Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD - First End User Reports!

[Health Nut]

It's nice to sit back for once... I know I'll also be anxious to see support for a lossless DD/DTS track...!!! Go lossless! No more of those tiring DD vs DTS wars!! Lossless = no debate!
All this stuff about 1080i... why? Why would I want to display 1080i when I could display the native 1080p on the disc straight to the projector... besides I want to display 1080p not 1080i.... Can't wait to replace my DWIN CRT in Q4 with a new 1080p Qualia or 1080p DLP!!!

[AugDog]

Couple other quick observations. I tried to get my local store to hook it up to sony 1080P SXRD to no avail. Nonetheless, the bravia that it was hooked up to did display how rock solid the 1080i output was and the clear difference between the 720P and 1080i. The Bravia and Panny AE700 internal conversion to 720P was superior to the player itself. May be a consideration if your display does not downconvert well. The media shows the encoding to be in 1080P and 1080i clearly benefits from the data and simple downconversion.

Really like the ability to access the menu in the middle of the movie and the near instantaneous resumption once exiting. When you press menu, the disc menu overlays the movie image and pauses the movie. Navigation was fast and the menus were high resolution. When you exit the menu, the movie resumes very quickly.

I think someone was looking for some feedback on a Sammy DLP. I will maybe hook it to my HLN-437W1 later tonight if there remains a need. It would be interesting to see if the Sammy deals with the 1080i to 720p better than the player outputs 720p.

[Larry Sutliff]

Originally Posted by sgibson

Larry...anyone?

I don't have the player yet, but others have said that it works with the DVI input fine.

[Rockokma]

Anyone understan when you should use Film, Video or Audio?

[Paul_Seng]

Originally Posted by Art Sonneborn

I can't seem to say the right things to get a disc . I'm sitting here with a player and ....................

Art

Art, you got further than me. They told me Monday morning for the player.

[AlieniceT]

I don't think the scaling of SD-DVD's is that bad on the HD-A1, but de-interlacing is another story. I ran the HQV benchmark through my HD-A1, and it pretty much flunked everything. It locked in on the grandstand shots on the Film Detail test in a reasonable amount of time, and handled the standard cadence tests OK, but that was about it. I saw a lot of noise in the picture on the tests that are created to reveal NR quality in a player.

Right now, watching Sin City extended cut upscaled to 1080i, PQ is close but not quite a match for my Pio DV-59AVi. I would love to see this movie in HD-DVD as it was a fully digital production. Would probably be amazing.

[AugDog]

Originally Posted by Ursa

This and Thaxx's findings on the AE900 are the most bizarre to me. Unless the scaling in the A1 absolutely stinks, you should get a much better picture with 720p than 1080i. With 1080i, you are essentially getting upscaled 540p in the Panny PJs (and most other 720p PJs, for that matter).

Later,
Bill

I don't know the technical reasons why, but this is what I saw. The Bravia and my AE700 were consistent. I asked them at BB why they had it on 1080i and not 720P on the Bravia, so I asked them to switch it. They did and the difference was clear. It was not that 720P was bad, but 1080i was razor sharp on both the displays. I have a buddy coming over right now and am sure that he will post his thoughts once I demonstrate for him.

Maybe need to try the DLP just to verify one more time.

[highvista]

Originally Posted by lymzy

What is the result for MPEG2 TS file? I mean disc without authoring.

Not good, I'm afraid. Both a DVD+R and a DVD+R DL with a TS file locked up the player. It tried loading the disk and identified it as "CD" on the front LED display. The monitor flashed, and then the player was locked up and had to be reset via holding down the power button for 10 seconds to turn it off, followed by hitting the tray open button to both power on and eject before it tried to load the disk again.

For grins, I also tossed in a CD-RW with some Xvid files. It figured out it couldn't read this and said so on the monitor, without hanging up the player.

Ah, well. I'm going to try using ULead to author an HD-DVD disk from a TS, as discussed in the thread linked below, and see how it works.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=667462

[Ken H]

Topics merged again.

[persiannight]

You know it's really not fair what Best Buy does to these Westy 1080p monitors. Once calibrated correctly the picture is astonishing. Watched Madagascar on mine today through Comcast HD On Demand and it looked freaking amazing. You need to see the new 42" and 37" 1080p models. Far better than the older models. When will we see a 1080p HD-DVD player that outputs 1080p??

[ptwyzard]

Originally Posted by rob316

Does anyone have an Panasonic 47x54 that they installed there Toshiba DVD player on. I am curious on how this player does on a HDTV RP

Rob

I have this TV and just picked up my Toshiba today. I'll let you know how everything looks/works.

[AlieniceT]

Originally Posted by Rockokma

Anyone understan when you should use Film, Video or Audio?

I assume you mean Auto in the picture mode? These are the settings for how the HD-A1 should handle material when converting interlaced content to progressive. As I have tested the de-interlacing skills of the HD-A1 and found them lacking, I would suggest that you leave it in Auto mode as the HD-A1 will struggle with any improperly flagged material, and does not handle video based material without producing serious "jaggies".

If you have a quality SD-DVD player that handles de-interlacing properly or a player that you feed 480i to a scaler (either HDMI or SDI), I would not even consider the HD-A1 as a SD-DVD source.

[thebland]

Keenan,

RE:Bug causing processor coming up as DTS instead of DD on HD DVD discs

Did you notice this problem with Phantom or another disc(s)?


BTW PQ on my Qualia is just as good (or better than D Theater). I also didn't see any MPEG artifacts on subtitles either!

[AlieniceT]

Originally Posted by persiannight

When will we see a 1080p HD-DVD player that outputs 1080p??

Blu-Ray or next generation HD-DVD, unless the hardware in the Toshiba HD-A1 is powerful enough to support 1080p through firmware updates. Which I am skeptical of, since the movies that are out are 1080p. If I had the capability to handle 1080p and I was Toshiba, I'd make damn sure my players had it on their feature list.

[nataraj]

Originally Posted by Ursa

This and Thaxx's findings on the AE900 are the most bizarre to me. Unless the scaling in the A1 absolutely stinks, you should get a much better picture with 720p than 1080i. With 1080i, you are essentially getting upscaled 540p in the Panny PJs (and most other 720p PJs, for that matter).

I guess A1 is worse than Panny in scaling - the assumption that panny is downconverting from 1080i to 540p before upscaling to 720p is wrong ?

[zerokills]

Just got mine today. Going to post Flickr link with pics inside as soon as I can get 5 posts up.

[dorsai78664]

I also saw the player on a Westinghouse 1080p at a local BB today. I have to admit I wasn't as impessed as I thought I would be but I also think the set was still using the factory defaults. I have a 9 month old Westy 37" 1080p that I picked up from BB (for about $1000 less than the new ones) and although I might be biased, I think my settings at home give it a better picture. I had thought the Westy would have been a really good test but without tuning, I agree that it will not compare at all to a set 3x the price. I love my Westy but don't think for a moment it will compare to a plasma.

One thing that I wanted to compare was component to HDMI. They had both hooked up but the sales guy couldn't change the inputs. I noticed he kept getting Error on the front of the player. Phantom of the Opera was playing and although it looked good, the FBI warning screen looked better to my eye. Source material really is going to play a big part.

Although I would have loved to picked up one of these, I have made a couple of big purchases lately and will wait. If the price had been about $100-$150 less...

Oh, I know there is a separate thread for retail sightings but those in the Austin area can go to the BB in Round Rock and get both player and movies. I didn't see Serenity but saw the other 2.

[CasualViewer]

Anyone else having troubles getting the HDMI output to work with a Sony KD34-XBR960? I can get the component out to work, but not HDMI. I get no picture at all. FYI, this is the first time I have used the HDMI input on the TV, so that could be the problem.

[ILJG]

Nothing too new to report here, yet, in regards to what's already been posted.

I went to a Best Buy today and bought the player, and even though they had the titles available, they wouldn't sell them to me until the 18th. So I went to BB #2 that's about 20 minutes further south, and they had them, and would sell them to me. They only had Last Samurai and Phantom available, so I picked up Last Samurai.

I've been having the slight "green blob" issue with my Sony 60" SXRD and Tweeter's been great about it. They've got a set in their store that they're checking for me and I went to look at it today, it has no issue, so they're going to swap it with me. This is what I'll be hooking my HD-A1 up to. For now, I can still get an idea of the PQ even on my current set, since the issue isn't too horrendous. It can take a 1080i signal and displays 1080p, btw.

I have the OPPO 971H that's been doing all the upconverting of my current SD DVD's. Been very, very pleased with it, although I need a 50ms audio delay to compensate for sync when outputting 1080i. Have had no issues with macroblocking at all. I'll compare the upconverting quality of the OPPO to the HD-A1.

To be honest, I have no interest in testing component output vs HDMI. HDMI on all hardware I've ever tested with this set has always had better PQ than component for me when resolutions being sent were equal. Just my experience.

My receiver is an RCA RT-2280 (don't laugh) and I'll be sending the sound out via coax and optical to start, but am interested in the DD vs DD+ I can get via 5.1 analog as well.

[zerokills]

So I just got mine today and cracked it open as soon as I got home. Here's some pics of the internals....

Flickr Link to HD-A1 photos

[Ilka]

Originally Posted by AlieniceT

I ran the HQV benchmark through my HD-A1, and it pretty much flunked everything. It locked in on the grandstand shots on the Film Detail test in a reasonable amount of time, and handled the standard cadence tests OK, but that was about it. I saw a lot of noise in the picture on the tests that are created to reveal NR quality in a player.

Oh well. What do you or others think are the odds of this kind of concern being addressed by a firmware update?

[TimothyB]

Originally Posted by CasualViewer

Anyone else having troubles getting the HDMI output to work with a Sony KD34-XBR960? I can get the component out to work, but not HDMI. I get no picture at all. FYI, this is the first time I have used the HDMI input on the TV, so that could be the problem.

The player will only show video out one port at a time, hit Vouput on the remote until HDMI is lit on the player or you see picture through hdmi.

I got no picture from HDMI on starting it up nor from simple composite. You'd think they'd default it to a cable they included in the package.

[Ken H]

Originally Posted by zerokills

So I just got mine today and cracked it open as soon as I got home. Here's some pics of the internals..

There are some already posted earlier in this topic.

[Dan Hitchman]

Are the audio tracks on these discs really only 16 bit/48 kHz or is this what the player converts the bitstreams to in order to output via HDMI (or some other wierd conversion)? How is this data getting generated?

Stacy Spears even listed the Phantom's TruHD track as 16 bit/48 kHz! Wow, where the heck did they get these soundtracks from? They're definitely not using the master recordings since most new soundtracks are at least 24 bit/48 kHz.

Hey Hollywood, 16 bit/48 kHz is not high resolution audio!! We're looking for master quality sound losslessly compressed or uncompressed.

Now, was The Last Samurai shot Super 35 or was it anamorphic Panavision? The fine grain being discussed may be an artifact of Super 35 photography as it always tends to be grainier. Or, was a poor master used, or is this VC-1 compression artifacting?

Film has a lot more real time resolution than HD video, it's just how accurate the telecine scanner is at eeking out the last nth degree of resolution. Some are much better than others, and some can't even get a full 1920x1080 from their sensors. I'd like to see the archival 2k and 4k digital IP's used rather than slip shod consumer grade telecine jobs.

Dan

[sgibson]

Originally Posted by Larry Sutliff

I don't have the player yet, but others have said that it works with the DVI input fine.

Thanks Larry!

Since I'm currently enjoying Hi-Def via Directv Tivo, and upconverting standard DVDs via Samsung HD-841, guess I'll play the wait and see. At least for the time being. I am enjoying the first end user posts on the Toshiba HD-A1. I appreciate (and envy) those early birds and their feedback. This is a great forum !

Regards,
sgibson

[Vogon Poet]

Originally Posted by CasualViewer

Anyone else having troubles getting the HDMI output to work with a Sony KD34-XBR960? I can get the component out to work, but not HDMI. I get no picture at all. FYI, this is the first time I have used the HDMI input on the TV, so that could be the problem.

Make sure the display panel has "HDMI" lit; if not hit the V.Output button on the remote to enable HDMI.

[LEVESQUE]

The HQV benchmark disk is for standard SD-DVD material only, and don't tell us anything about HD. The Toshiba is an HD player, and I'm not surprised at all that SD performance is not optmized on those. Kris Deering (and other pros) already predicted more than 1 year ago that SD performance would be sub par on those HD players.

Does anyone really taught that a 500$ player would be optimized for both SD and HD?

After all these years there is still SD players out there with the CUE bug. So... It was predictable...

[MrBigglesworth]

It would have been nice as to be able to use a single player for both types of Discs.

[Sonisame]

Will HDCP stripper(from moome) work with this player and a non HDCP display?

Sonisame

[b2bonez]

Originally Posted by zerokills

So I just got mine today and cracked it open as soon as I got home. Here's some pics of the internals....

Flickr Link to HD-A1 photos

Is there anyway to peek around to see what brand (ie. NEC...) of HD-DVD drive is in the unit? There has been some questions as to which drive it uses.

b2b