I have had Blu-ray for a while courtesy of my PS3. It came into its own when Netflix starting offering Blu-Ray at no additional cost. At then this weekend I found the HD-A2 at Amazon for a great price and they are still doing the 5 free disc offer. So now I am the proud owner of both formats.
It is unfair to compare the HD-A2 setup experience with the PS3 as the PS3 is so much better than a stand alone player. It was simpel to setup and easy to update. The HD-A2 was also simle to setup but the firmware update must have taken 45 minutes over the web. Will do a CD update next time.
Added HD-DVD as an option to my Netflix queue in second place behind blu-ray and waited for the discs to roll in.
The only complaint I have so far is that I had assumed like the PS3 I would be able to get full 5.1 using the hdmi cable. I currently have a nice etup where my TV takes the hdmi audio and then splits it out into optical and forwards to my ancient amp. This works great for the ps3 but fails miserably for the HD-A2. The problem is the HD-DVD discs all have DD+ and not standard DD or DTS. This means my TV doesn't know what to do with it and so nothing gets forwaded.
My solution will be to get a toslink switch and use the optical out instead as pointed out here:
Ultimate AV: Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player
"Without this HDMI audio capability you'll be limited to hearing only the downconverted output over the optical Toslink connection. DD or TrueHD signals are decoded and converted to PCM in the player. This PCM signal is then re-encoded as a 1.5 Mbps DTS bitstream, which is then output over the Toslink connection and decoded yet again from DTS to (ultimately) analog by your AVR or pre/pro. This is bad news for those who are still without a DTS decoder in their AVR. They'll be stuck listening to downmixed analog two-channel output from the legacy RCA jacks."
Or I can try and covince my wife that I should by the $1700 Sony STR-DA5300ES when it comes out in september.......
No comments:
Post a Comment