Toshiba HD-A35 displaces HD-XA2 in highend hometheater setups!

[dugpa]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

Do you mean passing a digital Dolby TrueHD signal via HDMI to a receiver or something?

Yes. People was saying passing the raw soundtrack streams because of the mixing in the player (commentaries, menu sounds, etc) wouldn't work. It's now been proven that if the disc is authored correctly it works just fine. You get the TrueHD sent to your receiver. If you turn on a commentary track it kicks it down to dolby digital.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by dugpa

Yes. People was saying passing the raw soundtrack streams because of the mixing in the player (commentaries, menu sounds, etc) wouldn't work. It's now been proven that if the disc is authored correctly it works just fine. You get the TrueHD sent to your receiver. If you turn on a commentary track it kicks it down to dolby digital.

Wow, a lot has changed since I was last active here.

Thanks!

Peace...

[dugpa]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

Wow, a lot has changed since I was last active here.

That's progress for you. Another 10 years and we'll be downloading films directly into our brains and playing them back on our bionic eyes.

[Ruined]

The A35 got quite a flattering review here, despite this being a picky review site! The author basically names it the best looking HD DVD player to date.

http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplaye...a35/index.html

But whenever I want to get a good handle on the best quality HD DVD playback, I often turn to The Chronicles of Riddick. It might not be (spoiler alert: understatement ahead) the greatest movie ever made, but it does become more interesting with repeat viewing, thanks to a serious science fiction premise and some fine performances from actors who can make even leaden lines sound convincing (though I don't refer here to the leads!).

But like it as a film or not, it looks completely amazing. I haven't revisited this film in a while, but through the HD-A35 I received a refresher course in its jaw-dropping cinematography and production design. It's a rather monochromatic film, but the few bright colors are all the more startling for that. There are many dark scenes, but they are never murky—on a good display. And there aren't more than a handful of shots here that aren't in tight, crisp focus, including long shots with a startling depth of field. The HD-35 gets it all—in fact I've never seen this pristine HD DVD transfer look better.

I had the good fortune to see King Kong twice in the same theater (the Arclight in Hollywood). In both cases the prints were the best I've seen from any movie in years. I had been particularly impressed by one of the quieter sequences early in the film: the close-ups of Naomi Watts' Ann Darrow as she talks in a New York restaurant with Jack Black's Jack Driscoll. Watts' eyes looked amazing on the big screen. I don't know if there was any computer enhancement involved in this, but if there was, it had the desired effect. I've watched this scene on other HD DVD players and displays, and this was the closest I've come to duplicating the emotional reaction I had from it in that original theatrical experience. The rest of the disc looked great as well on the HD-A35, but this particular scene grabbed me immediately.

I'd highly recommend this unit to anyone looking for a top notch HD DVD player!

[ganthc]

Does the hd-a35 have a built in decoder for dts-hdma that can send the lossless track via pcm, or does it just simply pass the audio via bitstream to a receiver that decodes it? For me, that's a big difference as my receiver is an hdmi receiver, but it does not decode dts-hdma.

[chlngr1970]

Acording to the Toshiba site, the HD-A35 can only decode dts HD Core, not HD MA. Looks like you will need to buy a new receiver, g

j

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by chlngr1970

Acording to the Toshiba site, the HD-A35 can only decode dts HD Core, not HD MA. Looks like you will need to buy a new receiver, g

j

Thanks for the info. Nah, I think I will just wait for the player that does decode it and is reasonably priced.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Does the hd-a35 have a built in decoder for dts-hdma that can send the lossless track via pcm, or does it just simply pass the audio via bitstream to a receiver that decodes it? For me, that's a big difference as my receiver is an hdmi receiver, but it does not decode dts-hdma.

Ah, okay. The HD-A35 does pretty much the same thing as all other HD DVD players (including your A2) with DTS-HDMA. It only decodes the 768kbps-1.5mbps lossy core (varies depending on release) and sends that via PCM5.1 to your receiver. Therefore you will get sound with DTS-HDMA soundtracks, just not the full resolution. If you want the full DTS-HDMA resolution, you need to output bitsream. The HD-A35 can do this, but there is a tradeoff.

With that in mind, I have the capability to run things bitstream w/ full DTS-HDMA but I do not use bitstream. The reason mainly is because there is very little gain between DTS 1.5mbps and DTS-HDMA based on my tests. I watched the first 5 minutes of Terminator 2 in DTS-HD 1.5mbps lossy decoded by the player, then again in full DTS-HDMA. After strict A/B analysis I found a 5 second part of that 5 minutes where the distant background noises were just a tad clearer on the DTS-HDMA version. This is the brief period during the opening monologue where Sarah Connor is discussing the war against the machines, about 10 seconds before the first machine comes on screen and crushes the skull. I don't see anyone actually noticing these brief differences as they were so minute.

And here lies the problem. For such little gain when you run bitstream you lose the sound on U-Contrl/IME/PiP special features because those need to use the internal decoders and mixers for audio. So in my opinion, its definitely not worth it to run bitstream for little to no gain in most tests I ran. So I have actually disabled bitstream and I am decoding internally in the player - it just works better and doesn't sound significantly different. I don't want to lose sound on all of my in-movie extras.

The ultimate would be a player that can decode every format in full resolution including DTS-HDMA internally - the HD-A35 does all of them (including TrueHD) with the exception of full resoluton DTS-HDMA. However there are very few DTS-HDMA releases and the gain from bitstream is not worth the tradeoff of losing sound on all the cool IME/U-Control features. So I wouldn't be all that anxious to upgrade your receiver or HD DVD player for that manner. So, while the HD-A35 isn't perfect, IMO its the best HD DVD player to date. HD-XA3 may trump it when it comes out with quicker operation or internal DTS-HDMA decoding, but it will likely also cost $400 more.

In summary, I feel nextgen bitstream codec output is a gimmick that hampers the HD DVD experience more than it helps.

[rixrex]

I just got two new gizmos to add to the already quite large setup here.

Picked up an XA2, first venture into any regular HD format, and not at all unhappy with it, as it perfectly matches the older Pioneer set that only does 720p and 1080i. The A2 is exceptional in performance as I look at it with somewhat limited HD viewing experience, I admit, and really has a nice design as well. Looks great next to the legacy Toshiba items.

Also picked up a new DVDO unit that upconverts to all sorts of HD formats in all different Hz and framerates, and I must say that it blows away the upconversion on the XA2, and likely would blow away any other upconvertor, either HD or BD.

This new DVDO unit really fixes all sorts of annoyances I had been having with S-DVD artifacting, and all the herky-jerky imaging that happenes with quick and wide motion across the screen. Everything now looks very much like a film theater presentation.

It's tough to see the differences in LDs vs S-DVDs, where before it only took me to watch an action scene to tell which was which. And the upconversion really makes all the older formats come close to the HD DVD. Plus I get to keep LD sound. Videotapes are more noticable as such, but generally that's because of peculiarities always common to tapes, the enhanced image is still outstanding, and no more dot crawl, even on EP tapes.

The DVDO also has built in lyp sync adjustment if necessary, but so far not needed.