[erasat]

As the title says, I just went Format Neutral this week, when my XA2 arrived on Wednesday. After 4 months in the Blu-Ray camp with my PS3 almost exclusively used for Blu-Ray movies, I saw that XA2 went down on price and without thinking I decided that I needed to give it a try to HD DVD world.


Well so far, I must tell you that I'm very dissapointed, I went for the best because I replaced my beloved Oppo HD-981 with this one following all the great posts here about the great upconversion to 1080p that the XA2 provides and because of future 1080p/24 firmware update. I received it on Wednesday, at that point I didn't have any HD DVD movie so I tried The Incredibles, I was amazed that it looked the same than my Oppo, so I inserted LOTR 3, and then I was, What is wrong with this?, the picture seemed sub-par basically seen it in SD. It looked great on my Oppo.


I decided to try an HD DVD (after all, that is the main reason of getting it), I still haven't received my rentals from Netflix, so I went to Costco and picked a copy of Jet Li's Fearless (I remembered reading a good review in the Tier Thread), I went home and play it, and after the normal 1 minute waiting with the Welcome on the Player display, it finally loaded (Now I realized how great the PS3 is), after just 1 minute playing, it began freezing, audio problems (because of the freezing) and it continued doing that until I stopped it. Then I went again and tried it again, this time I just went ahead and skipped a couple of chapters and boom, the freezing began shortly after that, and then suddenly the "Cannot play this disc... error". I connected and made a search for that error here on AVS and for my surprise there are dozens of posts related to that with different movies and/or players.


I disconnected it and wait a while and plugged it back, and just presses play without touching anything else, and the movie seems to play fine where it was giving me freezings and the error before, so I'm wondering about this. Now I just read a thread of a guy with 3 different Netflix movies and none of them are playing, so Whatt's wrong people, I hate to think that I just wasted $549.99 plus shipping onn something that was suppose to be working a lot better than Blu-Ray players, that is the Flagship of Toshiba with the latest Firmware on it, and still giving me bugs that were suppose to be fix long time ago.


Coming from the BD world for 4 months now, I just hate comparisons but after more than 50 movies seen in my PS3 and not a SINGLE hiccup, great performance and everything, I was expecting nothing less than that in my new XA2, and 1 SD upconverted horribly, and 1/1 HD DVD with issues playing it, I'm begining to worry about my "investment".


Note: In simple words, I just plain hate the Remote Control, Can somebody tell me where can I see the Info about the Movie playing, a simple Info or Display button is missing.

 

[e_professor]

I'm not really good at trouble-shooting but I'll see if I can try helping out here.


What is the version of your player's firmware? Have you updated the firmware to v1.5?


I wouldn't recommend getting the combo disc as the first HD DVD to view in the meantime (while all the combo issues are being sort out for a percentage of 2nd-gen & 1st-gen players are having problems with them). You could try out other non-combo titles. There is a great selection of them in similar tiers.

 

[bases1616]

Sorry you are having so much trouble with your new XA2, but if you do have the updated firmware version of 1.5 and are still having all these problems you must have a bad player. I have had my HD-A1 since October 2006 and have had minor problems with it. I just watched Fearless last week and had no problems with it at all. The XA2 is the best HD DVD player out there right now and if it is not working right I would send it back for another one. The link below is the review of the XA2 from Sound And Vision. Believe me if S&V certifies and approves this player it is a good one.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-...vd-player.html

 

[erasat]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that my XA2 is March 2007 built and it already has the 1.5 firmware on it.


Thanks.

 

[tundrSQ]

so i am the only one tempted to raise the BS flag here?

 

[erasat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tundrSQ /forum/post/0


so i am the only one tempted to raise the BS flag here?

If you don't have something positive to say just don't post. I don't care about your BS Flag comment, just stay out of this thread. BS why?, because I paid $549.99 for a player and I'm having problem with the very first movie I played on it?, Have a life dude.


To the others, thanks for trying to help. What about the Info, Is there anyway to see the movie information while playing?

 

[thebland]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tundrSQ /forum/post/0


so i am the only one tempted to raise the BS flag here?

Yes...but probably not.


Its not as if these problems are a first of a kind.


Lets be reasonable.

 

[jerseydiplomat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tundrSQ /forum/post/0


so i am the only one tempted to raise the BS flag here?

i wouldn't call bs just yet, but he is jumping to some conclusions rather quickly. i was consider myself a pretty good troubleshooter so i would recommend the following:


try the different picture settings and filter settings on the XA2 for SD DVD


try another HD DVD and other SD DVD, yes it sucks that the first movie you got didn't work but one difference between blu-ray and HD DVD is some movies are combos among other things. i personally like that fact bc my brother was able to borrow several movies yesterday but it has created some problems for some players not mine. there is a rumored update to fix some these problems


try a hard shut down of the unit when it locks up


i personally feel there can be some problems with any device some enjoy troubleshooting and trying to fix these issues others dont

 

[binister]



Quote:
Originally Posted by thebland /forum/post/0


Yes...but probably not.


Its not as if these problems are a first of a kind.


Lets be reasonable.

Problems with fanboys posting bogus threads or problems with the XA2?


Op, I don't doubt you are having problems I just want to clear up if the XA2 is known to have issues (I didn't think so) because I am planning on purchasing one.

 

[Frank Derks]

At the bottom section of the remote the lowest small button on the left should pop up an info screen.

If you are in this screen you will also be able to select the available soundtrack option on the fly using the cursor keys without having to go into the menu.


For better sd upconversion you should enter the picture menu and edit the picture mode settings. Enabling one of the filter modes should activate the HQV video processing.


It's not likely but make shure that the switch behind the front door isn't set to SD.


Having 40+ films I did encounter only two minor glitches. The Pat Metheny disc choked with an error code. This was solved by cleaning the disc. There were smudges on this disc from the get go.

Lost the TrueHD track from Poseidon. It started to go out of sync and sounding screetchy and scratchy. A restart solved this. After this it didn't happen again with newer firmware.


Don't worry about reports from rentals that have problems. People are having bad luck, it happens. They should ask for deposits to force people to treat discs more carefully.

 

[erasat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Derks /forum/post/0


At the bottom section of the remote the lowest small button on the left should pop up an info screen.

If you are in this screen you will also be able to select the available soundtrack option on the fly using the cursor keys without having to go into the menu.


For better sd upconversion you should enter the picture menu and edit the picture mode settings. Enabling one of the filter modes should activate the HQV video processing.


It's not likely but make shure that the switch behind the front door isn't set to SD.


Having 40+ films I did encounter only two minor glitches. The Pat Metheny disc choked with an error code. This was solved by cleaning the disc. There were smudges on this disc from the get go.

Lost the TrueHD track from Poseidon. It started to go out of sync and sounding screetchy and scratchy. A restart solved this. After this it didn't happen again with newer firmware.


Don't worry about reports from rentals that have problems. People are having bad luck, it happens. They should ask for deposits to force people to treat discs more carefully.

Thanks a lot Frank, this is the kind of replies I was expecting to have from adult people, not just a fanboy that can't accept that something may be wrong.


I'll definitely try working with the filters, as I didn't know that I needed to enable the filters in order to activate the Video Processor.


Thanks to you also, jerseydiplomat, as you also suggested me to try the filters.

 

[tundrSQ]



Quote:
Originally Posted by erasat /forum/post/0


If you don't have something positive to say just don't post. I don't care about your BS Flag comment, just stay out of this thread. BS why?, because I paid $549.99 for a player and I'm having problem with the very first movie I played on it?, Have a life dude.


To the others, thanks for trying to help. What about the Info, Is there anyway to see the movie information while playing?

rather than be so defensive...if someone would have thrown the BS flag at me for a post like yours, I owuld have replied with:


Yes i can see how it might sound suspicious to you, but i truly am having these problems and I am truly looking for help. i would also return a player if i truly had issues like yours.


But i will sit back and see how this develops.

 

[erasat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tundrSQ /forum/post/0


rather than be so defensive...if someone would have thrown the BS flag at me for a post like yours, I owuld have replied with:


Yes i can see how it might sound suspicious to you, but i truly am having these problems and I am truly looking for help. i would also return a player if i truly had issues like yours.


But i will sit back and see how this develops.

Read my previous post to Frank, that will answer this one also.


When you are a format neutral, like I'm now, there is nothing to loose with one format or the other, whoever wins is still great, if both of them last 10 years, great also.


If I took the time to post my problem here is because it didn't seem normal, Player is not bad, because if it's bad then it wouldn't have played later (Did you read my whole initial post?), Hardware maybe fine, but software may give problems, I was huge concerned when I searched for the error here in AVS and found so many threads and posts with the same issue, different movies and different players, when you see the whole picture the only thing in common from a Systems guy's perspective is the Software. And that's why I posted this in the HD-DVD Software forum, although it was moved to the Hardware section because I talked about the player.

 

[Penman]

Regarding poor SD, I was told in another thread that the HD-XA2 does NOT upconvert via component but only via HDMI. FWIW...

 

[erasat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Penman /forum/post/0


Regarding poor SD, I was told in another thread that the HD-XA2 does NOT upconvert via component but only via HDMI. FWIW...

Thanks penman, Yes, I'm using HDMI. Remembeer that I replaced my Oppo HD-981 with the XA2, and the Oppo just have HDMI output.

 

[Sarcoptic]

You can try going to setup > maintenance > initialize. This will reset the player to all its factory settings. How positive are you that this was a brand new unit and not already tampered with?


A lot of us with XA2 have very minimal issues with them. SD is amazing and HD is even better. My player plays a movie pretty much everyday between myself and our 2 year old. I have yet to have any sort of freeze, skip, or anything go wrong. If the above doesn't work definitely consider it a bad player and try another one...

 

[Penman]

Ah, OK. Didn't know the Oppo was HDMI only.


I actually like the remote (the metal feel, it's heavy, has backlighting), and a few minutes spent with the manual's remote section (pp. 31-42) really paid off for me.


I got my HD-XA2 a few weeks ago, and it has the 1.0 firmware. I've probably played 10 discs (SD and HD) all the way through, and the only problem I've had is that it wouldn't play Discovery Atlas: Italy Revealed. I then read in the forums here that that disc run was problematic.


Bottom line, so far, so good. Awaiting the RS-1 so I can watch upconverted SDs via HDMI; also awaiting the 1.5 firmware upgrade from Toshiba.

 

[drjjr]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Penman /forum/post/0


Regarding poor SD, I was told in another thread that the HD-XA2 does NOT upconvert via component but only via HDMI. FWIW...

Is that true for all SD-DVDs or just the CSS encrypted ones? I thought the XA2 would upconvert over component if it were not a protected disc.

 

[tundrSQ]



Quote:
Originally Posted by erasat /forum/post/0


, Player is not bad, because if it's bad then it wouldn't have played later (Did you read my whole initial post?)

deleted post...taking the high road...good luck with your player..hope it works out for you

 

[Penman]



Quote:
Originally Posted by drjjr /forum/post/0


Is that true for all SD-DVDs or just the CSS encrypted ones? I thought the XA2 would upconvert over component if it were not a protected disc.

I don't know the answer to this.


Anyone?


Edit: I do know that for every SD I've played so far (Little Children, Breaking and Entering, The Queen, The Last King of Scotland), the player has given me this message (paraphrasing): "This disc is not HD so is being played at 480." I assume that means that the Toshiba is NOT upconverting.