Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Toshiba HD A2 for $98.87

Ken, give me a couple of days and it may be on it's way.

I'm surprised by your experience so far, too. I have the earlier HD-A1, and HD DVDs look so nice. It goes head to head with the PS3's Blu-ray, of course depending on the content. I find the audio to be terrific as well, but I'm using HDMI for that, which may make a difference. Sorry to hear about your lackluster first impressions.

I'll go back once again...

I dunno, everything looks up to snuff regarding setup and connections ... HDMI out to the TV and Optical to the receiver, output is 'Up To 1080i' on the A2.

Maybe I need to check out a couple of more HD-DVDs.

My buddy bought a PS3 and said he saw no dif in blueray disks on his 42" Plasma. I went over in disbelief and his TV was still set to 480p. We bumped it up to 1080i and boom!

I know you already checked that but for somebody else reading this post later on, it might help them.

Be warned...I have at 1 GHZ Celeron that is so slow with XP I had to put Windows 98 on it. I can't imagine it with Vista.

Realized this makes no sense where it is posted now...it is in reference to the new Celeron laptop that was purchased a couple pages back in the thread.

I will keep my eyes open on the forums about actual real-life performance that other people are getting before giving it to my wife. If it is a "pooch" I'll tkae it back before she even knows I got it.

As for the unimpressive performance of the A2 for BortherBob, did you say that it is going through your AVR via HDMI? Have you tried a direct HDMI link to your TV just for testing?

EDIT: Oops. I just noticed that your AVR doesn't have HDMI. Are you using HDMI or component?

Richard,

You sure you got the disk up where you're watching the HD version and not the SD version? Not to be-little you or anything, but I've done that myself with these stupid "combo" disks. Twice now...watched the hole freakin movie thinking, hu...that ain't too hot. Then figured out I watched the SD version.

If you have, then something is weird. While the Oppo does a darn fine job, I've popped an SD disk in the Oppo, and an HD disk of the same movie in the A2 and the difference has been startling, every time....

Nick I am using HDMI from the A2 out to the TV and Optical from the A2 out to the receiver, I'm wondering....

Way back whenever I first set everything up I connected the Denon to the TV via component cable and the Denon to the receiver via optical, sound was never an issue. Watched, and got used to viewing this setup for almost two years. Not too long ago I connected the Denon to the TV via the HDMI and was some what astounded at the difference...the Denon was now upconverting to 1080i and man, now just about every DVD we viewed was so much better. I now wonder if I was looking for this same astounding difference between the upconverted 1080i and the HD DVD and, although an awesome picture, the astounding effect just wasn't there. Maybe I expected way much more than the end result.

There's no doubt that this HD-DVD is an awesome picture, but so was most of the SD disc with the upconversions. I'm also thinking in terms of cost associated with HD-DVD players, disc, receivers and so forth. The verdict is still out for me but over time, who knows.

I'm off for two weeks, the wind is blowing to beat 60 down here and the garage is clean so I'm busting out a Heineken, playing with this thing for a couple of hours...I'll figure this stuff out.

Hmmmm, without nary the first glance ... I'm wondering if stupidity is stamped all over my forehead (as usual).

Let me go look Mike, hopefully, and in this case, I hope you are right.