Newbie here- help
 

Hi all,
I've heard so much about this site and the people in it. I need your help. I just received my HDA1 from amazon for a 399 price tag which I'm so happy about. I connected it and watched 3 movies so far with my wife and son. WE received Costantine, Batman, corpse Bride, Serenity.

We watched Serenity, Batman and Constantine on my HDTV Sony 42we655 LCD.

I expected t see maybe 4-6 times of a knowck out picture experience and what i saw was maybe a super duper DVD. Maybe my tv stinks or something is wrong. My previous DVD player was an upconverting one. It was a Panasonic DVD-S97. Even my wife thinks it's the same but I notice it's a little nicer. Here's my connection type and probs;

Setting:
Connected via HDMI- set it up at 16*9 picture on hd-a1 player, HD-A1 states 1080i- tried 720 but looked the same. Got my 2.0 upgraded firmware

1. The 3 movies I watched still had the black bars on top and bottom...
2. Why does the picture look good but not the WOW as many others have
stated...
3. Nt worried about sound- just picture. looks great as a great DVD. MAybe expecting too much I guess. Just looks great but not wow. Anyone have this same tv? Whats wrong.

My wife's ready to kill me because I spent this much when picture looks like a dvd or little better...

Constatine,and Serenity(2:35) are supposed to have the black bars, and Batman (1:85) may have small black bars if your tv has no overscan. These were the hd-dvds,and not standard dvds correct?

Sounds like their SD DVDs. Your player will upconvert them but they will not look as good as an HD DVD. You should also set the output the player to your TV's native resolution. At least to me it looks better. Plus, calibrate your set. It does help a lot.

I would try using componant as well. Some people see a better picture with that as oposed to HDMI. You won't get up conversion of your sd dvds with componant though. I think my A1 looks fantastic, but the jump isn't as great as vhs to dvd.

Play with your calibration settings. The settings are wildly different than those required for SD DVDs and make a huge difference.

Were you watching the HD versions of those movies?

Black bars are irrelevant, you were seeing all the image there is, in its proper ratio, unless you have something set incorrectly. People simply need to get over the need to have their screen "filled up". Look at it this way if you were looking at the image on a blank wall, there would be no bars, unless you expected the image to fill the entire wall.

No, I'm on HD DVD's . It's clear don't get me wrong- I guess I was expecting something much better than my upconvert Panasonic. Looks great but with so many people saying it's 3 times clearer and better- not that much of a difference yet to blow my mind.

I may need to calibrate but colors look fine and crisp. hmm- maybe I'm spoiled with that Panny I bought. I'm on 1080i on the 42we655- tried 720 but really didn't notice anything.

I am sorry your expectations did not match your experience.

Good luck!

You are right, that player isn't worth it. You should just sell it to me for a buck. :D

Kidding aside, I second trying the component cables, and since your TV has dual Component inputs, try hooking it up two both players and switching back and forth for a better grasp of the varying quality.

People use giant, fantastic words to describe things when simple, quieter ones will do. Some see an extra bit of detail on a picture of a brick wall or something, and go crazy with smilies and exclamation marks all over the web. Meanwhile others say, "what are you talking about?"

The improvement from DVD to HDDVD, on the same HDTV, is not nearly as obvious as the improvement from VHS to DVD. Esp if you are used to watching both DVD and HDTV on the TV. And many people did not see a difference between VHS and DVD on small TVs (under 40-50"), unless the tape was damaged.

Yeah, have to agree with Spiky...I mean you can fool around with the settings and connection to get a bit better of a pic, but its not like being blind for a while and then all of the sudden being able to see again.

God, here's an example from an NFL thread at AVS:

"That's why I laugh at the guys who complain about Fox's poor quality HD..... it's still 100x better than CBS's SD crap."

Apparently poor quality 1280x720p is 100 times as good as moderate quality 640x480i. Hyperbole, anyone? What does that even mean? And then forums like these start taking comments like this and turning them into fact. Pretty soon you don't know what the heck anyone means at all.

Maybe a dumb question but I thought having HDMI was the best you can get over Component . Not sure why I would use Component - can't imagine getting a better picture but will try it. If Component did give me a better pic- I'd kick my self in the butt since I would have purchased the xbox360 HDDVD drive for 200 bucks.

also- my display is 1386 x 788 Pixels on my 42- what is the ideal setting- 1080 or 720. they both looked about the same but what is the real ideal setting on this sort of monitor?

Technically, HDMI should be more consistent and therefore better than component. In reality, they both give the same resolution and colorspace so there isn't much difference if they are done well. And HDMI handshaking has been an occasional problem. Or other issues. So sometimes component can be better, but HDMI usually is.

They are both viable is basically what I'm saying. It somewhat depends on the equipment you have.

I'm betting you mean 1366x768 (aka WXGA) on the plasma, and that would be the ideal resolution to send it. But players may not have that as an option. 720p is probably usually the best. You should just try both to see which is better. The Toshiba had a problem when set to 720p output, at least at first, so it was recommended to only use 1080i, even if you have a native 720p display. Not sure if they fixed that.

This might be your seating distance, too. A lot of people couldn't tell the difference between a Panny ED plasma and an HD plasma with the same signal at greater than 10-12ft.

At longer distance the quality difference is going to be less and less noticeable.