OK, here goes a quick review.
My system is a 61" DLP LED Samsung set w/ Onkyo 605 receiver. Connection is HDMI to the Onkyo and then HDMI to my Sammy.
Please note that I have never owned a standalone HD format player before. I do have an HTPC with HDMI out to my set and have 'previewed' some HDDVD and BR rips previously.
*HDDVD and Blu-Ray PQ are excellent.
*The player is slow to start up a new disc, compared to the PC playing a disc ripped to the HD. This is to be expected of course. BR seems to start slightly faster. This may be because it is earlier in the "what kind of disc is this?" sequence that the player is running. It takes forever to start a standard def DVD as well, so there you go. UPDATED: Actual startup times posted below.
*The player will re-compress the new formats to DTS on the fly. Never heard of this before. Guess since it does not have 5.1 analog outs this is a compromise. It will send the DTS out the digital output or HDMI. Since my HDMI is going to a new receiver that supports the new codecs and I pass everything to it directly I have no idea how good the re-compression is.
*All the audio bitstreams passed to my REC were detected and decoded. (PCM5.1, DD+, etc) Dolby TrueHD was NOT passed to my REC as expected. LG has already said this will take a firmware update. UPDATED: DTS-HD-MA was confirmed by LG at some point but still is not being passed. Only DTS Core.
*The player (at this point) does not have any option to output 24p. The player definitely does not have an option to 'force' 24p.
*The network portion of the player does not seem to have a "check for new firmware" type option. It has basic net settings and login and password fields. I don't have the book so I have no idea what this is for.
*The standard DVD output is GODAWFUL. I don't plan to use this as a DVD player so I don't care, but be forewarned. Yes, It's that bad. UPDATED: Others report that the SD quality is not nearly as bad as I think it is. Read below for more opinions.
*There is no "zoom" feature. It handles all the aspect ratio stuff automagically and it does not appear to be configurable other than setting the output AR of the display. If it is standard def, NON-Anamorphic, widescreen material, ie. Extras, it is window boxed with bars on all sides I am afraid. No way around that on this player it seems.
*The remote is **** and slow to respond even in the native menu of the player.
*The menus resemble those on the BH100. (From the screens I've seen in this forum.)
*Navigating the HD disc menus is choppy and slow. Again, I am used to the PC and PowerDVD but it seems very clunky. It works, but just feels like a gui running on a machine who's processor is at 100%. HDDVD seems a little worse that BR in this respect but they are both slow.
Questions?
PS: How did I get it and where? See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post11966731 .
My system is a 61" DLP LED Samsung set w/ Onkyo 605 receiver. Connection is HDMI to the Onkyo and then HDMI to my Sammy.
Please note that I have never owned a standalone HD format player before. I do have an HTPC with HDMI out to my set and have 'previewed' some HDDVD and BR rips previously.
*HDDVD and Blu-Ray PQ are excellent.
*The player is slow to start up a new disc, compared to the PC playing a disc ripped to the HD. This is to be expected of course. BR seems to start slightly faster. This may be because it is earlier in the "what kind of disc is this?" sequence that the player is running. It takes forever to start a standard def DVD as well, so there you go. UPDATED: Actual startup times posted below.
*The player will re-compress the new formats to DTS on the fly. Never heard of this before. Guess since it does not have 5.1 analog outs this is a compromise. It will send the DTS out the digital output or HDMI. Since my HDMI is going to a new receiver that supports the new codecs and I pass everything to it directly I have no idea how good the re-compression is.
*All the audio bitstreams passed to my REC were detected and decoded. (PCM5.1, DD+, etc) Dolby TrueHD was NOT passed to my REC as expected. LG has already said this will take a firmware update. UPDATED: DTS-HD-MA was confirmed by LG at some point but still is not being passed. Only DTS Core.
*The player (at this point) does not have any option to output 24p. The player definitely does not have an option to 'force' 24p.
*The network portion of the player does not seem to have a "check for new firmware" type option. It has basic net settings and login and password fields. I don't have the book so I have no idea what this is for.
*The standard DVD output is GODAWFUL. I don't plan to use this as a DVD player so I don't care, but be forewarned. Yes, It's that bad. UPDATED: Others report that the SD quality is not nearly as bad as I think it is. Read below for more opinions.
*There is no "zoom" feature. It handles all the aspect ratio stuff automagically and it does not appear to be configurable other than setting the output AR of the display. If it is standard def, NON-Anamorphic, widescreen material, ie. Extras, it is window boxed with bars on all sides I am afraid. No way around that on this player it seems.
*The remote is **** and slow to respond even in the native menu of the player.
*The menus resemble those on the BH100. (From the screens I've seen in this forum.)
*Navigating the HD disc menus is choppy and slow. Again, I am used to the PC and PowerDVD but it seems very clunky. It works, but just feels like a gui running on a machine who's processor is at 100%. HDDVD seems a little worse that BR in this respect but they are both slow.
Questions?
PS: How did I get it and where? See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post11966731 .