I'm also starting to see some positive results with our A2...

I played with the unit for a couple of hours Friday afternoon and then unplugged it and reconnected the Denon 2910 (do to aggravation), wife and I went away for the weekend so I didn't have time to do any more messing around with the A2. This morning I reconnected the A2 to show my wife there wasn't *that* much of difference between the A2's HD and the up converted SD on the Denon, popped in the 'Last Samurai' HD-DVD and she also said there was not much of a difference she thought ... I then loaded up 'Face-Off' and whoa mule, there's that hi-def I was looking for on Friday with Samurai or Transformers, the difference was incredible.

I did play with the A2 for quite a long time today and am still unimpressed with Transformers and the Last Samurai, like earlier stated the movie Face-Off was incredible and 95% of the SD movies was very impressive, I did notice that whenever I turned off the 'black enhancer' (or whatever it's called) the picture seemed to be a bit better for both HD and SD. Sound-wise, running the A2 to the H/K635 via an optical connect I don't know if I can tell any difference between the A2, Oppo or the 2910 ... the A2 definitely sounds equally as good as the other two units, better? I just can't tell.

Whenever I spoke with Mr. Toshiba on Friday about ordering a firmware disc he did say that some of the older HD disc *may* have pixelation/sound breakup and some of the new disc *may* be 'a little' advanced for the A2 prior to the firmware upgrade but I shouldn't have any problems and to go ahead run it with any disc because "....chances are you won't see any difference".

So....

My take is that the Samurai disc is one of the first generation run disc (somebody mentioned that prior, forgive me for forgetting who) and just isn't a good quality disc, period. The Transformers disc is a new movie and the A2 without the firmware just isn't reading like it should with the upgrade, whereas the Face-Off disc is probably in the middle of the road generation-wise and the A2 is having no ill regards reading the information on the disc and supplying us with an awesome picture ... *the* picture I was looking for on Friday but not finding it 'til Monday, making me a much happier consumer.

I'm thinking maybe the firmware upgrade is *probably* going to help this unit out, thanks again Nick for sending a disc!

\:\)

Rick
Our Room

smile