I'm not trying to win any points. For me, it it would stupid and idiotic to buy a player (Samsung BD or Toshiba HD) that have faults that are fairly major.

So which faults do you consider to be "major"?

Jiggawhat say:

All of which kind of makes one wonder why you are even visiting these forums. You appear to have already made up your mind not to buy anything, and consider both formats to be unqualified failures at this point (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), so why put yourself through the obvious agony of talking incessently about them?

Or are you just on a mission to alienate people?

Answer is pretty clear to me. He wants HD films. He doesnt want shoddy hardware. He has patience to wait till something rises above the cut to make the move to the format worth it, and by then a bigger selection of titles and better understanding of the 2 formats will evolve. Intelligence is quite high with this one.

Why does this thread seem so familiar?

Freak,
Don't put words in people's mouths. The Tosh has the same issues it has always had; it's still "only" 1080i, it still doesn't do any of the new formats correctly, and it is a slow PC-based machine since they couldn't get the real deal ready for April. The BD players are even worse. Other than discs that are already at 1080, it would be a major step down for some people.

You guys with your little TVs and $500 audio systems have finally gotten something halfway good and think you are all the way there. (not counting Josh, he just likes ragging on BD supporters) You aren't. You are the exact same people who will upgrade another piece in 3 years or whatever (either your TV, audio, or HDDVD player), and spout more "amazing" comments once you get something else a little better than what you have now. And then you'll be whining about it being $500, unlike today. Some of us expect more for $500, even today.

I'm not going to drop $500-1000 this year on an incomplete format when next year (after there are actually 2 dozen movies I might want) there will be a complete player for the same price. I'm assuming, here.

wow. You sure told us.

Not this crap again. 1080i deinterlaced is the same thing as 1080p. Just ask Samsung. All their magical "1080p" capable Blu-ray player does is output 1080i from the decoder and run it through a deinterlacer. Only difference between that and the Toshiba is that with HD DVD you do your deinterlacing in the TV rather than the player.

It does Dolby Digital Plus just fine, thank you very much. And Blu-ray does what with the new audio formats? Oh, that's right, nothing. Nothing at all. Ah, but Blu-ray gives us space-hogging PCM audio that's supposedly "uncompressed" but in reality has been downsampled to 16-bit resolution from the original 24-bit master and sounds notably inferior to even regular old DTS, much less Dolby Digital Plus.

Let's see, which one of us here actually owns both the Toshiba HD DVD and Samsung Blu-ray players and can speak with first-hand knowledge about them? Something tells me it ain't Spiky.

This is in reference to the Toshiba.

1) Player should have worked out of the gate for everyone rather than having the firmware upgraded to have it work 'normally.'

2) The boot time and the time it takes to load a disc. That's completely ridiculous. Almost 2 minutes before you can watch a movie. "Let me go take a dump while the electronics turn on Honey." Ridiculous.

If this thing didn't have firmware upgradability, I can't even imagine the amount of backlash they would have gotten. Luckily for you guys they did add that in.

digitalfreaknyc says:


I guess everyone here is my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend since I heard a lot of the negative comments from this forum.

0/5

Mine was at least funny and referencing a movie. Yours is just insulting. Funny that you have to pick on my being gay...twice. Is that your only comeback?

Overwhelming evidence right. You keep selling yourself on that. How do you know that this was such a successful launch, because you were told by Toshiba?

I have an HDTV myself and would like to get on the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray bandwagon, so I wanted to find out whether it's worth it or worth it to wait for them to unify or to get a universal player which I'm sure will come out. Then there will be no need to unify the formats. And right now it's definitely not worth it to me.


If I was on a mission to alienate people, I would have done it a long time ago. And If you're bothered by a few comments than I don't think you should bother posting here either.

Honestly I didn't even know you were gay. My reference was a metaphor more than anything else. I don't do personal attacks unlike you until your last remark.

Guess what? You just did. Twice.

Speaking of "wasted space," I think you've single-handedly helped turn this thread into just that.

Think this should be closed yet, mods?

I'm not the one who attacked first. You asked for it. I was making comments that were attacking no one and instead of replying like a civilized person you attacked me.

(Double post deleted)

1) Mine did work "normally," right out of the gate. Just because you refuse to believe that doesn't make it untrue.

2) The HD-A1 was very clearly targeted at early adopters and videophiles. Do you have any idea how long it takes for high-end audio equipment and projectors to warm up enough that they can produce image and sound quality that uses their full potential? It's a bit more than 2 minutes. Besides, my experience has been that the player has never taken 2 minutes to load a disc. based on your comment, I take it yours has?

3) They didn't "add in" the firmware upgrade feature. It was part of the player's design. Toshiba knew full well that they were releasing the player before all of the kinks could be worked out, but they were pretty up front about it, and have been very aggressive in getting fixes out. Their goal was to get the player into peoples' hands, so that they could start generating buzz about the incredible picture quality. And for my money, it was well worth it.

Uh, hello? In case you have completely missed everything I've said, I own a Toshiba HD-A1, so I've seen for myself how successful the format is at delivering what was promised.

Which goes right back to my original question. You did your research (despite coming to some rather unusual conclusions IMO), and decided to wait things out. Nothing wrong with that at all. Yet you are still here, harping on the subject and bashing people who don't agree with everything you have to say. Why is that?

I really have no idea who you are talking about here, but if it was meant to include me, you are waaaay off the mark. In my main theater room, my "little TV" is a 73" 1080p DLP rear projection set, and my audio system is a $1500 Sony ES receiver and $2500 Carver speakers. So what exactly was your point?

That his dick is still bigger and prettier...and cost more.

I don't get it. A year from now, the players will still play the same discs. They will still have roughly the same picture quality by company (meaning G2 Toshiba will look roughly like G1, G2 Sony will roughly look like G1, G2 Pioneer etc.). The "amazing" things we're seeing now will be the same as the amazing things you see next year. The only difference is you'll have G2. Well, guess what? Who cares?

I got the Tosh HD DVD on May 1st (and loved it from the first) and picked up the Sammy BD yesterday.

I spent many hours this last few weeks at the 3 Best Buys and 2 Circuit Citys near me checking out the Sammy BD set ups and adjusting the different displays.

I have to say, every setup I saw looked like crap, and no amount of adjusting the displays made it look good. The best trailer I saw was for Chicken Little and the blue sky had terrible banding and you could see dot crawl and macroblocking in the fences.

I went down to CC on Tuesday with the intention of buying the Sammy BD, but chickened out.

I talked to the assistant manager at CC for a while, explained my hesitation and she said it would not be a problem to return it for any reason within the 30 day period. I asked her what would happen with the open discs, since the 4 free discs were a package deal with the purchase of the BD player. She told me they would take those back too.

So, after reading the boards some more and not understanding how some people could say the picture looks great and some saying the picture was terrible, curiosity got the better of me and I went back to CC yesterday and bought the Sammy and 7 BD discs.

I got it all hooked up to my 65" HP6580N 1080p DLP TV, popped in Terminator and expected the worst. Boy, was I surprised! Terminator has a lot of grain, but it looked pretty good for being a low budget older movie. Parts of it look better than others, but the good parts look pretty good.

I also watched part of the Fifth Element. They definitely used a crappy print, but there are parts that are very much HD quality. For the most part, only the first 20 minutes or so had any real issues, the rest looked good.

And then I watched Ultraviolet. The PQ on Ultraviolet is as good as anything I have seen on HD DVD!!!

The FBI warning logo looked very HD on all of the discs and the trailers that are included on the different discs have also looked pretty good.

I have also tried using HDMI 1080I, 1080P and Component 1080I. The PQ has looked the same from all three modes.

From the looks of it, the sammy is very capable of HD output. The only issues I see are the less than stellar transfers they are using for some of these movies.

I wonder if having a true 1080P TV makes any difference? Or if there are incompatibility problems with some of the other TV's?

I was able to use a 10% off CC coupon and walked out of the store with the Sammy BD and 7 movies for a total of $962.02.

All I can say is, don't depend on the store displays. If you haven't tried it on your setup and the store has a good return policy, it is a no loose situation for you to try it out. You might be pleasantly surprised

WRT The Fifth Element, wasn't the Superbit derived from the same master they did for the initial DVD released in 1997? I wonder if they're using the same master for the BD. That may explain why it doesn't look as good as more recent films.

Good for you.

Who's the second paragraph referring to? Just curious.

The rest of us who actually own a HD DVD are enjoying them and our High Definition content. Why criticize us? Just because you haven't made your grand decision on which format you want, doesn't mean we can't enjoy the selection we've made. I seriously doubt anyone here is anxiously awaiting your announcement for which format you choose to go along with your $100,000 home theater setup. I don't really care.

I bought the HD A1 for me to enjoy, which I have from day 1. What I'm certainly not doing is bashing others for making the same choice. Or even those who have selected the Samsung.

Your post seemed very snobbish.

1. My player has worked just fine since day 1.

2. There are 24 hours in a 1 day. Why would waiting 2 minutes to watch a 2 hour movie be such a terrible thing?

3. At least this machine can be upgraded via ethernet. I'd call that a bonus.