I don't understand Toshiba's position on this.. OK so they sell a few thousand players but Warner Bros and others have spoken.. I don't see these studios changing their minds.

What I have been finding out in the past few weeks after I bought my Toshiba HD A3 player is:

1. You can't display any remaining time on the TV monitor, only what has played- so far.
The remaining time left is only displayed on the readout panel of the player itself..   

2. When you play an HD disk you can't bring up the 'audio  source' on screen and pick which audio format you want to hear. The remote will change the audio, ( English to French to commentary etc..) but only 'blindly', it will not display the info on screen ( only non HD disc will do this)

3. The audio embedded in an HD disc will play back fine on my 4 year old digital JVC audio receiver, but because of the 'NEW' HD audio formats ( Dolby Digital True HD and Dolby Digital Plus ), I get all 5.1 on my receiver readout regardless of what the HD disc is playing, (1.0/ 2.0 DD Mono, 'interactive menu music ', and Dolby surround DD3 is all read back as 5.1.,) Makes it kind of challenging when you are trying to figure out what it is that is playing back.  The sales people never explained that fully to me..
( Means I will have to invest in a newer digital audio receiver for HD )

4.  When you start up the HD player ( blu-ray or HD) , it takes up to a minute or longer for the player to be in the mode to open the disc tray.. ( bottom line, power up the player, then power up the TV (and then go to the can) ...,,,,  when you come back,  the player will be 'ready' to accept a new disc. The HDD player is in effect a like a PC/ CD-ROM with memory and Ram .

5. If you decide to stop playing back a non HD disk , you hit stop......... then when you hit play it goes back to the scene you just played..,BUT  If you turn off the player it will forget where it was and you will have to navigate back to that area the next time you power up the player, no Bookmarks for NON HD disks.,

6. If you decide to stop playing back a real HD disk , you hit stop......... then when you hit play it goes back to the FBI warnings,. It will not remember where the disc was stopped and will always go back to 'square one'  ( this is not the case with Regular DVD.., ).

7. 'Bookmarks ' are a novelty  over non HD disks, but you will have to remember to do this before you hit stop on the remote..

8. HD discs are priced at twice the price over NON HD disks and with the Toshiba players ability to up convert the signal to 1080i , I find the regular DVD a treat to watch., I will now be curbing my spending dollars to NON HD discs and will be very selective on any of the current catalog I will buy in the future. ( Lethal Weapon was such a disappointment in HD ) ..

Did I overlook anything??

Quoting eommen:

Quote:

Pressing menu should bring out the full menu, allowing you to go to the sound options. Depending on your preference, the movie plays on or you should pause it. Like your 1., this is very much by design targeted at conforming HD DVD's.
...

Reply: I have only seen that on a couple of Disks I own but not all., And when you do pause the picture it brings up that large slider bar and that cuts into any detail you want to look closer at.
And the same movie that does have that slider bar I own ( 2001 ), for any of the extra  featurettes that play back you cannot get any type of slider bar to activate, that feature is only available on the Main feature and not all content on the HDD .

It's all about install base.  I'm assuming the HD DVD camp is figuring if they can drop the prices, get the hardware in peoples' homes, then the studios will have no choice but to either go neutral or possibly switch back.  If HD DVD can prove they have more hardware in the homes than Blu-ray then they could be back in it, especially if there is angry consumer demand on the studios to support these new hi-def players they just bought at Wal-Mart.

I can't really say whether it may be a good plan or not.  All I can say is that I'm glad I went purple with a dual format player so I don't really care one way or the other.  I will say that I still feel HD DVD is the superior format.  Not to say HD DVD hasn't had their share of problems with their movies, but Blu-ray is currently a mess as far as format support in their players.  Blu-ray is just now introducing profile 1.1 (essentially just adding PiP capability.. a feature HD DVD has had from the beginning) discs on the market and attempting to upgrade players to the 1.1 standard.  Every week Blu-ray movies are being released that cannot be played in various players due to incompatiblity with whatever Java the studios decided to throw on the disc.  With my particular player, there's a list of Blu-ray movies that have major issues during playback or cannot be played at all.  3:10 to Yuma was fixed (for the most part) in the last firmware update last week, but Sunshine and several others are completely unplayable.  Many others have issues with the menus and garbled audio on various discs.  There's supposed to be another firmware upgrade coming out soon to fix these other discs.  But what about the movies coming out next week? Or the week after?

Things will eventually settle down once the profile 2.0 players are standard and profile 2.0 discs are standard and Studios quit getting "cute" with their java programming, but I don't see that happening until closer to the end of the year.  I knew what I was getting into being an early adopter so I'm trying to be patient.  But it sure would be nice if I could watch Sunshine that I bought a week or so ago on my new high tech hi-def player...    Ya blu-ray!

Quoting THEMADCHEF:

Quote:
this is why i have not bought any of these players yet, doesn't anyone remember the VHS/Beta war?
LP's vs. CD's, 8-track vs. cassette, and i still have not bought a HD TV yet, but i know that not only will the price come down but the quailty will go up, i'm just going to wait and save my money for that better, cheaper product, maybe next year.

Get your Bucket List made , before it's too late...