New Firmware 4.0 HD-XA2/HD-XF2/HD-A20 - Page 11

Same here. I burned two discs (thinking I had done something wrong). Neither 4.0 disc worked on my HD-A1 which had (and still has) 3.0 on it.

My A3 and XA2 both took the 4.0 update fine.

Anyone have any idea why the FW for the HD-A1 is a dud?

Update 4.0 works fine with no glitches so far. It does take awhile to install though.

99% of DVD's are anamorphic. One that is not is the first DVD release of Titanic which was in OAR.

I have noticed those lines as well, and asked that question before, and no one was able to answer why they are there. I didn't know they were on the sides as well. I would bet that they are also found on 16:9 movies but you have to raise or lower the video to see them. They are present even with movies on the movie channels, so it is not just a DVD movie or DVD player issue.

Hey! I'm a little late jumping in on this. I just got a new Sony STR-DA5400ES and a Panasonic BD50 BRD this past weekend...until now I hadn't had a solid reason to mess with my setup.

Updated my A20 to 4.0 last night! So far all's well, haven't watched a full movie yet but tried out a handful of scenes last night on about 4 different HD DVDs.

Question...I can't even remember what the capabilities of the A20 vs other players are, but was hoping that 4.0 would allow it to bitstream out TrueHD and DTS MA. Looks like this is not the case...still appears to output new formats in PCM. Is this correct (for the A20)? For example I threw in Top Gun last night and switched between DTS (which I think for that disc is DTS-ES 6.1) and Dolby True HD. Both formats hit my receiver at 48K PCM 5.1. Thought maybe DTS should have been 6.1 but not 100% on that. Was I expecting too much from the 4.0 upgrade? In the above case will I even be able to tell a difference between DTS-ES and Dolby TrueHD?

FWIW, I went Blu for new movies (Iron Man, Indiana Jones next week), but was frustrated when I wanted to buy Young Frankenstein at Fry's this week and it was $30. Picked up 4 more HD DVDs in the $8 - $12 price range instead. Would love to say I'm format neutral now that I've got both but MAN HD DVDs are a bargain when Blu-Rays of the same title are about 3x the price

-IM Fletcher

I'm 99% sure the A20 will bitstream DTS. It just won't bitstream the high res codecs like DTS-HD MA, Dolby Digital Plus, etc. If you want your A20 to bitstream, you need to tell it to do so. Auto HDMI will pretty much decode to PCM.

The A20 will NOT bitstream the HD audio soundtracks and never can because it does not have the HDMI version 1.3 transmitter required to do this. The player must decode the HD audio tracks.

I always get error 2007c501.

If I update via the internet I download all 40 pieces then get error code 2007c501 and update is not applied.

If I burn an update cd and pop it in the player I get prompted to update, yes or no. I select "yes" and the player displays "verup" for about 2 minutes. Then I get error code 2007c501 and the cd is ejected. Again the update is not applied. I've tried several different cd media and software and the result is always the same.

I have a copy of the service manual and this error is a "decryption" error. That's all it says about it.

Perhaps my flash memory is bad.

Any thoughts???

Mahalo!

haoleboy,
I tried to update my A2 yesterday and got a hex error code also, heck is may have been the same one I didn't write it down. I was trying to update via CD. I tried multiple disks with nero and all of them had the same issue. Easy CD Creator would not even burn the image without giving a error. I'm wondering if something is wrong with the image. If you get yours to work I would like to know how.

Thanks,
Dan

Layer Change and text:

@ questions. I watched Iron man last night on SD DVD cause I couldn't get a BluRay copy at Blockbuster. Question. . . I got a longer than normal layer change drop. Anyone actually know what the layer change time was with the XA2?

Also then we watched The Zohan. Really funny movie BTW. Anyway, for those who saw it is the text in the movie for the subs really jaggid? It was pretty bad, just don't know if it was the DVD or me?

jimi

Try burning your disc with ImgBurn at the slowest speed allowed on a good quality CDR.

how do i tell what the current firmware version is on my hd-a2??

if i go to update, it shows 4.0/T23T

does this mean it's starting at 4.0 or it wants to upgrade to 4.0??

(side question: if i want to go pal and region-free, do
i have to hack the 1.6 firmware to downgrade 4.0,
then apply the 2.5.1, then the aussie 2.8, then the current 4.0??)

lcubed

I just went back through the owner's manual, and you're correct. The player (A20) will process the Dolby True HD and DTS-HD (5.1 core only) and send them as PCM to my receiver via HDMI, though, correct? So I'm still listening to the Dolby True HD sound track with no diminished quality (lossless) even though my receiver is showing PCM?

-IM Fletcher

My recollection is that:

HD DVD players are required to have decoder support for the legacy DD and DTS, DD+, and Dolby TrueHD. All players support multichannel channel decoding of these formats.

No HD DVD player supports decoding DTS-HD HR or MA internally. The HD-XA2, HD-A35, and DV-HD805 support bitstreaming these via HDMI v1.3 to a receiver capable of decoding these formats.

So, yes, you are getting Dolby True HD lossless audio by PCM to your receiver. For DTS-HD HR and MA, you can only send the DTS core audio, not the lossless version, with the A20.

Thanks!

i remember reading that the A20 decodes DTS-HD on the player

Nope... only the 5.1 DTS core. DTS-HD HR and DTS-HD MA need to be bitstreamed (not by the HD-A20 but by the HD-XA2, HD-A35, LG BH200, Samsung BD-UP5000, Onkyo DV-HD80 or Integra DHS 8.8) to a capable receiver to be decoded.

What does this update really do? Did it fix the 1080p deinterlacing issue by any chance?

hi guys, I just installed 4.0 with no problems but I forgot, do I have to go back into maintenance and hit initialize or update?

Thanks
George

what do you mean by 1080p deinterlacing? 1080p is not interlaced... are you referring to the 1080p24 AVC jaggies issue? from what i've read it's been fixed


no... unless you want to confirm 4.0 is installed then select update and it will give you the version number

I agree with you on this, however Dolby True HD was supposed to be the "chosen" format for HD-DVD. I did a quick glance through the "unofficial" (and not 100% complete) HD-DVD software spec thread (here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=822245). It appears that with the exception of several EU titles, there are only a handful of HD-DVD movies that have DTS HD on them (Band of Brothers, Black Rain, The Italian Job, Nature’s Journey, Sahara, Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, Sleepy Hollow, Top Gun, U-571, U2: Rattle & Hum).

Am I correct in saying that unless I really am interested in either the EU titles or the ones listed above, I'm not getting much benefit of buying another player from eBay at this point? Looks like an XA2 is currently $200 to $300, and I'm not sure it's worth it since no new titles are coming out (and I only own two of the ones I could find).

-IM Fletcher

Hello Jimi,

I'm still on firmware 2.7 waiting to download 4.0 via the actual update disc that Toshiba sent me. I really want to be sure before doing this. Anyway the layer change on the XA2 was rated "borderline" acceptable by Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity website during their in depth review. I posted before Blu-Ray won about the XA2 having a long layer change on Live Free Die Hard but didn't get any responses from folks. It's funny how folks will complain endlessly about waiting an extra 10 seconds for the tray to open compared to another DVD player but not say much about the layer change in the middle of a movie. I just finished watching Zohan and don't remember the pause being increasingly longer than any other movie but there definitely was a pause. I also don't remember the words being jagged like you mentioned and definitely would have noticed this if so. This is definitely concerning so others would need to chime in here and say whether they've seen this on 4.0 FW. I for one won't go to 4.0 if the words are jagged.

I'm wondering if 4.0 got rid of all the brief layer change interruptions within the menu. I thought someone posted saying this is gone which would be a big plus to me. I find it quite annoying to get the slight sound during every change made in the menu.

Here's the link to the Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity site where it lists the specs on the XA2 with the layer change rated as borderline. You can go to the site and read through the actual review of the XA2 which is another link there. I can't remember if they listed the layer change pause time in that review or not:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-b...2%20(Component)

Hope this helps.

Robert

I wish we could get more posts on any problems with FW 4.0 instead of reading so many about folks not being able to update their player. Contact Toshiba and they will mail out a 4.0 FW disc.

Basically are there any problems at all reported on 4.0? Or maybe someone could also list what 4.0 does address on the same post. This would benefit everyone and reduce posts asking if it is safe to use 4.0 FW.

Just my 2 cents........

Robert

The lack of posts indicates that there are few to no problems. The consensus already is that the upgrade is a success and worthwhile and safe .

You can always create a poll and see how many people were happy (or not) with 4.0...

I agree that 4.0 seems worth using but still quite a few posts from folks wondering what specifically has been addressed or not. Look at how many are still asking about the bit streaming, lossless codec, etc.

I'm good.

I bought 2nd one quite a while ago not just for HD but in my opinion it is the best for upscaling SD dvds (I have a lot of them).

My TV isn't capable of displaying 24fps. What I meant was 1080p60. There were numerous posts on this topic about the player not outputting it properly and some people opted for 1080i instead of 1080p and let their TV's do the deinterlacing.

Well, I wouldn't buy an XA2 over an A20 to bitstream DTS-HD. I might buy one to actually enjoy 1080p60 instead of 1080i. You left out Pan's Labyrinth as that's the main title people think of when they think of HD DVD and DTS-HD MA. There are a few other domestic DTS-HD HR/MA titles that are mostly music related (e.g. all titles from Surround Records).

Correct about Pan's Labryinth, however the A20 does 1080p via HDMI. It was the HD-A2 that only did 1080i. I can't remember if it did 24fps right out of the box or if that was a previous firmware upgrade.

Not sure if this is a problem per se, but when I updated to version 4.0, I lost PAL video output in my XA2. I have a Panny 50PZ800U, and with version 2.7, PAL discs play fine, but only in 1080p/24 mode. And after I upgraded to 4.0, Region 2 PAL discs would still play, but there wouldn't be any video signal (and I played around with the video settings on the XA2 and Panny for a while), just sound. Maybe someone else had different experiences with PAL output and the 4.0 firmware, but it was enough for me to drop back down to version 2.7, which has been working perfectly fine.