M
Mrjb
Guest
This is about the player so dont flame me for posting it in here.
I was very excited receiving the higher end hd-dvd player.
Appearance. Clean lines. Black top silver bottom that is motorized and opens-sometimes via button and remote. The unit is really wide. Wider than any of my other equipment including my 100 pound amp which almost caused a problem. The surround of the power button is red when off green when on. It has a blue lit strip in the middle of the unit about DVD sized.
Material
hd-dvd Last Samurai and Apollo 13
I tried the player on both a 50 inch 720p samsung dlp and a 72 inch 1080p toshiba.
Picture First
I was not happy with the picture on the samsung but I think it may have been due to using the hdmi cable the player came with. I saw pixilation, blocking and noise.
Most of this went away on my Toshiba with a better hdmi. The Last Samurai - The picture was good. I was not blown away. Very inconsistent as some scenes looked crisp and clean and other looked like a regular DVD. Dark scenes looked off some how in the dark detail.
Apollo 13- It looked like it was up sampled from the factory. Very little noise but not a crisp or colorful picture. Maby because it is an older movie?
Both movies skipped out of the box.
Sound- First things first. Dolby Plus. The player decodes this internally and has an analog 5.1 output which essentially bypasses the processing in your pre amp or receiver. What a piece of junk. The bass was better and that is it. The dynamics were terrible. Gunshots sounded weak. The rocket taking off in Apollo was completely unexciting. A MAJOR step back in sound. It also sounded very bright. I am not knocking Dolby plus just the fact that until other receiver manufactures offer Dolby plus or true 5/6/7/8.1 decoding and Toshiba has another way to get it there it ie hdmi 1.3 it is completely worthless. I switched back to a digital coax and the sound was much better.
Usability. Wow. It acts like a prototype. I thought it was broken at first. It takes about 2 minutes to turn on. Everything has a major delay. I hit a button waited a good amount of time to make up for the delay then hit it again thinking it didn't register. Very,very frustrating and buggy. It froze a couple of times.
I don't know if this is the players fault or the hd-dvd design fault but both disks skipped brand new first run. On the second run of the last samurai it completely locked up and wouldn't change scenes. Went through the 5 minute procedure of powering off and on.
Toshiba rushed it to the market. I really believe they just wanted to beat blue ray to the market. It is consumer unfriendly. Ohh well, win some lose some
I am RETURNING IT TO THE VENDOR
I was very excited receiving the higher end hd-dvd player.
Appearance. Clean lines. Black top silver bottom that is motorized and opens-sometimes via button and remote. The unit is really wide. Wider than any of my other equipment including my 100 pound amp which almost caused a problem. The surround of the power button is red when off green when on. It has a blue lit strip in the middle of the unit about DVD sized.
Material
hd-dvd Last Samurai and Apollo 13
I tried the player on both a 50 inch 720p samsung dlp and a 72 inch 1080p toshiba.
Picture First
I was not happy with the picture on the samsung but I think it may have been due to using the hdmi cable the player came with. I saw pixilation, blocking and noise.
Most of this went away on my Toshiba with a better hdmi. The Last Samurai - The picture was good. I was not blown away. Very inconsistent as some scenes looked crisp and clean and other looked like a regular DVD. Dark scenes looked off some how in the dark detail.
Apollo 13- It looked like it was up sampled from the factory. Very little noise but not a crisp or colorful picture. Maby because it is an older movie?
Both movies skipped out of the box.
Sound- First things first. Dolby Plus. The player decodes this internally and has an analog 5.1 output which essentially bypasses the processing in your pre amp or receiver. What a piece of junk. The bass was better and that is it. The dynamics were terrible. Gunshots sounded weak. The rocket taking off in Apollo was completely unexciting. A MAJOR step back in sound. It also sounded very bright. I am not knocking Dolby plus just the fact that until other receiver manufactures offer Dolby plus or true 5/6/7/8.1 decoding and Toshiba has another way to get it there it ie hdmi 1.3 it is completely worthless. I switched back to a digital coax and the sound was much better.
Usability. Wow. It acts like a prototype. I thought it was broken at first. It takes about 2 minutes to turn on. Everything has a major delay. I hit a button waited a good amount of time to make up for the delay then hit it again thinking it didn't register. Very,very frustrating and buggy. It froze a couple of times.
I don't know if this is the players fault or the hd-dvd design fault but both disks skipped brand new first run. On the second run of the last samurai it completely locked up and wouldn't change scenes. Went through the 5 minute procedure of powering off and on.
Toshiba rushed it to the market. I really believe they just wanted to beat blue ray to the market. It is consumer unfriendly. Ohh well, win some lose some
I am RETURNING IT TO THE VENDOR
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