HD DVD . . . I’ve been waiting over twelve years for such a player. Readers who’ve worked their way through this entire series know that when I designed my home theater and made my equipment selection, I made very sure that my front projector would accept and display the HD formats of 1080i and 720p. Little did I know as I plunked down my cash in 1994 for an NEC PG-6000 CRT front projector that it would take over a decade for home video media to catch up to my expectations. And little did I know that I’d be provoked to retire my CRT projector before HD on disc became available. Sigh.
Having replaced my NEC with a new Sony VPL-VW100 “Ruby” front projector equipped with three SXRD 1080p imagers in its optical block and an HDCP-compliant HDMI video input, I was anxious to view my first HD discs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite fast enough to buy the few Toshiba HD-A1 players stocked in the first distribution. And then I was rather distracted for six weeks or so when I had to temporarily step down as site editor. But I finally managed to snag a player, I installed it, and I’m rather impressed.
By the time I put fingers to keyboard to compose this chapter, the Toshiba players had been described and reviewed on many sites and in print. Perfect Vision, Widescreen Review, Sound & Vision . . . take your pick. Fortunately, many of the flaws initially reported elsewhere have been resolved. My player came with firmware 1.2 and I have in my hot little hands an installation DVD-ROM with firmware version 1.4 (which, based on problems described at the AVS Forum, I’ll probably not install). So since the player features have been described elsewhere at length, I’ll confine myself to how the player fit into my system, my impressions, and what I found to be true and untrue about published reports.
Installation And Impressions
I connected the Toshiba player directly to my Sony projector via HDMI, using the very fine BetterCables 8-meter Display Magic HDMI cable. My first HD DVD titles hadn’t arrived yet, so I initially had to be content with standard definition (SD) DVDs. I set the player’s video output for 1080i over HDMI and loaded my trusty copy of the AVIA Guide to Home Theater to adjust the projector for the Toshiba as a source. And I ran into my first glitch. As I maneuvered through the disc’s nested menus, whenever I reached the deepest menu page - any with a list of specific test patterns - the player would not highlight the cursor-selected menu item. I had to count horizontal and vertical cursor moves to select the test pattern. Annoying but manageable, I became concerned about just how buggy the firmware might be.
I confirmed that the projector’s brightness and contrast were right on the money; I then displayed the anamorphic resolution test pattern was immediately struck with the cleanliness of the image. Regular Blandings readers know that I went to extreme measures to find a DVD player that minimized the halos caused by the digital-to-analog converter’s video anti-aliasing filter. The Denon DVD-9000 I had selected is very good; its edge halos are almost invisible for high quality program material, but I still had to deal with analog component video and very modest hardware-generated halos remained. With a pure digital path from the Toshiba, virtually any trace of residual hardware-related halos was gone. And the resolution wedges on the AVIA resolution test pattern demonstrated superior definition, right out to the limit of DVD. So when I spun a few of my most impressive DVDs, I was not surprised to find that the Toshiba’s internal scaler yielded more impressive visual results than either my Key Digital HD Leeza external scaler or the Sony’s internal scaler when driven by analog component video. I suspect this may be best attributed to the pure digital path from player to projector optical block rather than any inherent superiority of the player’s properly designed scaler.
(Edge halos - caused either by intentional edge enhancement or by an artifact of MPEG-2 compression - that are inherently part of a disc’s video will, of course, still be very visible. And by the way, if you have a pure digital video path all the way to a fixed pixel display and you see halos using AVIA DVD test patterns, more than likely your sharpness control is set too high.)
Color reproduction, small object detail, finely grained textures, and the suppression of hardware related halos left me with very satisfying film-like images. But the Toshiba’s internal scaler does suffer from a particularly significant shortfall. I still have quite a few non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs in my collection, guilty pleasures like The Rocketeer, which was never re-released in anamorphic video. And, as you well know, many anamorphic DVDs have supplements that are presented in non-anamorphic widescreen. The Toshiba detects whether or not the disc’s active video is anamorphic. If it’s non-anamorphic, the player automatically windowpanes the video. So non-anamorphic widescreen images are displayed with substantial black bars surrounding the image on all four sides.
When playing non-anamorphic widescreen material from the Denon through the Key Digital scaler, I have the option of adjusting the scaler to zoom the image. After selecting the appropriate zoom mode that maintains proper proportions, the width of the screen is filled and the image height is increased. (Perhaps I should take this opportunity to explain - complain might be a better word - that even though my Sony KDS-R60XBR1 SXRD rear projector allows zooming of SD signals provided over HDMI, my Sony VPL-VW100 SXRD front projector bizarrely does not.) Alas, the Toshiba does not offer a zoom mode for non-anamorphic widescreen video on DVD. I find this a ludicrous omission. The Toshiba’s internal scaler should be able to perform the same type of zoom as the Key Digital. I found this so annoying that, despite the better looking images available from the Toshiba, I decided to keep the Denon / Key Digital combo online for non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs (more about that later).
Since my existing B&K Reference 30 audio decoder cannot deal with the high definition discs’ advanced audio CODECs, I experimented with the Toshiba’s internal decoder. I’m aware that this first generation HD DVD player does not support Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio (it converts those tracks to stereo). But Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 is available as transcoded DTS at a high bit rate from a coaxial or optical digital port and is decoded internally and is available via the analog audio outputs. I connected the HD-A1’s 5.1 analog audio outputs to my decoder’s 5.1 analog inputs and made the digital connection as well. I found that the B&K would properly de-matrix analog 5.1 to 6.1 with EX enabled (negating the need for external de-matrixing as I described years ago in my Pseudo-EX article), but the bottom end wasn’t quite right; it seemed quite weak. Switching back and forth between the sounds produced from the decoder’s analog inputs and its digital audio coaxial input revealed that my decoder does not have proper bass management of analog signals, not an uncommon problem. So I’m forced to use a digital connection between the Toshiba and my B&K Reference 30 audio decoder via coaxial cable. The problem will vanish when next year I purchase a new digital audio decoder equipped with HDMI 1.3. Then I’ll be able to really enjoy advanced CODEC digital audio; I’m particularly looking forward to experiencing the lossless compression audio formats from Dolby and DTS. In the mean time, I’ll enjoy high bit rate DTS and focus on the improved video resolution of HD on disc.
Everything you’ve read about the Toshiba’s lack of speed is true. The player boots up like a computer, a leisurely affair. Much handshaking is going on. Are you an authorized HD DVD disc? Are you on my disable list? Am I connected to an HDCP-compliant HDMI input device? Are you on my unauthorized video receiver device list? Everything seems to take longer: ejecting a disc, turning off, opening an empty tray. But the waits are worth it.
HD DVD Discs Arrive
Before I describe my impressions of my first experiences with film on HD DVD, a brief diversion . . . DVD reviews are hard to evaluate for accuracy; they are highly dependent upon the reviewers’ equipment. Only the most advanced home theater equipment reliably reveals qualities and flaws. That may account for some of the wide variations in reviewed assessments of video. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received email from readers chastising me for criticizing transfers I found soft and contaminated with halos. They frequently cite reviews from other sites that extol the quality of the transfer. When I write back, I include screencaps, cropped and magnified, from the criticized DVD and a similar example from what I consider a superior DVD. The flaws I had reported become obvious and I don’t recall a reader continuing to disagree after receiving my screencaps. Reviewing HD will be even harder.
High definition likely will have fewer transfer issues. The new video CODECs fail in ways that are different than MPEG-2: more gracefully. I don’t believe the advanced video compression algorithms generate halos or mosquito noise; MPEG-2 can produce both. And 1080’s spatial resolution is so high that display technologies are highly challenged. I did a quick survey of some of the displays currently being used around the Web to review HD on disc. I found several rear projection CRT displays that can resolve only about 80% of 1080’s resolution; I found a rear projection DLP that uses one of TI’s 960x1080 wobulation chips and a 7-segment color wheel; I found a 34-inch direct view CRT; I found a 1280x720 rear projection DLP; I found a 3-chip 1280x720 LCD front projector; and I found a 1920x1080 45-inch LCD. All of those viewing experiences will be different from one another and quite different from my viewing, in a room as dark as a closed coffin, HD on disc on an eight-foot wide screen illuminated by a projector with three 1920x1080 SXRD chips. And it’s going to be quite a while before I purchase a computer with an internal HD disc drive so I can capture and send screencaps to those who may disagree with any of my video criticisms. So if and when I do find problems with any HD disc that another site found stunning, please bear with me; I probably really did see the problems I reported, and they are probably quite real.
But I digress . . . with luck, I’ll be so impressed with HD on disc that I’ll have little to complain about. And that brings me to my first arrivals: The Last Samurai, Swordfish, and Constantine.
The Video
The images are razor sharp. During a close-up, when the focus is slightly different on the farthest and the closest facial feature due to a limited depth of field when filming in low light, it’s highly noticeable. Small object detail is outstanding. Facial expressions remain very clear in scenes filmed with longer focal length lenses. This is a dramatic advantage when an actor, far from the camera in a long shot, is maintaining an emotional tone regardless of how close he or she is to the lens. Finely grained textures are superb. The textures of fabrics and the normal skin imperfections found even in a movie star’s face are crystal clear. Color intensity and depth are exceptional. Edge halos - the bane of my home theater existence - are gone. The high definition images don’t have that unpleasant processed appearance that halos cause.
But my most compelling reaction is that by removing what I can only describe as the haze of standard resolution, the viewing experience has more emotional impact. With detail comes the impression of realism, and with realism comes the ability of the film to draw the viewer more effectively into the onscreen drama.
The Audio
The sound impresses as well. There have been reports that Warner Home Video mistakenly mixed the tracks at too low a level. There have been other reports that the tracks become too loud. Both of those claims incorrectly represent the audio tracks. What I perceive is a reduction of the average level of the spoken word to elevate the dynamic range. The only way a sound mixer can accommodate simultaneously an absolute maximum level and an extended dynamic range is to reduce the average level. The result is that dialog runs 10 dB to 15 dB lower than the same title on SD DVD. So the viewer is forced to boost the audio gain to make the voices from the HD DVD as audible as the DVD. But loud sound effects then peak at much higher sound pressure levels, which is closer to the motion picture theater experience, but requires great loudspeakers and substantial power amplifier reserve.
In the opening act of Swordfish, John Travolta’s character is having a quiet chat with the authorities. It’s at that point that the viewer will pump up the volume level to achieve parity with the DVD version. But within a few minutes, there is a horrific explosion. From DVD the audible impact of the explosion is notable. From HD DVD it’s visceral . . . palpable . . . shocking . . . gut pounding. Once again, the format draws the viewer into the emotion of the scene with sensory near-overload. The drama quotient has gone up a dozen points.
The Supplements
For the most part, bringing up the menu from the remote control displays a translucent affair that allows free navigation with the film running in the background. (I also recall selecting a menu list that stopped the film dead in its tracks even before I made a selection.) The disc/player defaults to an annoying swishing sound whenever a cursor action is taken. That sound may be disabled from a disc setup submenu. It would have been more logical to set a player setup option to default to either menu sound on or off, so the setting would be remembered from disc to disc.
The extras are essentially recycled from the DVD editions and it truly is impressive to watch and listen to a film with such improved visual and audible fidelity and still have room on the disc for supplements that consumed a second disc in the DVD edition.
The Annoyances
I’ve already mentioned the inexplicable lack of a video zoom function for non-anamorphic widescreen content. There are a few more annoyances worthy of mention.
Stop a DVD player and the player remembers the precise point when you halted the disc; if you avoid pressing Stop a second time, pressing Play will resume where you interrupted the flow. Not so HD DVD. The Toshiba will behave like any other player with a DVD loaded. But stop an HD DVD and press Play (or Resume) and the film starts from the beginning. I’m having trouble understanding why that should be so.
The HD DVD player should be turned on last if HDMI is the signal transport. In fact once that handshake connection is established, interrupting that connection causes the player to enter the Stop mode. This is another unfathomable annoyance that brings me to the topic of HDMI switching.
Things Get Complicated
Since I can’t zoom non-anamorphic widescreen video internal to the Toshiba, I’m going to retain my Denon DVD player and Key Digital scaler. The scaler has an HDCP-compliant DVI output that’s capable of driving an HDMI input (as described in Blandings Part 10, that’s my preferred connection path for best results). And when I take delivery of my Blu-ray Disc player in the September / October timeframe, I’ll have accumulated three HDCP-compliant HDMI signal sources. The Sony has only one HDMI input. I need a digital video switcher.
Such switching will be included within HDMI 1.3 capable digital audio decoders, since the HDMI bit stream will transport both the advanced digital audio and video. The decoder will strip out the audio and transform it to the analog signals power amplifiers require. The video will then be sent on its way to the display. But such decoders are months away; I need a switcher now.
Not all HDMI switchers are built the same. It must be HDCP-compliant. It must have sufficient bandwidth to receive and transmit 1080p reliably. It must have enough drive capability to push signals down an eight-meter (or more) HDMI cable without generating any visible errors. It must have enough input channels to satisfy switching needs. And it should be cost-effective.
When I first designed my theater, I recommended that the more dexterous consider buying the quality raw materials and tools required to fabricate quality interconnects. At the time, all high-end cables were excessively expensive and were marketed like snake oil. That was before BetterCables came along. Here’s a company that uses great materials and simply makes reasonably priced quality cables. As I mentioned in Blandings Part 10, being able to support without error an 8-meter HDMI run of 1080p is an impressive feat for a passive cable. It’s a company I trust; its products have never let me down. So I was delighted to discover that BetterCables is now offering a 5-channel HDCP-compliant HDMI switcher with all the attributes I require and the cost is only $350. It’s the DM-HDMI-5X1 Display Magic 5-In 1-Out HDMI Switcher.
Having replaced my NEC with a new Sony VPL-VW100 “Ruby” front projector equipped with three SXRD 1080p imagers in its optical block and an HDCP-compliant HDMI video input, I was anxious to view my first HD discs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite fast enough to buy the few Toshiba HD-A1 players stocked in the first distribution. And then I was rather distracted for six weeks or so when I had to temporarily step down as site editor. But I finally managed to snag a player, I installed it, and I’m rather impressed.
By the time I put fingers to keyboard to compose this chapter, the Toshiba players had been described and reviewed on many sites and in print. Perfect Vision, Widescreen Review, Sound & Vision . . . take your pick. Fortunately, many of the flaws initially reported elsewhere have been resolved. My player came with firmware 1.2 and I have in my hot little hands an installation DVD-ROM with firmware version 1.4 (which, based on problems described at the AVS Forum, I’ll probably not install). So since the player features have been described elsewhere at length, I’ll confine myself to how the player fit into my system, my impressions, and what I found to be true and untrue about published reports.
Installation And Impressions
I connected the Toshiba player directly to my Sony projector via HDMI, using the very fine BetterCables 8-meter Display Magic HDMI cable. My first HD DVD titles hadn’t arrived yet, so I initially had to be content with standard definition (SD) DVDs. I set the player’s video output for 1080i over HDMI and loaded my trusty copy of the AVIA Guide to Home Theater to adjust the projector for the Toshiba as a source. And I ran into my first glitch. As I maneuvered through the disc’s nested menus, whenever I reached the deepest menu page - any with a list of specific test patterns - the player would not highlight the cursor-selected menu item. I had to count horizontal and vertical cursor moves to select the test pattern. Annoying but manageable, I became concerned about just how buggy the firmware might be.
I confirmed that the projector’s brightness and contrast were right on the money; I then displayed the anamorphic resolution test pattern was immediately struck with the cleanliness of the image. Regular Blandings readers know that I went to extreme measures to find a DVD player that minimized the halos caused by the digital-to-analog converter’s video anti-aliasing filter. The Denon DVD-9000 I had selected is very good; its edge halos are almost invisible for high quality program material, but I still had to deal with analog component video and very modest hardware-generated halos remained. With a pure digital path from the Toshiba, virtually any trace of residual hardware-related halos was gone. And the resolution wedges on the AVIA resolution test pattern demonstrated superior definition, right out to the limit of DVD. So when I spun a few of my most impressive DVDs, I was not surprised to find that the Toshiba’s internal scaler yielded more impressive visual results than either my Key Digital HD Leeza external scaler or the Sony’s internal scaler when driven by analog component video. I suspect this may be best attributed to the pure digital path from player to projector optical block rather than any inherent superiority of the player’s properly designed scaler.
(Edge halos - caused either by intentional edge enhancement or by an artifact of MPEG-2 compression - that are inherently part of a disc’s video will, of course, still be very visible. And by the way, if you have a pure digital video path all the way to a fixed pixel display and you see halos using AVIA DVD test patterns, more than likely your sharpness control is set too high.)
Color reproduction, small object detail, finely grained textures, and the suppression of hardware related halos left me with very satisfying film-like images. But the Toshiba’s internal scaler does suffer from a particularly significant shortfall. I still have quite a few non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs in my collection, guilty pleasures like The Rocketeer, which was never re-released in anamorphic video. And, as you well know, many anamorphic DVDs have supplements that are presented in non-anamorphic widescreen. The Toshiba detects whether or not the disc’s active video is anamorphic. If it’s non-anamorphic, the player automatically windowpanes the video. So non-anamorphic widescreen images are displayed with substantial black bars surrounding the image on all four sides.
When playing non-anamorphic widescreen material from the Denon through the Key Digital scaler, I have the option of adjusting the scaler to zoom the image. After selecting the appropriate zoom mode that maintains proper proportions, the width of the screen is filled and the image height is increased. (Perhaps I should take this opportunity to explain - complain might be a better word - that even though my Sony KDS-R60XBR1 SXRD rear projector allows zooming of SD signals provided over HDMI, my Sony VPL-VW100 SXRD front projector bizarrely does not.) Alas, the Toshiba does not offer a zoom mode for non-anamorphic widescreen video on DVD. I find this a ludicrous omission. The Toshiba’s internal scaler should be able to perform the same type of zoom as the Key Digital. I found this so annoying that, despite the better looking images available from the Toshiba, I decided to keep the Denon / Key Digital combo online for non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs (more about that later).
Since my existing B&K Reference 30 audio decoder cannot deal with the high definition discs’ advanced audio CODECs, I experimented with the Toshiba’s internal decoder. I’m aware that this first generation HD DVD player does not support Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio (it converts those tracks to stereo). But Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 is available as transcoded DTS at a high bit rate from a coaxial or optical digital port and is decoded internally and is available via the analog audio outputs. I connected the HD-A1’s 5.1 analog audio outputs to my decoder’s 5.1 analog inputs and made the digital connection as well. I found that the B&K would properly de-matrix analog 5.1 to 6.1 with EX enabled (negating the need for external de-matrixing as I described years ago in my Pseudo-EX article), but the bottom end wasn’t quite right; it seemed quite weak. Switching back and forth between the sounds produced from the decoder’s analog inputs and its digital audio coaxial input revealed that my decoder does not have proper bass management of analog signals, not an uncommon problem. So I’m forced to use a digital connection between the Toshiba and my B&K Reference 30 audio decoder via coaxial cable. The problem will vanish when next year I purchase a new digital audio decoder equipped with HDMI 1.3. Then I’ll be able to really enjoy advanced CODEC digital audio; I’m particularly looking forward to experiencing the lossless compression audio formats from Dolby and DTS. In the mean time, I’ll enjoy high bit rate DTS and focus on the improved video resolution of HD on disc.
Everything you’ve read about the Toshiba’s lack of speed is true. The player boots up like a computer, a leisurely affair. Much handshaking is going on. Are you an authorized HD DVD disc? Are you on my disable list? Am I connected to an HDCP-compliant HDMI input device? Are you on my unauthorized video receiver device list? Everything seems to take longer: ejecting a disc, turning off, opening an empty tray. But the waits are worth it.
HD DVD Discs Arrive
Before I describe my impressions of my first experiences with film on HD DVD, a brief diversion . . . DVD reviews are hard to evaluate for accuracy; they are highly dependent upon the reviewers’ equipment. Only the most advanced home theater equipment reliably reveals qualities and flaws. That may account for some of the wide variations in reviewed assessments of video. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received email from readers chastising me for criticizing transfers I found soft and contaminated with halos. They frequently cite reviews from other sites that extol the quality of the transfer. When I write back, I include screencaps, cropped and magnified, from the criticized DVD and a similar example from what I consider a superior DVD. The flaws I had reported become obvious and I don’t recall a reader continuing to disagree after receiving my screencaps. Reviewing HD will be even harder.
High definition likely will have fewer transfer issues. The new video CODECs fail in ways that are different than MPEG-2: more gracefully. I don’t believe the advanced video compression algorithms generate halos or mosquito noise; MPEG-2 can produce both. And 1080’s spatial resolution is so high that display technologies are highly challenged. I did a quick survey of some of the displays currently being used around the Web to review HD on disc. I found several rear projection CRT displays that can resolve only about 80% of 1080’s resolution; I found a rear projection DLP that uses one of TI’s 960x1080 wobulation chips and a 7-segment color wheel; I found a 34-inch direct view CRT; I found a 1280x720 rear projection DLP; I found a 3-chip 1280x720 LCD front projector; and I found a 1920x1080 45-inch LCD. All of those viewing experiences will be different from one another and quite different from my viewing, in a room as dark as a closed coffin, HD on disc on an eight-foot wide screen illuminated by a projector with three 1920x1080 SXRD chips. And it’s going to be quite a while before I purchase a computer with an internal HD disc drive so I can capture and send screencaps to those who may disagree with any of my video criticisms. So if and when I do find problems with any HD disc that another site found stunning, please bear with me; I probably really did see the problems I reported, and they are probably quite real.
But I digress . . . with luck, I’ll be so impressed with HD on disc that I’ll have little to complain about. And that brings me to my first arrivals: The Last Samurai, Swordfish, and Constantine.
The Video
The images are razor sharp. During a close-up, when the focus is slightly different on the farthest and the closest facial feature due to a limited depth of field when filming in low light, it’s highly noticeable. Small object detail is outstanding. Facial expressions remain very clear in scenes filmed with longer focal length lenses. This is a dramatic advantage when an actor, far from the camera in a long shot, is maintaining an emotional tone regardless of how close he or she is to the lens. Finely grained textures are superb. The textures of fabrics and the normal skin imperfections found even in a movie star’s face are crystal clear. Color intensity and depth are exceptional. Edge halos - the bane of my home theater existence - are gone. The high definition images don’t have that unpleasant processed appearance that halos cause.
But my most compelling reaction is that by removing what I can only describe as the haze of standard resolution, the viewing experience has more emotional impact. With detail comes the impression of realism, and with realism comes the ability of the film to draw the viewer more effectively into the onscreen drama.
The Audio
The sound impresses as well. There have been reports that Warner Home Video mistakenly mixed the tracks at too low a level. There have been other reports that the tracks become too loud. Both of those claims incorrectly represent the audio tracks. What I perceive is a reduction of the average level of the spoken word to elevate the dynamic range. The only way a sound mixer can accommodate simultaneously an absolute maximum level and an extended dynamic range is to reduce the average level. The result is that dialog runs 10 dB to 15 dB lower than the same title on SD DVD. So the viewer is forced to boost the audio gain to make the voices from the HD DVD as audible as the DVD. But loud sound effects then peak at much higher sound pressure levels, which is closer to the motion picture theater experience, but requires great loudspeakers and substantial power amplifier reserve.
In the opening act of Swordfish, John Travolta’s character is having a quiet chat with the authorities. It’s at that point that the viewer will pump up the volume level to achieve parity with the DVD version. But within a few minutes, there is a horrific explosion. From DVD the audible impact of the explosion is notable. From HD DVD it’s visceral . . . palpable . . . shocking . . . gut pounding. Once again, the format draws the viewer into the emotion of the scene with sensory near-overload. The drama quotient has gone up a dozen points.
The Supplements
For the most part, bringing up the menu from the remote control displays a translucent affair that allows free navigation with the film running in the background. (I also recall selecting a menu list that stopped the film dead in its tracks even before I made a selection.) The disc/player defaults to an annoying swishing sound whenever a cursor action is taken. That sound may be disabled from a disc setup submenu. It would have been more logical to set a player setup option to default to either menu sound on or off, so the setting would be remembered from disc to disc.
The extras are essentially recycled from the DVD editions and it truly is impressive to watch and listen to a film with such improved visual and audible fidelity and still have room on the disc for supplements that consumed a second disc in the DVD edition.
The Annoyances
I’ve already mentioned the inexplicable lack of a video zoom function for non-anamorphic widescreen content. There are a few more annoyances worthy of mention.
Stop a DVD player and the player remembers the precise point when you halted the disc; if you avoid pressing Stop a second time, pressing Play will resume where you interrupted the flow. Not so HD DVD. The Toshiba will behave like any other player with a DVD loaded. But stop an HD DVD and press Play (or Resume) and the film starts from the beginning. I’m having trouble understanding why that should be so.
The HD DVD player should be turned on last if HDMI is the signal transport. In fact once that handshake connection is established, interrupting that connection causes the player to enter the Stop mode. This is another unfathomable annoyance that brings me to the topic of HDMI switching.
Things Get Complicated
Since I can’t zoom non-anamorphic widescreen video internal to the Toshiba, I’m going to retain my Denon DVD player and Key Digital scaler. The scaler has an HDCP-compliant DVI output that’s capable of driving an HDMI input (as described in Blandings Part 10, that’s my preferred connection path for best results). And when I take delivery of my Blu-ray Disc player in the September / October timeframe, I’ll have accumulated three HDCP-compliant HDMI signal sources. The Sony has only one HDMI input. I need a digital video switcher.
Such switching will be included within HDMI 1.3 capable digital audio decoders, since the HDMI bit stream will transport both the advanced digital audio and video. The decoder will strip out the audio and transform it to the analog signals power amplifiers require. The video will then be sent on its way to the display. But such decoders are months away; I need a switcher now.
Not all HDMI switchers are built the same. It must be HDCP-compliant. It must have sufficient bandwidth to receive and transmit 1080p reliably. It must have enough drive capability to push signals down an eight-meter (or more) HDMI cable without generating any visible errors. It must have enough input channels to satisfy switching needs. And it should be cost-effective.
When I first designed my theater, I recommended that the more dexterous consider buying the quality raw materials and tools required to fabricate quality interconnects. At the time, all high-end cables were excessively expensive and were marketed like snake oil. That was before BetterCables came along. Here’s a company that uses great materials and simply makes reasonably priced quality cables. As I mentioned in Blandings Part 10, being able to support without error an 8-meter HDMI run of 1080p is an impressive feat for a passive cable. It’s a company I trust; its products have never let me down. So I was delighted to discover that BetterCables is now offering a 5-channel HDCP-compliant HDMI switcher with all the attributes I require and the cost is only $350. It’s the DM-HDMI-5X1 Display Magic 5-In 1-Out HDMI Switcher.
With respect to image quality, placing the switcher between the Toshiba HD-A1 and the Sony display made not one bit of difference (pun intended). Not a sparkle, not a visibly dropped bit, no noise, nothing. And that’s as it should be. A switcher should be completely transparent. The switcher properly takes care of HDCP handshakes between the Toshiba and the Sony and all is well. Until I tried to make a DVD to HD DVD comparison. I paused my Toshiba on a specific HD DVD frame and found and paused my Denon player on the same frame from a same title on DVD. But when I switched the BetterCables unit back to the Toshiba, the HD DVD player had stopped. If the HDMI connection is broken, the Toshiba player stops and, of course, without remembering where it was on the disc. Annoying and annoying. It’s an issue with how Toshiba implemented the HDCP handshake and I guess I’ll just have to live with it until Toshiba decides to fix the problem with a future firmware release.
So, my final video configuration (in anticipation of the Sony Blu-ray Disc player) looks like this:
Parting Thoughts
The HD DVD experience is very satisfying indeed. I think I can safely say that I’ve finally reproduced the emotional impact of the motion picture theater at home, but without inconsiderately noisy moviegoers, sticky floors, and the ever-present smell of popcorn.
We could all stop upgrading our home theater rigs with the 1080 format, embracing an approach of “close enough.” Or, sometime in a decade or so, we could press ahead with bigger and better. As I pointed out in my Viewpoint speculating about what the future may hold, we still haven’t approached what our vision can perceive. I have resigned myself to the reality that Home Theater is an expensive hobby.
I’m genuinely delighted with HD DVD, but Sony is preparing a round of Blu-ray Disc releases authored with the advanced VC-1 video CODEC. (The first Blu-ray Disc releases were compressed using MPEG-2 with reportedly mixed results.) When those improved discs are available, what will Blu-ray Disc look like with a higher bit rate afforded by its larger capacity? I salivate at the thought.
As happy as I am with the stunning quality of HD DVD’s video performance, it’s too soon to make a recommendation to you. Only when I’ve experienced Sony’s Blu-ray Disc player and Blu-ray Discs authored with an advanced video CODEC will I be able to make an informed comparison. But I will say this . . .
The Toshiba HD-A1 is readily available for under its SRP of $500. Many, perhaps most, HD DVDs are readily available for $18 delivered to your door. There is no predicting when or if Universal Studios Home Entertainment or The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment will relent and support Blu-ray Disc. So if you are willing to risk several hundred dollars on a format that could fail or win or simply coexist with Blu-ray Disc for years to come, and if you have a hankering for film in high definition, and if you’d like to improve the appearance of anamorphic DVDs, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the Toshiba player.
The HD DVD experience is very satisfying indeed. I think I can safely say that I’ve finally reproduced the emotional impact of the motion picture theater at home, but without inconsiderately noisy moviegoers, sticky floors, and the ever-present smell of popcorn.
We could all stop upgrading our home theater rigs with the 1080 format, embracing an approach of “close enough.” Or, sometime in a decade or so, we could press ahead with bigger and better. As I pointed out in my Viewpoint speculating about what the future may hold, we still haven’t approached what our vision can perceive. I have resigned myself to the reality that Home Theater is an expensive hobby.
I’m genuinely delighted with HD DVD, but Sony is preparing a round of Blu-ray Disc releases authored with the advanced VC-1 video CODEC. (The first Blu-ray Disc releases were compressed using MPEG-2 with reportedly mixed results.) When those improved discs are available, what will Blu-ray Disc look like with a higher bit rate afforded by its larger capacity? I salivate at the thought.
As happy as I am with the stunning quality of HD DVD’s video performance, it’s too soon to make a recommendation to you. Only when I’ve experienced Sony’s Blu-ray Disc player and Blu-ray Discs authored with an advanced video CODEC will I be able to make an informed comparison. But I will say this . . .
The Toshiba HD-A1 is readily available for under its SRP of $500. Many, perhaps most, HD DVDs are readily available for $18 delivered to your door. There is no predicting when or if Universal Studios Home Entertainment or The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment will relent and support Blu-ray Disc. So if you are willing to risk several hundred dollars on a format that could fail or win or simply coexist with Blu-ray Disc for years to come, and if you have a hankering for film in high definition, and if you’d like to improve the appearance of anamorphic DVDs, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the Toshiba player.
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Mr. Blandings Part 11 - August 2006
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HD DVD and HDMI Switching
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