent of the title(yours).




So far, it seems that a large proportion of those who have had issues with other recent Universal combos now don't have problems. Others still do.


you have no way of coming to that conclusion based on your poll.

perhaps if you had worded it like this:


yes (had problems with uni combos/ now with smokin aces too)

no ( had problems with uni combos/ but not with smokin aces)

and all the other variants.




Sure. Call me hydra-head. :rolleyes:

Anyone else didn't understand the rationale?

ok, you're a hydra-head :)

No problems here.

I can't even get Smokin' Aces to play.

First message I got is "this disc is not dvd format" so i ejected the
disc and reloaded it and I got the dreaded error code.

I ejected this disc again rebooted my Toshiba and cleaned off the
disc with a soft microfiber towel and loaded the disc to finally get
to the menu screen but then it freezes and the player locks up.

I guess my next step is to boil the disc as others have tried.

and if that doesn't work maybe I will get my ouija board out and ask it for
help. :D

No problems with any Uni combos. I use an XBOX HD DVD drive with a HTPC.

Lots of trouble with it on my HD-A1 (2.1FW).

The disc seems to play fine if (for the most part) if I just press play as soon as the disc loads.. if I let it sit on the menu for more than a few minutes though, I get non-stop stuttering. It's locked up the player completely a few times and is very disappointing that I can't pause it without having to restart the player because it stutters when it resumes.

poll seems to be not so well thought out or intentionally misleading.

the title of the thread asks a specific question ie: smokin aces.

the poll with the statement in brackets opens the question up to include all
uni combos.


seems underhanded to do this if it was intentional.
I disagree with your assertion. The first post explains the secondary filter.

The basic title is fine - to explain the secondary intent of the poll in the title would make it very wordy. E.g.: "Looking for trends: Do you have problems with Smokin' Aces, and have you had previous problems with Universal Combo disks?" That is too long IMHO.


And for the subject of the poll: it played fine in my A2. I did not try any of the U-control stuff.

shinksma

No problems on my XA1.

Yes and no. I bought my copy from amazon, I own the 360 add on, watched the movie with no problem, but then I tried watching the outakes, it played for a few seconds then froze.

No problems at all here.

I just got done watching on my XA2 and had problems. Had to finish watching on my A1 and still had some minor problems. Third disc I have had trouble with on my XA2, but not on the A1. Hollywoodland, Good Shepard and Ace's. CoM played fine on the XA2.

I got Smokin' Aces from Netflix last night. When I started playing, it started to freeze right in the first chapter, so I took it out and looked at it. The fingerprints and scratches were horrible! How could a disc that's been out for such a short time get so much abuse?

So I spent about 5 minutes washing it with mild soap and let it sit for a while to dry. All the smudges were finally gone, but the scratches were still there.

Popped it back in the A1 and it played right through, just fine. :cool:

Watched it again with the U-Control tonight. I think the Assasin Tracker has been one of the coolest interactive features I've seen. Very slick, yeah, OK, kinda' gimmicky...but still pretty slick. :D

What is it with Netflix discs? Not just HD DVD, but SD, too? In fact, the SD copy of The Queen I just got locked the player up altogether. When I went to wash it, I noticed a crack in it, along with all the other scratches. I wish the Netflix discs weren't in such sad shape.

Nope just watched it and children of men. played without a hitch on A1.

Sorry, my 3 combo titles (Happy Feet, Children of Men and Smoking Aces) were flawless and played beautifully on my HDA1 with :) version 2.0 firmware.

Did not have one problem with my copy from Netflix. XA2 running v1.5

No problems with "Smokin' Aces" on HD-A2 with firmware v1.5, but horrible trouble with "Children of Men". "Happy Feet" & "Batman Begins" both played fine.

I say disc authoring on CoM!

EDIT: I went to watch "Smokin' Aces" this morning, to check out the Assassin Tracker feature, and now I get the "This disc is not DVD format, can not play disc" WTF!? Universal you suck! Toshiba, if it is your hardware choices for the player, you suck too!

(Maybe it's the humidity...who freaking knows!)

Major problems with my copy, I got about 3/4 of the way through the movie with a few glitches until it froze completely. After that it wouldn't load, so I did both the disc soap trick and the boiling trick with no luck each time.

I have a 360 drive for the record.

I had problems with Smokin' Aces. Just received it yesterday from DVDEmpire.com, fired it up and wouldn't recognize disc. Took it out washed it then I was able to play it. About 3/4's of the way through the movie it started studdering and skipping.
Returning it today for a fresh copy.

Same thing happened to me with Children of Men. Luckily DVDEmpire.com has a great return policy.

Regards,

billmac

I couldn't get through all of chrildren of men. I figured it was just a scratch and watched the rest in DVD. With Smoking Aces, I couldn't get anything at all. My A2 just said it couldn't play it. The disc looks perfect. Is it that I need an upgrade? I never recieved my upgrade from Toshiba and I send in the form months ago.

Tried it with my 360, says it cant read the disc. do i need an update of any kind or something? this is incredibly annoying, got it from amazon

I solved my issues with UNIVERSAL. I just quit buying them... :D

Problems here. My new XA2 can't play Smokin' Aces. It eather says "can't play", "not DVD format", or "error code xxxxxxxx". Best case is that it played the starting Universal short clip, then "can't play" again.

Morpheus

No problems here with my A1 running 2.0 firmware. I am a strong advocate of disc washing. I wash everything - combo's and standard disc. I initially didn't wash Happy Feet and it froze. After washing it, Happy Feet has played all the way through. CoM also plays without issue.

Had a lot of problems with Hollywoodland. Had some problems with Children of Men after I had watched it once a few weeks later after I upgraded to the latest firmware. It was after that I tried Smokin' Aces and had even more trouble.

It keeps dropping out to this error code. I had Amazon ship me another copy to replace this one and it does the same thing in a different place, but it's still the same code. No other discs are doing it, just the Universal combo flippers and only the recent ones.

I think they have a real problem in QC.

Well I got Smoking Aces and Children of men last night..

No problems at all with COM.

I had one lip synic issue with Smoking Aces when Comon was carrying Sexy Keys down the steps and me the FBI dute. I just pause the movie and play again with no more problems. I will watch again to see if it happens again.

Ps Did anyone else think the ending of COM was retarted?

Just bought the HD A20 yesterday, popped in "Smokin' Aces", the Universal logo played, then the disc froze and the player was stuttering. I actually had to power the unit off by unplugging it as nothing else would remedy the situation. After leaving the disc in the player from the off position, then turning the player on again, the movie played just fine! Except for the pause. Paused the movie once, and after a few moments, the disc goes to the Universal screensaver and that's where the disc froze again! I can't believe that the first title I try on my new player acted like this? I just think it's simply a matter of too much too soon for this media. U-Control and the like has a few too many quirks.

Other HD DVD discs (Terminator 3, The Breakfast Club, Batman Begins) played just fine though. :)

-Murray

After I washed it twice and wait for 2 hours, it plays now (touch wood).

Morpheus

I couldn't get through all of chrildren of men. I figured it was just a scratch and watched the rest in DVD. With Smoking Aces, I couldn't get anything at all. My A2 just said it couldn't play it. The disc looks perfect. Is it that I need an upgrade? I never recieved my upgrade from Toshiba and I send in the form months ago.
I would recommend upgrading to the latest firmware. If you have high-speed internet, just connect directly to your modem with an ethernet cable. Otherwise you can download an ISO image and burn your own CD, rather than wait for Toshiba to send you one.

For both movies, a little paper slip came with the movie suggesting an upgrade to the latest firmware may be required, which usually tells me that it is indeed required, especially for the u-control stuff.

IMHO, YMMV,

shinksma

Now I have decided to return the disc to amazon.com for a refund. This is the first time that I have ever had to return anything to amazon. Too bad, because this is a terrific movie. I saw it in the theater and couldn't wait for the HD DVD! :(

-Murray

I would recommend upgrading to the latest firmware. If you have high-speed internet, just connect directly to your modem with an ethernet cable. Otherwise you can download an ISO image and burn your own CD, rather than wait for Toshiba to send you one.

For both movies, a little paper slip came with the movie suggesting an upgrade to the latest firmware may be required, which usually tells me that it is indeed required, especially for the u-control stuff.

IMHO, YMMV,

shinksma


can you pm me how to download the iso image for the hd dvd a1 player?
power went out during update!

thanks

No issues yet with a Universal combo disc.

HD-A1 w/firmware vr 2.0:
First time in (4 times actually) it stalled at welcome after the customary40 second or so wait. Couldn't ejet or power off. Had to pull the plug all 4 time and could only eject the disc by powering on by hitting the eject button. Hitting power took you straight throught Welcom to the lockup. Washed in hot soap & water then the player recognozed it as a CD, showed the cd wallpaper screen for a fraction of a second then locked up. Gonna try my first ethernet update to see if I can snag 2.2 and try it again.

I solved my issues with UNIVERSAL. I just quit buying them... :D

That definitely seems to be the sensible response, doesn't it?

I was able to watch the movie itself without problems, but the U-control would not work, and then when I tried watching with the audio commentary on, it would play properly for a few minutes, then freeze, and this freezing after a few minutes of play happened repeatedly.

I had serious problems with COM just in watching the movie itself, error messages, sound problems. Since I didn't like the movie, it wasn't much of an issue, but I liked SA better, so it's more of a problem there.

HD-A1 w/firmware vr 2.0:
First time in (4 times actually) it stalled at welcome after the customary40 second or so wait. Couldn't ejet or power off. Had to pull the plug all 4 time and could only eject the disc by powering on by hitting the eject button. Hitting power took you straight throught Welcom to the lockup. Washed in hot soap & water then the player recognozed it as a CD, showed the cd wallpaper screen for a fraction of a second then locked up. Gonna try my first ethernet update to see if I can snag 2.2 and try it again.

Couldn't get the update to work via ethernet but booted the plater back up about an hour later and it loaded right up. No problems at all until 1:11:04 where it froze. I couldn'tff, but I skipped to the next chapter and was able to RW to about 1:12:14 where it froze on the rewind. I skipped the chapter adain and RW to 1:12:20 or so and it played the remainder of the fick without issues.

I had problems with Smokin' Aces. Just received it yesterday from DVDEmpire.com, fired it up and wouldn't recognize disc. Took it out washed it then I was able to play it. About 3/4's of the way through the movie it started studdering and skipping.
Returning it today for a fresh copy.

Same thing happened to me with Children of Men. Luckily DVDEmpire.com has a great return policy.

Regards,

billmac


Just for grins I thought I'd try boiling the DVD as it's described in the "Children of Men Problems" thread before returning it for a new copy. What do I have to lose.

I was really surprised to see that IT WORKS. Now the disc plays through all the way and the final two chapters no longer skip and stutter. I think this confirms there is a manufacturing problem with the combo format discs. It's disappointing that as a high-end consumer I have to spend time "preparing" a $30 piece of media. These studios need to get their act together.

FYI,

billmac

watched this last night (netflix) no problems on XA2- ver.1.2 (I'm afraid to upgrade- lately it seems to be behaving-COM (after washing it), happy feet- no problems as well. I liked the movie-pretty good action.
thetman

No problems with smokin aces on my HD A1 with firmware 2.0.

I would recommend upgrading to the latest firmware. If you have high-speed internet, just connect directly to your modem with an ethernet cable. Otherwise you can download an ISO image and burn your own CD, rather than wait for Toshiba to send you one.

For both movies, a little paper slip came with the movie suggesting an upgrade to the latest firmware may be required, which usually tells me that it is indeed required, especially for the u-control stuff.

IMHO, YMMV,

shinksma


I have the latest firmware on my XA2 and I have still been having problems with a few of these titles.

Smokin' Aces disk from NetFlix played thru completely with no problems on my HD A1 with firmware 2.0. Some minor scratches, but not too bad.

I carefully wash (dishsoap & water with fingers, then soft towel dry and finish with a shot of DUST-OFF) all HD disks from Netflix. No problems since I started that plan.

Steve

Got Good Sheperd from BB Online and (thankfully) it quit about 2/3rds of the way into the movie, and gave an error message.

Bought Smokin' Aces and it wouldnt play at all. Downloaded and applied newest firmware (was using 1.3? with the A2) and it would play. But, about 2/3 of the way into the movie (hotel hallway shootout) it craps out.

No problems with Smoking Aces on my A2. I'll try CoM on it tomorrow. It played fine on my 360 a few weeks ago. Good Shepherd was flawless as well - one of the best PQ's I've seen yet.

BBO rental of SA played flawlessly on my A1 with U-Control features at full bore. While I had issues with COM with F/W 2.0, all the recent Uni Combos have played without skipping a beat since installing 2.1.

no problems so far, CoM, Miami Vice, good shepard, until Smoking aces, total lockup nothing no sound weird picture...
but its a disc issue right? so if CoM runs once without problems it will always run without problems, or am i wrong....

No problem w/playback----but the movie was rather lame.

Well I gave up on my copy, and sent in for a replacement through Amazon. Their customer service is top-notch and a replacement order is already on it's way via expedited international shipping. Although it's a disappointment to get a bum disc it's nice to see that replacing them is quick and painless.

Happy to report no playback problems with my copy of SA, using the Xbox 360 add-on.

Even U-Control plays without a hitch for me; I must say, the Assasin Tracker feature is pretty damn cool.

Though I would understand completely if my player were to lock up during the scene where Alicia Keys is "dressing up" :D

207 votes so far. :)

Provisional analysis:


32% of voters had problems (was just over 50% with Children of Men)
90% of those who didn't have problems with recent Uni combos didn't have problems with Smokin' Aces either.
66% of those who had problems with recent Uni combos had problems with Smokin' Aces too.

I bought 3 copies of smoking aces they all didn’t work on my 360 drive
The closest I got to was after restarting a ton of times on one it went to the universal screen and then back to the dash

What I want to know is
Is this update
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/DVD_International/Technical_Glitches/Digital_Video_Essentials_HD_DVD_Hits_Xbox_360_Playback_Snag/601

going to fix this combo format problem too

My children of men didn’t work either
Didn’t get good Sheppard

No problems with smokin aces on my HD A1 with firmware 2.0.

Ditto. Flawless playback.

I've only had problems with one HD-DVD and that was "The Bone Collector" didn't work very well from 1st playing kept freezing but I'm 100% sure it was due to a bad pressing as the disk looks perfect and I've had no other issues with my other 30+ HD-DVD's in any of my 3 players.

I've had it with trying to play Combo HD DVD's on the HD A2.
I can't beleive it's the discs.
So far COM, Good Shepard and The Departed won't play at all. Last night I watched Smokin Aces....Got it to play a little over half way then it froze, got the dreaded error message and locked up my player (had to unplug it).
This is my second HD A2 player. I exchanged my first HD A2 (Circuit City) for the current one. Both players had the updated firmware (I installed it) and both players did exactly the same thing.
I can't beleive every combo disc is bad!!
I'll be amazed if the Hd DVD format survives. In comparison I've watched many more Blu Ray than HD titles, (on my Samsung BDP 1000) with ZERO problems!!!
The only thing the HD A2 is good for is watching older single sided releases.
Someone should start a class action suit against Toshiba for manufacturing a complete peice of crap!!
Incidently both HD A2 players were manufatored 1st week of Jan 07.
Would be interesting to see if the manufature date has any bearing on the players ability to play Combo discs.
Also.....Toshiba is aware of the problem and assured me that another firmware upgrade is comming to fix the Combo Disc problem.
I'm not holding my breath.

Mark

I can't even get Smokin' Aces to play.

First message I got is "this disc is not dvd format" so i ejected the
disc and reloaded it and I got the dreaded error code.

I ejected this disc again rebooted my Toshiba and cleaned off the
disc with a soft microfiber towel and loaded the disc to finally get
to the menu screen but then it freezes and the player locks up.

I guess my next step is to boil the disc as others have tried.

and if that doesn't work maybe I will get my ouija board out and ask it for
help. :D

Update:

I had my Smokin Aces disc replaced and it loaded fine and played
until the 57 minute mark and then just froze.
I tried reloaded a later chapter and it will not load. The movie plays
flawlessly until the 57 minute mark but anything after that is no good.

Very frustrated with these combos.

2nd update:

I exchanged for a third Smokin' Aces disc and had problems getting to the menu screen, cleaned it with a soft microfiber towel and that seemed to work as it played without a hitch after the cleaning. I guess the third time was a charm.

I've watched without problems on both my XA1 and my XA2; XA2 is not up to last f/w (haven't been able to get the u/g to complete).

Watvched it last night...decent flick thatbuilt up initially and then flopped in the end.

Anyways, I had zero problems playing the disc except I did get an error code just after the Universal screen saver kicked (before the movie started - in the start menu)....Simply hitting 'play' however, bypassed the error so no need for a reboot.

Played start to finish...did anyone notice really low, low bass rumbling early that seemed unrelated to what was going on in the picture (first 10 minutes of film)?

Watvched it last night...decent flick thatbuilt up initially and then flopped in the end.

Anyways, I had zero problems playing the disc except I did get an error code just after the Universal screen saver kicked (before the movie started - in the start menu)....Simply hitting 'play' however, bypassed the error so no need for a reboot.

Played start to finish...did anyone notice really low, low bass rumbling early that seemed unrelated to what was going on in the picture (first 10 minutes of film)?

I also noticed this and figured that it was an intentional portion of the soundtrack. Why? I don't know, but any added bass is good bass! :)

-Murray

Only the scenes with Jason Bateman cracked me up...REally funny...But Ryan Reynolds was overacting and seemed not the right guy for the role...Too much going on with too many people..No character was able to be developed enough...A hodge podge falling short of a Quentin Tarantino (wannabe) film.

Only the scenes with Jason Bateman cracked me up...REally funny...But Ryan Reynolds was overacting and seemed not the right guy for the role...Too much going on with too many people..No character was able to be developed enough...A hodge podge falling short of a Quentin Tarantino (wannabe) film.

I agree, although I would have to add that I still enjoyed the film overall. But you are correct about there not being quite enough character development. I can only imagine what Tarantino would have done with some of these characters.

I didn't have any glitches watching this on my A1. No problems with COM either.

Initially I had problems with Smokin Aces using my 360 drive. I had it in the vertical orientation. The movie was suffering from very jerky playback.

As soon as I put the drive horizontal it played perfectly with no issues. I had not had to do this with any other disk.

I haven't had problems with any of these titles. I'm using an HD-A1 purchased 04/06 with every firmware load updated via ethernet.

I had problems with my Smokin' Aces too. Previously had problems with Children of Men and The Good Shepherd. No problems with my 49 other discs. My player is Japanese model HD-XF2 (more or less equivalent of HD-A2) with later firmware available (1.3). Toshiba hasn't released 1.5 firmware for this Japan model.

Smokin' Aces loaded fine and I watched the whole movie thinking that I got a fault free copy this time but when it was time to go back to menu after movie, player started making "searching noises" and couldn't load the menu anymore. Got an error code after a while.

I tried washing the disc and using some CD cleaning liquid but problems seem to be getting worse, couldn't load the menu after inserting the disc anymore except every now and then. I resorted to boiling the disc for 17 seconds and after that it works fine. Seems that there was some kind of oily substance left in the water after I removed the disc from there... My previous problem discs seemed to be recoverable with dishwashing liquid based cleaning but no similar success with Smokin' Aces.

Anyway, I was able to "fix" all 3 problem discs by myself which is good since I don't like making returns to U.S. from Japan.

I haven't had any problems with any of Warner combo discs, it seems to be just a Universal specific manufacturing problem. I hope they figure it out fast.

I just got my copy last night from Best Buy and the HD side had a scratch on it straight out of the package(disc was still locked in its place).The SD side played fine but it sucks to have to go all the way back to BB to exchange it. Nice job at quality control at your mexico plant universal.Oh pretty good movie though.

This is the first HD-DVD I had issues with, but I have only seen 32 so far and Children of men is not among them.
There have been some freezes at the beginning of the movie just after I accessed the option menu to switch sub-titles (started the movie first and then turned subtitles on).
I then stopped and started the movie again, but this time around selected subtitles before I hit the "play movie" button. The disc then played fine with the exception of one small stutter later in the movie. It was not a rental and there has been no visible scratches or fingerprints. It was certainly not a dirt issue....

No problems playing Smokin' Aces from netflix using HD-A2 with FW 1.3.

No problems playing other owned/netflix combo discs.

alinski...

Smokin' Aces would not even load for me.

Blockbuster rental, however it looked like a clean disc.

360 drive.

SD loaded fine ... :mad:

The biggest problem for me was that I took a friend's word that Smokin Aces was going to be a movie like Snatch or Ocean's 11. In fact, it's quite possibly the WORST movie I've ever seen. This is a movie I'd want a refund on because I felt I just wasted 2 hours. I really should have rented it instead.

It played decently on my HDA2. It seemed to skip for a second in some places and locked up once when the 3 Punkers charge out of the elevator.

I'm going to take it back to Best Buy and see if they they will allow me to pick another movie as at this point I don't even want a proper working version of this Pile of Crap.

Other than the movie being completely gawd awful, no, it worked fine on my 360 add-on.

Although I'm starting to wish it hadn't...could have saved me the two hours.

Most of my problems were w/ Smokin' Aces... Chilren Of Men had a small glitch, as did Good Shephard... please get rid of these freaking combos... I have to pay more money for something I don't want, and the Universal titles don't work properly :(

This didn't play at all on my XA-2 firmware 1.5 (won't even load) but it played on my A1 firmware 2.0 and only had one very minor glitch.

Children of men played fine on my XA-2 with firmware 1.0, I "upgraded" to 1.5 and now it stops playing half way through the movie. Amazon sent me another copy and the second copy doesn't even load on my XA-2. Total and complete bull$hit and I won't be buying anymore combos.

From now on I will only be buying exclusive (Weinstein and Universal non combos) titles on HD DVD that I want, all other titles I will be buying on Blu-ray as I haven't had one single issue with my Panasonic Blu-ray player.

I watched the HD DVD on Saturday and I didn't encouter any problems.
Maybe I'm just lucky, for I never had problems with combo discs.

I "had" problems with all universal combo discs (freezes and stuttering), but I read somewhere on AVS on washing the discs with soap and water. After "washing" all the problems went away. Very strange problems, but the solution was fairly straight forward.

How do I contact universal about getting a exchange ? I already exchanged it at best buy with no luck in getting the disc to play and I don't want to go through the trouble of exchanging for another crap disc.

I had a problem with the movie




























it sucked.

Huh, I thought the movie was pretty damn good. Jeremy Piven was great...

Smokin Aces played fine on a A2/1.5 from Netflix. So bought the movie from BB and failed halfway through the movie. Could not get this to play again, just got the error message. Exchanged the disk at BB and the new one plays fine (started at the halfway point).

Do have problems with the Universal titles. Next time I'll try the boiling water.

Watched this last night.

HD-A1 with FW 2.0

I've watched Smokin' Aces and Children of Men in the last week or so, and I had no problems with either disc.

I've had no problems at all.

However, Although the majority here have not had problems, I couldn't HELP but notice a rather larger group than I expected DID.

So I clicked on the results to see the names of the "HD DVD fans" who participated and voted "Yes, I had problems".

Was rather surprised (not) to see a few recognized BD fans instead.

So much for this poll reflecting an accurate outcome... oh well.... :rolleyes:

Children of Men defininately had some bad discs, which Universal was good enough to replace, so it would stand to reason that those who had problems with Smokin Aces, would likely have already had problems with CoM. Just keeping this in context, I guess...

So I clicked on the results to see the names of the "HD DVD fans" who participated and voted "Yes, I had problems".

Was rather surprised (not) to see a few recognized BD fans instead.


Please name the 'recognized BD fans' among this list.

Yes (I had problems with recent Uni combos):
8ohms, A.VOID, ahartig, alkie4life, anam8tr, Artzilla, AsianStyle, BassTek, bmackrell, bmeli, Bradad, bulkfoodboy, bunkaroo, C Dub, Chuckwl, CiPNET, clarkbar911, Count Westwest, CRAZZZY, cyberock, delrmx01, dlittle, DSET, dtsguy, EchoBaseGeek, edvedder, egore, enubis416, faux123, ifp, itsmeagain, Jason Yeo, jazzmaster221, JeffDL, jeffkretz, jfrost, joerod, John St, jyv1214, Kannisto, kongwil, kubebot, Kutter, kwhittenberger, loganhunter2002, Marc D Carra, MARTINIGUY, mavrick240, mcgarnagle, mikey p, mikeyj, Miles, milkpower, MorpheusSzeto, mrigsby, mrodger, nugga22, nvmyprixgt, nyg, Omegasaber, patrick99, petmic10, puzzle, Q THE GURU, RabidRob, rack04, rboster, Roger Mathus, San Jose Mark1, Schwartzy, SEMAJ92, Sisko197, sjwithers, snave8, Special FX_45, stevesns69, sysebo, TazExprez, Terrll23, the49ola, thecodeman, TheLion, Traelin, wingzz, Yumbo, z71tahoe193


Yes (I didn't have problems with recent Uni combos)
Donk74, easy9, EyeOutThere, fireshoes, Giger, HD-Freak, Headhunterx, hyperblau, IIIII, Mobius1138, mrkrispy, Murat, private Angus, rob5797, rolom, shadowrage, Shug7272, tjarrett999, Tomcats, WaveyD4vey, YellowCows

Yes (I had not used any recent Uni combos)
Aaron S, Develitate, diespine, djc9, KSC2303, tryguy

[BTW seeing Django, WirelessGuru and rdjam all say that they didn't have problems with this disc or with any other Universal combo disc made me raise my eyebrows and chuckle a little - but of course, it is not statistically impossible so I didn't say anything. :) ]

I've had no problems at all.

However, Although the majority here have not had problems, I couldn't HELP but notice a rather larger group than I expected DID.

So I clicked on the results to see the names of the "HD DVD fans" who participated and voted "Yes, I had problems".

Was rather surprised (not) to see a few recognized BD fans instead.

So much for this poll reflecting an accurate outcome... oh well.... :rolleyes:

Children of Men defininately had some bad discs, which Universal was good enough to replace, so it would stand to reason that those who had problems with Smokin Aces, would likely have already had problems with CoM. Just keeping this in context, I guess...

Unbelievable. In the same post you accuse this poll of being tainted because "BD fans" voted that they had problems. But you admit that "Children of Men defininately had some bad discs".

It's amazing how everything is a vast BD conspiracy, isn't it? :rolleyes:

By the way, I didn't have a single glitch with either Children of Men (Toshiba A1 with 2.0 FW) or Smokin' Ace's. But I did watch MI:3 last week, and the A1 stuttered a bit, then lost audio sync. I had to push the stop button, then hit play again, and it played the rest of the way through. But why would anyone believe me.....I'm just part of the BD conspiracy against HD-DVD, right?

I've had it with trying to play Combo HD DVD's on the HD A2.
I can't beleive it's the discs.
So far COM, Good Shepard and The Departed won't play at all. Last night I watched Smokin Aces....Got it to play a little over half way then it froze, got the dreaded error message and locked up my player (had to unplug it).
This is my second HD A2 player. I exchanged my first HD A2 (Circuit City) for the current one. Both players had the updated firmware (I installed it) and both players did exactly the same thing.
I can't beleive every combo disc is bad!!
I'll be amazed if the Hd DVD format survives. In comparison I've watched many more Blu Ray than HD titles, (on my Samsung BDP 1000) with ZERO problems!!!
The only thing the HD A2 is good for is watching older single sided releases.
Someone should start a class action suit against Toshiba for manufacturing a complete peice of crap!!
Incidently both HD A2 players were manufatored 1st week of Jan 07.
Would be interesting to see if the manufature date has any bearing on the players ability to play Combo discs.
Also.....Toshiba is aware of the problem and assured me that another firmware upgrade is comming to fix the Combo Disc problem.
I'm not holding my breath.

Mark

I'm right there with ya! I can't believe it is the discs, as many Gen 1 Toshiba players had NO problems, while the second (I have the HD-A2 probably mande the same time as yours!) Gen players have ALL KINDS OF TROUBLE with the Combo discs. All I have is an HD-A2 and about 15-20 HD DVD discs for my only format choice, but a BluRay or Multi-Format Combo player is looking more appealing, as I am not about to shell out more money for an XA2, if it has troubles too. In fact, some LG combo owner said his combo movies played flawlessly, less some of the "extra" features. Did you hear that Toshiba!!!

I think Toshiba forced Universal to blame it on "adhesive" and take the fall for their crappy Gen 2 equipment, while they scramble to "fix it" with a Firmware update just for Combos. (What a crock! You know Toshiba would stand to lose SOOOOOO much more money, as they are HD DVD!) Universal has options to make more, such as that rumor about going neutral. Conspiracy theory is my thing and I'm usually correct! :cool:

Just to give my 2 cents.
I bought Smokin Aces a month ago from Walmart.
watched it once then got the error code the second time.
returned it, then the second copy froze up my player never played once.
I tried to return for a different disk but was forced to get the same thing.
3rd time was the charm. No problems. Re-issue maybe??
I also watched Half Baked(combo disk) this weekend with no issues at all
Besides Aces, I havent had any problems from my Toshiba A20

Yes as a rental from Block Buster.

Yes for me. I just recently purchased my HD-DVD add-on to my Xbox360, and rented from Netflix. Around Chapter 17 it froze one me. Restarted the movie to Chapter 17, worked fine a few minutes, then froze again. Restarted again, and froze around Chapter 18.

I just got my 2nd one from Netflix. The first one wouldn't even boot up, and the 2nd one gets the 4xxx error. I'm going to try the boiling water trick to see if maybe that fixes it, or has anyone tried the new version 1.6 firmware to see if that helps? I'm using a HD2 with 1.5 FW.

jcg

i bought smokin' aces from bb last week. i wached it last night and it would freeze and drop audio. i'm using a hd-a1 firmware 2.0.....i've not had these problems with any of my other hd-dvd discs. i own about 20 and at least 5 are combo disks. it's odd cuz i read of others with hd-a1's that don't have these smokin aces problems.....on the other hand theres people having playback issues with other discs that i own and have wached with no problems....these porblems with discks, players, firmware, can hit any player or completly miss each player.

I just got my 2nd one from Netflix. The first one wouldn't even boot up, and the 2nd one gets the 4xxx error. I'm going to try the boiling water trick to see if maybe that fixes it, or has anyone tried the new version 1.6 firmware to see if that helps? I'm using a HD2 with 1.5 FW.

jcg

Not yet updated to v1.6, but oh man...if The Good Shepherd, Smokin' Aces, and Children of Men all play flawlessly...SWEEEEEEEET!

We'll see!

My first copy from amazon was a floater, had two big scratches and stuttered in the beginning and stopped completly halfway through CH16. The replacement played flawlessly on my HD-A1 with FW 2.0