ChrisHicks....your going to be blown away with the audio portion of HDDVD..I have never heard anything like this before!!!!It is so detailed that ...well you will see once you have it set-up!!!!Enjoy

When using the 6ch analog audio connection, do you HAVE to switch the player to PCM or can I leave it at bitstream? Does it make a difference at all?

I saw the toshiba HD player the other day and almost bought it. My wife loves Phantom of the Opera and there are some great movies coming to HD-DVD. Then I remembered that list of movies coming to Blu-ray that I love such as Fifth Element, Saw, Terminator 1 & 2, and Lord of War. I just can't bring myself to spending $500 for the HD-DVD player now and then another $1000 in a few months for another player so I can watch the Blu-rays. I hope this format war is over quick!!!

I put in Fantastic Four and tried out the DTS on it and everything sounds normal. By the way, this HD certainly gives audio tracks a boost. The DTS on FF sounded incredible. I'm going to assume it's not my player, because that would obviously suck. I'm going to try a couple of other things before I even consider returning it and getting a new one.

I may try using an optical cable. If that doesn't work, I'll try using the analog outputs. My receiver is almost 6 years old, but it's worked perfectly. I guess it's just not getting along with my HD player. I plan on getting a new receiver later this year, so in the meantime, if all else fails, I think I'll just use 2.0 with it and hope a new receiver will correc the problem. If it turns out that doesn't work, then I'll send mine in for repair. I plan on getting an extra warranty with this unit.

Big difference though. All the Toshiba is doing with standard DVDs is passing the DTS signal to your receiver. With HD DVD its actually taking the DD+ signal and converting it to DTS. If there is a defect with the player it may not be converting the signal correctly. Double check your settings and see if something is set weird on the sound output. Something is going wrong with the way its converting the DTS signal on HD DVDs.

If I turn the receiver off and then on again, the DTS sounds fine. But if I skip a chapter, it will become distorted again. I've hooked up via analog. That seems to be error free. But of course I had to switch my receiver to "analog" from "dvd digital". It only has 2.0 showing on the display, but am I still getting the true surround signal?

Also, if I use the analog outputs, do I have to change any audio settings on the HD? I'm going to do whatever it takes to avoid having to send this big thing back.

When new receivers come out to match the HD players, will the connections between those be HDMI only? In other words, will I ever have to worry about the coaxial connector if everything will eventually be HDMI?

You can't send a bitstream signal over analog. Bitstream is, literally, a stream of digital bits.

It doesn't really make a difference. No matter what output you use, the player is decoding the DD+ to multi-channel PCM anyway. PCM is fully uncompressed, so there's no loss in quality there.

Using HDMI, the PCM signal is sent straight to the receiver for D/A conversion and amplification.

Using 5.1 analog, the player uses its Analog Devices SHARC DACs (very high quality) to do the D/A, and the resulting signals are sent to the receiver for amplification.

Using Toslink/coax, the player re-encodes the PCM signal as lossy DTS at the maximum bit-rate. A little something will be lost in the conversion, but it should still sound as good as full-rate DTS on DVD does.

This will happen on any DD+ soundtrack. It's not just the Warner titles, and it's not a defect.

The Warner issue is that their first discs are authored too low in volume and missing bass.

I was going to suggest turning the receiver off and back on, which others who experience the problem say works, but it looks like you already found that. I think the problem is that the HD-DVD player somehow loses sync with some receivers when it does the DTS re-encode. Turning the receiver off and back on seems to restore sync, but skipping chapters may cause it to lose sync again.

The normal DD and DTS soundtracks on DVDs are output the same way as they are on standard DVD players, and should avoid any of these other problems.

What's your receiver brand? On my Denon, if it select "Analog" it only draws from the 2-channel analog inputs and then runs that through ProLogic II matrixing. But if I hit "Ext. In" it draws from the 5.1 inputs.

You shouldn't have to, no. The only settings you'd need to change at the player are for the HDMI or Toslink/coax outputs.

Theoretically, yes, but it's slightly more complicated than that.

The HD-A1 and HD-XA1 only have HDMI 1.1 outputs. HDMI 1.1 can't transmit any of the new audio formats in their native bitstreams, which is why it converts them to multi-channel PCM. With an HDMI compatible receiver, all you have to do is plug the player directly to the receiver by HDMI and then plug the receiver to the TV also by HDMI. This should give you both full-res multi-channel audio and video.

Future receivers will incorporate HDMI 1.3 connections, which will allow the new audio formats to be transmitted in their native bitstreams. The connection chain will be the same, but in this case the receiver does all the decoding, allowing you to skip the PCM conversion step. However, since the HD-A1 and XA1 don't have HDMI 1.3 outputs, it won't matter for these players anyway.

As I said above, though, PCM is fully uncompressed and there's no loss during that conversion process, so it really doesn't make that much of a difference.

I hear you. The new audio options are pretty confusing, but I don't think they're broken. It just takes some figuring out.

Went to Best buy to look at the players today. Yeaaah. They had it hooked up to a crappy Westinghouse LCD, and a regular DVD demo. No HD disc. Lame.

Me and a friend of mine were playing with it, a full minute to load, and the quality of the regular DVD wasn't that impressive.

And those short DVD cases? suck.

They had one hooked up to that Westinghouse set at my local BB. They showed the SD on the right, and HD picture on the right. Looked very good, but the source material wasn't movies. It was some stupid scenes disc.

Shit, I just dropped $3500 for a Denon 4806 receiver in December which only has HDMI 1.1 Wonder if HDMI ports are firmware upgradeable to 1.3?

That is exactly what happens. If I skip a scene, the receiver flashes as if it's looking for the audio signal and everything gets distorted again. I have a JVC, which has been great, but technology advancement will force me to upgrade eventually.

I did hook up everything via 5.1 analog and that seems to solve the sound problem. I have tried Serenity and Phantom of the Opera and both are not having distortion. Damn, those Warner discs are really screwed up. I really hope they offer us an exchange program. It sounds like I'm watching them with mono sound.

So, in the audio section of the HD player, I should switch the setting from bitstream to pcm?

Right now, the only HDTV I own has only 1 HDMI connection, so I couldn't use a HDMI receiver if I wanted to. I'll be upgrading both my tv and receiver by the end of the year.

The other good thing is I'm not an audiophile. I'm more into how the movie looks. With this 5.1 analog connection, I'm still getting surround sound. Serenity sounded great using it. It'll be good enough until I am/or they allow me to upgrade everything using the 1.3 version of HDMI.

I also figured out the analog setting on my receiver. I switched to "DVD Multi", which switched the receiver to "analog" but also showed all 5 speakers lit up, so everything is cool.

I'm not upset about the distortion because I understand this is a new technology. I knew by adopting early I would run the risk of any problems popping up. I'm just glad there was a way around this.

I did try an optical cable, but got the same distorted result. Oh well, the player works. I guess I'm asking alot of my 6-year old receiver.

Thanks for your help. I was looking for a detailed explanation of what was going on. And I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has experienced this problem.

I will definitely get my money's worth out of this player. With King Kong, Batman Begins, Harry Potter 4, and The Matrix all coming out in the future, it should be a great Summer in HD land.

This appears to be varying greatly between BEst Buy stores. As I mentioned, at mine they had it hooked up to a nice 50" plasma, and the demo disc was doing a great job of showing off the format.

I guess if you expected "regular" DVDs to look complete HD, then you might be disappointed. But as a "regular" DVD player, this unit is really pretty good. With a well-mastered DVD, it does a better-than-average job of upscaling it to HD, but of course it still pales in comparison to the real thing (as will any upscaling player).

Well, this is purely a matter of opinion an personal taste. But I don't think they suck. I think they look pretty cool. Much better than some of the early pictures made them look. And it was a very smart marketing decision to keep them easily distinguishable from SD DVDs, in the hope that at least some consumers won't mistakenly pick them up, expecting them to work in their $49 DVD player.

I'm afraid you've lost me there. One of the major features of the upcoming HDMI receivers is to make it so you only need one HDMI input on your TV. All of your HDMI devices will be switched through the receiver.

about this HDMI 1.1 and 1.3, does this mean that these new players could become outdated within a few months or are they upgradeable? does it really make any difference at this point or in the near future?

Instead of turning the receiver off and back on, will simply switching to another audio input on the receiver and then back again restore your sound? Just a theory.

I watched Last Samurai all the way through tonight, and honestly other than the volume being set low by default I didn't have any issues. Raising the volume on my receiver by 10db brought everything in line with normal DVDs. I got lots of surround activity and bass.

If you're using the analog outputs, you shouldn't have to do anything.

The HDMI versions are changes to the hardware, not just firmware. You won't be able to upgrade the HD-A1 player to HDMI 1.3.

However, that doesn't mean it will become outdated. The player will still transmit the audio in uncompressed PCM format, which retains every bit of the original quality, using HDMI 1.1. The only thing that HDMI 1.3 brings to the table is the ability to transmit the raw DD+ bitstream to the receiver for decoding instead of doing the PCM conversion first. It's just a different method of getting the audio there, but the audio itself is the same regardless of whether you convert to PCM first or not.

Yeah, the load time is my main problem with the unit. That and the size, makes it feel like an old technology. But, once it finally loads....woof! Beautiful! Another issue, is not being able to play my brands of DL dvd +Rs (Ritek and Memorex).

As far as regular sd dvds though, this is THE best upscaling player that I have owned and ive owned alot of them! (sammy 931, 841, 941, denon 1910, panny s97, momitsu V880DX and Oppo). Hands down it beats them in pq in my opinion. Because of it, im selling my Oppo.

Ive tested Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Collateral, Incredibles and more! They all look brilliant. Of course, they arent HD quality, but as close as sd dvd can get on my Sammy DLP tv.

It really won't matter one way or the other to me. My 1080p HDTV is also HDMI 1.1, so each 1080p frame will be split into two fields in the player, and then reassembled into a single frame in the TV. And since the DD+ audio can be decoded to PCM in the player, there won't be any loss of functionality for me there either.

However, on a purely technical note, have you confirmed that 1.3 will not be achievable via a firmware upgrade? I don't know either way, but I've been reading some claims that it can be done (although it does seem improbable to me).

If I have 1 HDMI on the TV. 1 on the HD player. and Presumably 1 on the Receiver, how does 1 cable connect all 3? Wouldn't 1 cable be connected from the tv to the player, and then 1 from the player to the receiver?

I'm not an engineer, but it was my understanding that the hardware had to be swapped out. I could be wrong, though.

Any receiver with an HDMI input will also have an HDMI output for video switching. Your signal chain would be:

Player -> HDMI -> Receiver -> HDMI -> TV

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/new...a-245764-1.xml

Interesting quote from Blu-Ray.

Not surprising. At this point in the game (with HD-DVD launched at Blu-Ray on the brink of launching), it is pointless to work on a unified format now.