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How often do you experience skipping on your HD-A1?

post #1 of 68
11/22/06 at 10:38am
Thread Starter 
Hi all,

I've owned 2 HD-A1s since July 2006, and I've always experienced some minor skipping.

I'm trying to decide if this is significant enough for me to call Toshiba, and maybe have the unit replaced.

I experience brief skipping, not very often, but maybe once for every 3-4 hours of HD-DVD viewing. This brief skipping is similar in duration and severity to a layer change on an older SD DVD player.

I'd like to hear from what the rest here have experienced. If this is totally expected from a first-gen, early-adopter unit then maybe I wont bother calling Toshiba.

Thanks.
Mani
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post #2 of 68
11/22/06 at 11:06am
No skipping here, but mine is prone to hard freezes if the disc is smudged at all. I used to get annoyed with the machine, but now just rub each disc quickly before putting it in the drive and no problems anymore. Fingerprints that cause no problems on regular DVD's seem to cause major problems with the HD-DVD's. Try wiping discs off before each use and see if this is part of the problem. Also make sure you have firmware 2.0.

Greg
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post #3 of 68
11/22/06 at 11:45am
I have never had a skipping problem with my homeburned HDdvd's, but I have had one or two skips on a couple of commercial movies. These disks must be ABSOLUTELY clean, whereas the homeburned disks play fine even with finger prints on them.

The difference I *think* is that the commercial HDdvd disks have much tighter read tolerances and if the beam gets even slightly refracted then there is a problem. My homeburned HDdvd's are burned on regular 4.7/8.5 gig disks and the read tolerences are not as tight on these (just a guess)
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post #4 of 68
11/22/06 at 12:29pm
I've watched over 60 HD DVDs on my XA1 since June and have had skipping problems on probably about 20 discs. I took back one XA1 for replacement, but newer one also skips. Early firmwares were skipping on nearly all of the movies. Firmware 2.0 seems to be the best (tried 1.0, 1.2, 1.4 and 2.0).

Currently, I figure that I'm averaging about one skip per 6 movies and am making a log of movies & skips to confirm this average.

I haven't been watching quite as frequently in the last two months though.

Even my brand new HD DVDs have encountered skips, but rewind and replay that section and no skip, so it appears to be random.

Like others, I've found that cleaning my Netflix discs does help and I've had many Netflix discs that did have minor blemishes play through flawlessly after cleaning.

I plan on replacing my XA1 with XA2 if the newer models appear to solve the skipping problems.
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post #5 of 68
11/22/06 at 2:38pm
My A1 player is only a couple of months old, but I've had nada trouble with skipping or freezing. Been running 2.0 and we watch mostly NetFlix HD-DVD's as well as a couple of our own.

I've been *very* happy with the performance of the unit.

-bruce
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post #6 of 68
11/22/06 at 2:59pm
I get skipping about once every 1.5 hours...but it isn't a consistent average. For example, I've never had a skip on Aeon Flux, but I can't get through KK or Van Helsing without a couple.
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post #7 of 68
11/22/06 at 3:02pm
I'll get an occurance once every 8-9 disks, and it's only ever happened once during the movie. It's all been with relatively beat up nf/bbo disks, so I just chalk it up to that.
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post #8 of 68
11/23/06 at 6:03am
My HD-A1 skips on HD DVDs on occasion, but not every disc. This has happened regardless of firmware version so it may be dirt or smudges on disc? The one problem that does seem due to firmware 2.0 is the "hard freeze". This typically happens with SD DVDs and I have to hard power down and restart the system to get things going again. It is sporadic but I don't remember it happening before firmware 2.0.

Stace
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post #9 of 68
11/23/06 at 6:52am
I notice some weird speed up in some scenes. Last one I remember was in T3 when they are having the chase seen. I noticed it and I was like WTF was that. Don't know if its the player or the discs though.
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post #10 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:04am
i am sure there is still room for improvement in the duplication/mass publication of HD-DVD discs, or blue-laser discs in general. Both HD and BR are still very new and immature technologies. They pushed both out the door just to try to win the "war". I am sure the manufacturering processes for both formats, for both players and discs, are meeting only the very minimum of their QC or QA requirements.
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post #11 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:05am
after upgrading to firmware 2.0 i replayed hd-dvd disks that had caused trouble before and they played end to end with no glitches. also, menu problems were fixed. there are still infrequent minor playback glitches. maybe one every 3rd disk on average.

my current conclusion is that the glitches are caussed by minor errors in the media and the errror handling code in the firmware will continue to improve over time.

my a1 plays sd dvd disks that older dvd players won't play.
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post #12 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:14am
After getting a new TV yesterday, a Hitachi 57F59, with HDMI, which has solved the HD digital video output problems that plagued my A1 with my old Aspect 51M200 which had a DVI input, I played Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (brand new, never taken out of the case) last night. At what appeared to be a layer change, I had some significant breakup, and the audio and video got badly out of sync. I stopped playback, then went back to the beginning of the scene, and it played through perfectly. Just before the end of the movie, the picture went out, the screen going to gray, while the audio kept on playing. The picture came back within a few seconds, and synced up fine with the audio. Could have been a brief HDMI handshake issue that resolved itself. I'm using the HDMI cable that came with the HD-A1. I played two SD DVDs last night and this morning for my kids (Cars and Ice Age: The Meltdown), and both played perfectly. THe other couple of SD DVDs and one other HD DVD (Polar Express) that I've played on the A1 played through perfectly.

I just got my first Netflix HD DVD (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and plan to watch it within the next day or two, when the kids are asleep or playing in their rooms.

I was blown away by the detail and picture quality of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the A1 has done a great job upconverting the SD DVDs we've watched so far. I hope the random nature of the playback issues means that the problems are software-related, and that future updates will increase the reliability of playback.
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post #13 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by msu89dawgs View Post

After getting a new TV yesterday, a Hitachi 57F59, with HDMI, which has solved the HD digital video output problems that plagued my A1 with my old Aspect 51M200 which had a DVI input, I played Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (brand new, never taken out of the case) last night. At what appeared to be a layer change, I had some significant breakup, and the audio and video got badly out of sync. I stopped playback, then went back to the beginning of the scene, and it played through perfectly. Just before the end of the movie, the picture went out, the screen going to gray, while the audio kept on playing. The picture came back within a few seconds, and synced up fine with the audio. Could have been a brief HDMI handshake issue that resolved itself. I'm using the HDMI cable that came with the HD-A1. I played two SD DVDs last night and this morning for my kids (Cars and Ice Age: The Meltdown), and both played perfectly. THe other couple of SD DVDs and one other HD DVD (Polar Express) that I've played on the A1 played through perfectly.

I just got my first Netflix HD DVD (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and plan to watch it within the next day or two, when the kids are asleep or playing in their rooms.

I was blown away by the detail and picture quality of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the A1 has done a great job upconverting the SD DVDs we've watched so far. I hope the random nature of the playback issues means that the problems are software-related, and that future updates will increase the reliability of playback.

firmware version?
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post #14 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:58am
i've had one instance of the disk skipping and it was when i was watching Grand Prix but after watching it when i took out the disk i flipped it over and it was scratched all to hell i'm surprised it even played. it was a rental from blockbuster online.
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post #15 of 68
11/23/06 at 8:56am
I wonder if they may partially be a drive generation thing.

Skipping doesn't seem to be a widely reported problem with the 360 Toshiba drive. I've certainly never had a disc skip, but then again I don't actually have that many discs, and none are rentals.
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post #16 of 68
11/23/06 at 9:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BuGsArEtAsTy View Post

I wonder if they may partially be a drive generation thing.

Skipping doesn't seem to be a widely reported problem with the 360 Toshiba drive. I've certainly never had a disc skip, but then again I don't actually have that many discs, and none are rentals.

http://www.i4u.com/article5008.html

Quote:


The NEC HR-1100A is not a disc writer it only can read HD-DVDs, DVDs and CDs. NEC uses one lens in this drive. CT Magazine finds very slow access times (370 ms for HD-DVD) with this pre-production model. Data transfer rates from HD-DVDs clocked in at 8,7 MByte/s. Error correction is a problem with the HR-1100A. NEC says the final HR-1100A will have those issues fixed.

The HD-A1/XA1 use an NEC HDDVDROM drive while the 360 addon & HD-A2/XA2 use a Toshiba drive. Maybe the error correction problems on the NEC were NOT fixed.
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post #17 of 68
11/23/06 at 9:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruined View Post

http://www.i4u.com/article5008.html



The HD-A1/XA1 use an NEC HDDVDROM drive while the 360 addon & HD-A2/XA2 use a Toshiba drive. Maybe the error correction problems on the NEC were NOT fixed.

I said it was the drives !!! Nice find Ruined
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post #18 of 68
11/23/06 at 10:18am
ONce on a Netflix rental disc, it skipped when I rented the Thing. Interestingly, the result was the sound and picture were out of synch. I stopped and restarted from the select scene menu and the problem was fixed. It did not recur.
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post #19 of 68
11/23/06 at 10:32am
I have watched about 60 hd-dvd discs on my XA1, and only experienced a few minor freezes/dropouts on Paramount titles (after Firmware 2.0). Absolutely glitch-free on all other playback, including SD DVDs.
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post #20 of 68
11/23/06 at 10:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by oliverjg View Post

firmware version?

Yeah, that info would have helped. Firmware is 2.0.
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post #21 of 68
11/23/06 at 11:57am
I've had skipping with 4-5 discs out of ~25. I had basically none before upgrading to 2.0 (from 1.3), but I didn't watch enough discs then to be able to say anything for certain.
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post #22 of 68
11/23/06 at 1:02pm
I've had more stuttering and skipping problems since 2.0 too. In particular, it's about ninety percent likely that there will be a few minutes of skipping after fast forwarding. Even scene selecting mid-way through a movie will cause it.

As long as I set the remote aside after starting a disc, it will play start to finish without any hiccups...but if I want to jump around, it's stutter city.
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post #23 of 68
11/23/06 at 1:21pm
I use component only and I have yet to see a skipping issue.
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post #24 of 68
11/23/06 at 1:30pm
Even with clean discs I get the occassional skip.

I've learned to "live with it" as being the price of cutting edge tech and the best PQ possible on my 60" SXRD.

From store demos I've seen, the BR players are also prone to skip if the disc is not pristine.
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post #25 of 68
11/23/06 at 6:37pm
I have owed both a A1 and XA1 since May and have not experienced a single skip, sych, or freezing issue. This is with Netflix disks, purchased disks, and burned single and dual layer DVDs. Never cleaned a disk, even some pretty bad ones from Netflix. Maybe I was lucky with the two units , but I can only describe my operational experience with both as flawless other than the startup time, which is not a big deal for me .

Currently only using the XA1 with a HDMI-DVI connection to a 65" RP-CRT. Using the 2.0 version of firmware without any "black crush" issue.

web
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post #26 of 68
11/23/06 at 7:27pm
My experience has been the same as Web described above. I only had one issue ever and it was the copy of Batman Begins I had once I replaced it no more issues.
Cheers
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post #27 of 68
11/23/06 at 8:10pm
I'm happy to report that I have never had any skipping problems!
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post #28 of 68
11/24/06 at 8:31am
I have never had skipping on my A1, but i did experience a problem where if i went into the settings while watching a movie, and came back to it, i would get a red tint... until i rebooted the machine.
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post #29 of 68
11/24/06 at 8:43am
the problem with playback issues is that there is almost no way to tell if it is a media problem, dirt, environment (temp., humidity. etc), player hardware, or player firmware.

when i reported playback problems on my a1 in this forum 2 months back people told me to return the player or disk or clean disks. i did/do none of these. the nearest thing i do to cleaning disks is to blow on them to get rid of any dust.

i left the player as it was for a while and eventually upgraded to 2.0 firmware. now playback issues are rare and i replayed disks that had problems.

IMHO they are still getting the bugs out of the error correction in firmware. my advice to anybody is to upgrade to 2.0 before returning a player. also, return a disk before returning the player.

my brother has more issues with his older sd dvd player then i have with my a1 and he will have to throw his out and get a new one becasue it cannot get a firmware update. my a1 plays his buggy sd dvd disks without problems.
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post #30 of 68
11/24/06 at 8:47am
Thread Starter 
moralpanic - i have the exact same issue with mine, the machine starting up with a red tint. this seems to only happen with universal titles. i am using HDMI to a Westinghouse 42", 2.0 firmware on the A1. how about you?

it is some comfort that i'm not alone here with the skipping, which was the purpose of starting this thread. however, i do believe this skipping is unacceptable and all of us with issues should contact toshiba for replacement/repair. the skipping i notice is always on PRISTINE disks that i triple-check before putting in the machine, and i am using the latest firmware.

one thing to notice, i have a shag carpet in front of the A1 which throws a lot of small strands into the air. last night i blasted the inside of my A1 with some compressed air, have yet to experience a skip in about 2 hours of viewing. i'll post again with an update if i dont have a skip for a while.
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