Warner BD titles: No TrueHD

[Applefiend]

Originally Posted by JTK

It's stupid, but the studios put me in this situation where I HAVE to have two players to get 100 percent studio support. If I want Universal, I need HD-DVD. If I want Sony, I need Blu-Ray, etc.

So, that's what I'm going to do I guess. $500 is CYA insurance as far as I'm concerned.

My feeling is I'm happy Toshiba/Universal are keeping the Blu Ray guys honest. They're no doubt getting a lot of **** over these crappy fossilized MPEG2 disks. If it wasn't for HD DVD they might not get their act together.

And if they're still around in 3 years, I'll buy a dual format player.

But yes I'm very jealous of you and your VC-1 and Goodfellas, and yes, $500 to an AV enthusiast is pocket change. I can understand someone choosing "works now" over "will work later".

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Applefiend

My feeling is I'm happy Toshiba/Universal are keeping the Blu Ray guys honest. They're no doubt getting a lot of **** over these crappy fossilized MPEG2 disks. If it wasn't for HD DVD they might not get their act together.

Exactly. It's a win-win the way I see it...

And if they're still around in 3 years, I'll buy a dual format player.

A lot of us probably will...

But yes I'm very jealous of you and your VC-1 and Goodfellas, and yes, $500 to an AV enthusiast is pocket change.

Not quite pocket change, but when you're talking about performance/value for your dollar...RELATIVELY speaking...it's not asking for a lot for what the end results are.

I can understand someone choosing "works now" over "will work later".

Not even. I choose: Works all the time.

Or "HD-DVD now. Blu-Ray later." Probably going to take both for a while, if I had to guess.

I want 100 percent studio support available to me. Two players is the only way to get it done...

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

i'm thinking of the whole thing from the perspective of demoing this to customers and selling customers on it. I want to be able to show a few different scenes on hd dvd from different movies. I don't want to have to wait 5 minutes while i change movies and I want them to feel like its easy to use and works well. 60 seconds is too long IMO for a ce device and i'll wait to add it to the demo room until thats down to 20 seconds at the most because our customers aren't very tech savvy and don't have patience.

As a whole I know the PQ and SQ is great I was just wondering about the other aspects of use. IE clunky remote, long load times, etc.

Dealers and showrooms have had no problems whatsoever demoing HD-DVD, even way back with the ungodly firmware 1.0 first runs.

You certainly would have no problems now. You pick maybe 3 of the best HD-DVDs as your showpieces and go to it.

Believe me: The product sells itself. People won't even notice any wait time because you'll be busy talking in their ear and getting them juiced up in between shock and awe.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JTK

It's not that bad. I'd say it's at most 60 seconds the moment the disc goes in the tray to the point you see the movie begin.

Big deal.

We tested it today, at work myself & proven flipper w firmware ver 1.4
takes approx 2 minutes from the off position, turn on open tray put in disc and movie boot up.

The samsung was about 45 seconds faster on the same test. We did the test 3 times for both and averaged it out.

[zombie]

FWIW, even though I have never timed the power on till movie start on my A1 I will say that it certainly does not appear to be any faster since having the 1.4 upgrade. Regardless, this is a very small nuisance. Once that disc is playing it's putting out top notch HD quality!

[JTK]

Originally Posted by nyg

FWIW, even though I have never timed the power on till movie start on my A1 I will say that it certainly does not appear to be any faster since having the 1.4 upgrade.

And it never can be or will be. Read on...

Regardless, this is a very small nuisance. Once that disc is playing it's putting out top notch HD quality!

It's fairly forgiveable at $500 given the end results, yes.

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

We tested it today, at work myself & proven flipper w firmware ver 1.4
takes approx 2 minutes from the off position, turn on open tray put in disc and movie boot up.

The samsung was about 45 seconds faster on the same test. We did the test 3 times for both and averaged it out.

Yeah, I can believe that.

My 45-60 second figure was with the unit already on, putting the disc in and until the movie starts.


So guess what? If you know you're going to use it, turn it on and leave it on, especially if you want to do like Psiweaver was talking about and show it off to someone. That's what any dealer does.

It's just not that big of a deal.


Here's where HD-DVD fanboys get their hopes crushed in a sea of reality on something:

The flaw with these players isn't the Toshiba side of things at all. It's well made.

The flaw is: The PC side. This player is a poor man's HTPC. That was the only way Toshiba could get these players rushed out and for as cheap as they are.

I'll be generous and say they used medium grade PC parts from circa 2002 to run the player. You're talking about some crappy Intel Pentium Mobile chip, 2.4 at best, if I recall.

Since that hardware is so cheap and old, and Intel is an HD-DVD supporter, they probably have literally given it away in wheelbarrows to Toshiba. You're talking minimal to no cost. It's crap. No question about it.


Some no name motherboard with virtually no expansion capabilities, and a 1 gig stick of wretchedly slow, 333MHz no name RAM.

Hell, I think it has just the one slot so you could only put a gig of RAM in there, and that's probably as fast as that crappy motherboard could even handle.


That's why the player is slow. But that's how you get something that puts out the amazing PQ and SQ that this thing does at $500. You cut corners.

Firmware can only do so much. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**, and that's what that PC hardware is.

HD-DVD fanboys really hope and think there will enough firmware some day that this thing will become lightning fast.

It simply is physically impossible with this piss poor hardware in there.

If I had money to blow out of my you know what, and I had the expertise, I would love to see what this player would be like if I could put in a real motherboard, maybe an Intel Conroe and one or preferably TWO gigs of some hot 1066Mhz RAM.

You know how smokin' fast that would be?!


You have to treat this player like you would a PC. That's the bottom line.

[zombie]

Originally Posted by JTK

You have to treat this player like you would a PC. That's the bottom line.

Agreed. Although I do understand the frustration people are having because of the slow boot. We never had to experience this with standard DVD players. With HD it's a whole new ballgame. I do feel pretty confident that these power up and load times will shorten quite a bit through 2G, 3G, and so forth.

[Longshot]

I don't get all the fuss about the load times. Yeah, it can take up to two minutes but so what? When I plan to spend 2+ hours watching a movie the 1-2 minute load time is a complete non-factor. Especially when you see the end result.

If the new BD players coming out can produce the same pq as the Toshiba I could care less if they take 5 minutes to load

[zombie]

Originally Posted by Longshot

If the new BD players coming out can produce the same pq as the Toshiba I could care less if they take 5 minutes to load

Hey don't give them any ideas!

[JTK]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news...nch_Titles/158

Here it is, offical, black and white.

While Warner could not estimate the quantity of discs shipped to retail with the erroneous packaging, the studio confirmed that despite what some of the labels may say, no retail copies of its first four Blu-ray titles actually include Dolby Digital-Plus tracks.

The best theory running on this was they felt they were running up against a brick wall thanks to...wait for it...BD25 discs combined with the overbloated space hogging MPEG2. Not a great combination.

It's too bad that they didn't at least launch with BD50 discs right away. At that rate, you could waste space with MPEG2 and it wouldn't matter.

If you go with one of better codecs in my sig, and even had to keep BD25 for a while, this wouldn't have been necessary.

In other words, yet again: MPEG2 + BD25 = get away from this combination ASAP.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JTK

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news...nch_Titles/158

Here it is, offical, black and white.



The best theory running on this was they felt they were running up against a brick wall thanks to...wait for it...BD25 discs combined with the overbloated space hogging MPEG2. Not a great combination.

It's too bad that they didn't at least launch with BD50 discs right away. At that rate, you could waste space with MPEG2 and it wouldn't matter.

If you go with one of better codecs in my sig, and even had to keep BD25 for a while, this wouldn't have been necessary.

In other words, yet again: MPEG2 + BD25 = get away from this combination ASAP.

Hahahahaha, looks like my pics got their 15 minutes of fame!

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by Longshot

I don't get all the fuss about the load times. Yeah, it can take up to two minutes but so what?

You know we had this very same discussion at BBY yesterday. 2 minutes vs. 1 minute 15 seconds isnt really that much. The reason the samsung seems light years faster is because it lets you know it's doing something.
I think if Tosh put in an indicator, or a screen to look at that said "TOSHIBA" or something it wouldn't be so bad. It just does a mind screw on you when you are staring at a blank screen and all you see is "LOADING" on the front of the player. We've had two customers (one actually bring the unit in to try and return it) because they thought it was defective. We had to explain that it was normal, one customer we told about the firmware update, he left somewhat encouraged.

So yes, it's not "that bad" but I definately woulnd't say I like it, or am even okay with it. Anything more than 30 sec is absurd IMO, but hey you gotta deal with this kind of stuff when your the first kid on the block with it.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Hahahahaha, looks like my pics got their 15 minutes of fame!

At least you got something out of all this, right?

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JTK

At least you got something out of all this, right?

Funny i'm actually being accussed of using someone elses pics on avsforum, when i'm the one who took the F'n pics!

[Psiweaver]

Lol AVS forum is not a place that I spend a lot of time for that reason. I agree with you Brian about load times over like 20-30 seconds being unacceptable.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

Lol AVS forum is not a place that I spend a lot of time for that reason. I agree with you Brian about load times over like 20-30 seconds being unacceptable.

I think Blu-Ray discs missing key features vs. their HD-DVD counterparts is unacceptable.

[Psiweaver]

I've never argued that JTK I too agree that blu-ray or HD DVD discs missing anything is short changing the consumer. But i'm less worried about discs than hardware because its a lot easier to replace a disc than it is a piece of hardware.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

I've never argued that JTK I too agree that blu-ray or HD DVD discs missing anything is short changing the consumer. But i'm less worried about discs than hardware because its a lot easier to replace a disc than it is a piece of hardware.

Very true!

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

I've never argued that JTK I too agree that blu-ray or HD DVD discs missing anything is short changing the consumer. But i'm less worried about discs than hardware because its a lot easier to replace a disc than it is a piece of hardware.

Incorrecto. If you buy 20 discs that do not have the audio functions and then have to replace those discs next year when larger DL50 discs are out the chances of you spending just as much for the disc replacements as the hardware is very plausible.

You're comparing one disc which doesn't make sense because Warner is evidently going to have to drop the higher rez audio on all their SL25GB discs until DL50 is ready in quantity which may be well into 2007.

I can handle slow load up times but I hate sluggish menus(Sammy BD player) and plain ole DD 5.1 is flat out craptastic on a nextgen disc.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Incorrecto. If you buy 20 discs that do not have the audio functions and then have to replace those discs next year when larger DL50 discs are out the chances of you spending just as much for the disc replacements as the hardware is very plausible.

Boy, that's depressing.

I, for one, am not going to get caught in that trap.

You're comparing one disc which doesn't make sense because Warner is evidently going to have to drop the higher rez audio on all their SL25GB discs until DL50 is ready in quantity which may be well into 2007.

D'oh!

I can handle slow load up times but I hate sluggish menus(Sammy BD player) and plain ole DD 5.1 is flat out craptastic on a nextgen disc.

The Samsung is a little bit better than Toshiba, but not by light years like some would have you believe.

Again: Both sides like to exagerrate the negatives of the opposite side.

It's a lot like politics, unfortunately.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You're comparing one disc which doesn't make sense because Warner is evidently going to have to drop the higher rez audio on all their SL25GB discs until DL50 is ready in quantity which may be well into 2007.

Warner shouldnt have to make any sacrifice, because they apparently are switching to vc-1 (after these 4 titles) so we should see no difference in PQ & retain the same audio tracks then. Then the "true 1080p" players should be out and could give a slight edge (player-wise) over the HDDVD.