GAD
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2007
- Posts
- 1,715
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I recently bought a Toshiba X-A2 HD-DVD player. The player was a birthday present and helped me pass the time while my arm healed.
I bought the XA2 because it supposedly has a better upscaling chip while also supporting 5.1 discrete analog outputs. My receiver does not support HDMI, so discrete is the only way for me to get lossless audio. At this time I have only used optical for 5.1 compressed sound. Having only one usable arm makes it tough to run cables.
The player itself is nice, if not great. My main beef with the player is the lack of mature features. For example, my Sony DVP-NS90V is an excellent upscaling 1080i DVD player. One of the awesome features is the ability to remember the position of the last 5 DVDs played. If I'm watching a movie, pause it, let my kids watch something, then later put my DVD back in, the movie picks up from where I stopped it. It will do this for the last five disks played. Awesome! The HD-DVD player doesn't do this for even one disk. Some movies allow me to record bookmarks which is useful, so there is that, but it's only on some movies.
The talk of slow startup and disk loading is true, but I quickly learned to turn on the player first and this becomes a non-issue for me.
The player, though second gen, does have quircks. It locks up on me once, forcing a reboot which resolved the problem. Still, my player shouldn't hang. It hasn't happened since, but now I expect it to.
Upscaling DVDs to 1080i is supposed to fantastic on this player. Honestly I like the upscaling on my Sony better. The Toshiba player upscales well, but everything looks softer than it does from the Sony. This is not a huge issue - it's something I noticed, but everyone else in my house did not. I tend to be a bit of a PITA when it comes to stuff like that though.
The menus on HD are cool in that they overlay the video so you don't have to stop the movie to change settings and such.
So far I've watched a few movies in HD. They are:
Serentiy
Batman Begins
The Mummy
Van Helsing
I own a Sony XBR50 SXRD television and have HD cable, so I'm no stranger to HD movies. The video quality is breathtaking. The ships are *so* crisp in Serenity that for the first time I thought they looked fake. They're *TOO* good.
The picture quality is as amazing as expected. No complaints there.
I discovered some things I didn't expect in my viewing.
HD-DVD and Blueray discs are freakin' expensive! Bestbuy sells the cheapest HD-DVD discs for $25. They're closer to $20 on Amazon. The real stinker is that many of the hot discs (300, Hot Fuzz) only come in combo discs. Here some marketing genius decided that we the sheep would happily pay $35 for a disc that has both HD-DVD and DVD on it. What's better is that fact that these movies, while available on DVD-only, are not available on HD-DVD-only! This infuriates me to the point that I joined Netflix. To Hell with them all.
One of the big reasons for me to get into widescreen and HD is that I insist on watching movies in their originally intended aspect ratios. Nothing tweaks me like pan and scan. I love watching super-wide movies in their original glory.
Watching movies in HD, on cable, is awesome, but guess what - they're usually cropped! A Movie filmed in 2.35:1, shown on cable, is often cropped to 16:9! I'm still not getting the whole picture, and that tweaks me. When watching from disc, you get the whole movie.
So this player was $500. I paid for the better player because I wanted discrete audio out (the lesser Toshibas don't have that feature). Was it worth it?
I'd have to say no. Now that being said, I haven't heard lossless audio yet, so maybe the heavens will open and I'll be floored by delicious sound. You never know.
If I were to do it again, I'd buy a Woo WA6 instead.
. I think that at this point in time, if you're looking for HD, opt for the less expensive players unless your nuts - like me.
GAD
I bought the XA2 because it supposedly has a better upscaling chip while also supporting 5.1 discrete analog outputs. My receiver does not support HDMI, so discrete is the only way for me to get lossless audio. At this time I have only used optical for 5.1 compressed sound. Having only one usable arm makes it tough to run cables.
The player itself is nice, if not great. My main beef with the player is the lack of mature features. For example, my Sony DVP-NS90V is an excellent upscaling 1080i DVD player. One of the awesome features is the ability to remember the position of the last 5 DVDs played. If I'm watching a movie, pause it, let my kids watch something, then later put my DVD back in, the movie picks up from where I stopped it. It will do this for the last five disks played. Awesome! The HD-DVD player doesn't do this for even one disk. Some movies allow me to record bookmarks which is useful, so there is that, but it's only on some movies.
The talk of slow startup and disk loading is true, but I quickly learned to turn on the player first and this becomes a non-issue for me.
The player, though second gen, does have quircks. It locks up on me once, forcing a reboot which resolved the problem. Still, my player shouldn't hang. It hasn't happened since, but now I expect it to.
Upscaling DVDs to 1080i is supposed to fantastic on this player. Honestly I like the upscaling on my Sony better. The Toshiba player upscales well, but everything looks softer than it does from the Sony. This is not a huge issue - it's something I noticed, but everyone else in my house did not. I tend to be a bit of a PITA when it comes to stuff like that though.
The menus on HD are cool in that they overlay the video so you don't have to stop the movie to change settings and such.
So far I've watched a few movies in HD. They are:
Serentiy
Batman Begins
The Mummy
Van Helsing
I own a Sony XBR50 SXRD television and have HD cable, so I'm no stranger to HD movies. The video quality is breathtaking. The ships are *so* crisp in Serenity that for the first time I thought they looked fake. They're *TOO* good.
I discovered some things I didn't expect in my viewing.
HD-DVD and Blueray discs are freakin' expensive! Bestbuy sells the cheapest HD-DVD discs for $25. They're closer to $20 on Amazon. The real stinker is that many of the hot discs (300, Hot Fuzz) only come in combo discs. Here some marketing genius decided that we the sheep would happily pay $35 for a disc that has both HD-DVD and DVD on it. What's better is that fact that these movies, while available on DVD-only, are not available on HD-DVD-only! This infuriates me to the point that I joined Netflix. To Hell with them all.
One of the big reasons for me to get into widescreen and HD is that I insist on watching movies in their originally intended aspect ratios. Nothing tweaks me like pan and scan. I love watching super-wide movies in their original glory.
Watching movies in HD, on cable, is awesome, but guess what - they're usually cropped! A Movie filmed in 2.35:1, shown on cable, is often cropped to 16:9! I'm still not getting the whole picture, and that tweaks me. When watching from disc, you get the whole movie.
So this player was $500. I paid for the better player because I wanted discrete audio out (the lesser Toshibas don't have that feature). Was it worth it?
I'd have to say no. Now that being said, I haven't heard lossless audio yet, so maybe the heavens will open and I'll be floored by delicious sound. You never know.
If I were to do it again, I'd buy a Woo WA6 instead.
GAD
