Caprica13

Just puchased the standard edition for $16 odd. Didn't feel the crap in the tin box was worth even an additional tenner (+ postage) and the tin takes WAY too much space on the rack. The transfer is spectacular. Worth the purchase. Pity the fool that bought the box at full price when it first came out

What's not covered under warranty? Your Toshiba product. Go buy Panasonic instead.

Here's one of the best reviews of the product i've seen. In a nutshell, some reviewers have found that the player decodes 1080p off the disc natively to 1080i and then does post processing back to 1080p. What this means is that it just de-interlaces a 1080i native signal and doesn't do a true throughput of 1080p. I think even Xe1 has this issue. And it's output on 1080p can be lousy, Here's the article. http://www.ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/507tosha20/ Don't believe that newer firmware has fixed this problem.

The fact that it was shot in 70mm means that it continues to look better and better as transfer resolution improves. Saw it projected in the cinema in 70mm a few years back - Quite a thing to behold. The beauty of 70mm format is no anarmorphic lens abborations. So all the light flares look right and the edge focus is razor sharp. Just awesome. And I concur - On HD DVD, 2001 looks stunning, like a period movie instead of a movie made 40 years ago.

This is the kind of slimebag that rushed off to the stores on the first day of sales, loaded up the trolley with the entire stockpile of players for that store and walked out with them at $99 each. I saw people walking off in JB hifi with 6 players at a time in a shopping trolley, asking if there are any more. Looked slimey. The guy I saw couldn't speak English properly but he knew enough to have the gall to ask for cheapa. He had a mobile phone and was calling furiously while there stacking the trolley. Fortunately those were only E1s that I saw being sold. Ironically, this particular ebayer is selling an E1 himself now after dumping on it in the other ad. Wonder if buyers pick up on this or realise that EP10 1080p doesn't even work correctly. It amazes me how people buy the machines now at these staggering prices. When they were $149 they sat on their hands. Now they're buying obsolete units at 3x the money. Maybe cause they have a large collection now and need a spare/replacement machine.

I feel a class action coming on. Would hate to be working in ACCC over this.

Hey. Clever guy - read the link in the very first posting. The headline is what this topic was referring to in the article.

Come on guys - he's pulling your leg. Anyone who joins this forum I am sure would know about aspect ratios.

Whoah. The "retard" comment struck a nerve. I leave the forum for a couple of hours, come back and there's all this back and forth. Firstly, thanks for the support minibinpin. Now, come on guys. I was not trying to be offensive. I use this expression for someone doing something extremely silly. And since when do we need to be politically correct in this forum. That's for work, right? We can express ourselves without pulling punches here. ok, so to elaborate on the comment, you would have rocks in your head (is that better?) to spend all this money on obsolete technology for the following reasons: 1) Good luck getting support out of Toshiba in the future. I read about people having major issues today getting repairs on their machines here. Imagine what it will be like 6 months from now when parts (and spare players) are gone or rare. If you buy a good upscaling player, it's got more chance of being supported vs. something that manufacturer walked away from. 2) Why, why, why would you go and buy for full price something that won't play any new movies in the future. Now, I'm not saying go buy a BD - in fact not at all as the pricing is an absolute utter ripoff. Stick to something that gives you good performance vs. price. It used to be HD DVD. Now that players and movies have dried up, it just doesn't make sense. Amazon is more expensive, Ezydvd just has crap left for sale, crave has limited titles. WHY would you bother? 3) PS3 high price is not a good compare. Buying something at the start of it's life that will play awesome games (GTA 4, MGS4, etc) + blue ray that's upgradeable to 2.0 profile kind of makes sense. Paying same money for something that is guaranteed to have no support is baffling. So there you go. I have to conclude that those paying these prices are making irrational, emotional decisions that they will regret. Oh, and I'm not a kid by the way - not in years at least...

Anyone who pays like $700+ for an XE1 today is a retard...sorry. The reason why everyone jumped on this is that players were costing $99 (E1) to $300 for an XE1. HD DVD is gone - deal with it. The sales are gone...deal with it. If you missed the boat, thems the breaks. But dont go blowing a grand just to make yourself feel part of this crowd. Oh, and I have an XE1. Bought cheap. Lots of movies bought cheap. Would I pay top dollar for movies or player? No way! HD DVD made sense cause it was a bargain (or priced how things should be priced). Remember, it did not sell when it was full price - that's why it extinct.

Actually on the subject of XE1 I have yet to see any HD player (HD DVD or Blu) that beats or even matches the picture quality. The sharpness, color, everything just jumps off the screen. Everytime I look at playback in the stores from either Pana units, or Pioneer or whatever the image just looks ordinary, even on good plasmas like Pioneer or Pana. Are there any players BD players on the market that actually give you a beter picture than the XE1?

Hey One other thought. You could get one of these. I reckon if I was out for a high end player, I might think about it. I have read some reviews that it can be a bit glitchy, but given the price and feature set, may be a good option. SAMSUNG BD-UP5000 Blu-Ray & HD-DVD Combo I can't post a link to ebay as I think it's against the rules here. Go to Ebay (Aussie or US) and do a search for this player. There are a few people selling them at like $470 to $500 USD + postage. So for around $600USD you can get a combo HD DVD + blu ray delivered which plays both formats and has a Reon scaler like the XE1. there's also new firmware avail on the web if you dig around. Prob the best option today and a very nice looking unit to boot. You'll be the envy of all your friends with this one. Do keep in mind that it will only play Region 1 DVDs and Region A Blu Ray which means you will have to buy BDs on amazon or ebay. HD DVD of course, is region free so you're sweet. Finally, you may need a step down converter from 120v to 240v to use here. Still overall a MUCH MUCH better use of your money than buying an XE1 at advertised prices. GOod luck

Maid in Sweeden would be more my cup of tea from that site.

Only if you pry it out of my cold dead hands Seriously, it may be a hassle finding one by now. If you're ready to pay a big premium, ebay may be best option. Keep in mind - the improvement is small - although you can't output bitstream audio you can transcode to LPCM on EP10 and then multi channel out. I've read a lot of reviews and most are in agreement that it largely doesn't make a huge difference doing transcode at player end to LPCM or using amp to decode bistream. The picture settings on XE1 are nice and so is upconvert, but again not worth the big money you need to pay nowadays. During the heyday of sales, getting an XE1 at $299 - $350 made sense. Paying $600 to $800 now when you have an EP10 and that no further titles will be released...I'd suggest holding off and spending the money on something that will give better return. The fire sale ship appears to have sailed. Move on...

Wow, the topic is getting rather philosophical On the topic of blu ray, had a look around on the weekend. There may be 5 titles at most worth getting. The rest looks like crud. Should start seeing a lot more titles from mid year, but am I the only one who thinks that BD titles are rather lacking right now? I wonder what all these fire sales on HD DVD will do to HD demand though this year and whether people that went both simply won't buy the same titles again in Blu? Interesting also how all the newest titles appear to be "B" coded where older movies have ABC coding.

Mjr69. Hope you're insured.

Finally watched Beowulf last night. Expected very little. Was pleasantly surprised. Of course image and sound was just awesome. Audio mix is possibly the best I have heard period. The only thing is the dynamic range was excessive. I mean dynamic range is great and all, but the peaks and lows were extreme in volume differences. When Grendel screams, if it doesn't knock the crap out of you - you're already dead! The movie was surprisingly good. The first 30 mins was rather flat, but it then picked up as a story. Angelina Jolie with outfit and heels was something else. I wonder how "accurate" her motion capture of all her body parts was. Since the extras are conspicuously missing any behind the scenes footage of Angelina, I'd say that they somehow managed to get some very accurate motion capture of her indeed. Voice and motion acting was superb all round. I definitely think they should have made it as a hybrid animated with live action actors. Those mannequin eyes (they still haven't worked out how to motion capture eyes) let the performances down in a big way and detach you emtionally somewhat. Nonetheless a cracker of a disc - glad I got it.

I for one was motivated to jump into HD DVD purely as it became a case of "too good an offer to resist". Around late last year as I was looking at purchasing some new DVDs (not HD) titles out of US, I came across the Best Buy clearances for HD DVD machines at USD$99. A quick browse of the web confirmed that I could ship a brand new unit to Australia for around $200 all up. I couldn't believe it - a quality HD player for this kind of money was just too good to pass up. That and the price of HD DVDs being basically same as DVD made me think - we'll if I'm buying these movies anyway, may as well get them on HD. Now I am a pretty hard core Home cinema buff, but an upconverted image on my top of the line $2K DVD player running into a 50" HD plasma via HDMI was more than good enough. The decision to go HD was purely a "too good to pass up". I've said this in another posting. A good upscaling DVD player at 4m away (even on a 50" plasma) looks damn good and nearly indistiguishable from HD at a sitting distance (I have both a good uppscaling machine and an XE1, so believe i speak from experience here). In the time runnig up to the fire sales, I bought maybe 8 titles (a very select few movies that I REALLY wanted). Never planned to own more than like 10 discs at normal pricing. With the sales, I managed to get over 80 titles (all at $5 - $10 brand new - again, a no brainer as they were cheaper than standard def pricing), and an XE1 that I would have never imagined buying had it not been < $400 for Reon based DVD player. So we have now gone HD purely as opportunists. The point is this - if as a home cinema enthusiast I am basically very satisfied with a DVD option and opportunistically fell into HD (the opportunity being basically over now for new buyers), why would 95% to 99% of the population (most of whom are prob using $99 LG or $50 Strathfield players) give a toss about True HD, 1080p, or whatever. Most people come home, put on the box, watch their foxtel and get their DVD rentals from their local video ezy. How many people run their HDMI plasmas via composive or S-video? VHS to DVD was a QUANTUM leap in quality, extras, sound (5.1 vs. mono for most people). DVD to HD DVD/Blu Ray is a tiny incremental upgrade vs. DVD for most people. Even 1080p vs. 720p in most cases is indistiguishable on all but the largest and best LCDs. And most people didn't get into DVD until they were everywhere and you could buy machines for < $100. AND this is all in moving from archaic VHS. So here's my humble view. Until HD basically replaces DVD at same price and that's the only thing on offer, which is some years away, I don't see Blu Ray or anything else setting the world on fire. People need something really dramatic to push them to move. I mean, most are still on analogue TV (what happened to cutting off analogue this year?) Oh, and the comment someone made about recession in US driving low sales. Mate, you prob don't have a mortage. Checked our interest rates recently? With much of the country (at least in major citites) mortaged to the hilt, HD is like the luxury within luxury spending that will quickly get pushed back. Don't worry,the receission will hit us soon enough. With all the money Sony burned trying to win this war, the only way they will recoup is by pushing high profits in the short term (which means not much lowering of prices). I hope people are smart enough to see this and demand value before they spend. At least in US, this seems to be happening.

Interesting. Getting a reply out of ebay when you need something is basically impossible. Interesting if they have time to harass forums instead of looking after their own customer better. Buggers!

HI there. I have posted this in the HD DVD forum as it's more topical to HD DVD devotees than Blu Ray readers. Posting something like this in the BD forum would serve to purely annoy people, which was not the intention here. I'd say many of the users here are frustrated that HD DVD is gone since it was superior in some important ways like region free and that discs were repairable. Makes it an interesting read in this forum

Interesting coverage. Not only has HD DVD end not helped Blu Ray Sales, but in the US they have tracked a 40% sale decline from Jan to Feb and then almost same bad sales in March month. Interesting how everyone was raving around HD DVD this and HD DVD that in terms of stalling HD Growth. Could consumers finally be voting with their feet? Could consumers finally be realising the poor value monopoly situation we are faced with now? In fact sales are so bad, that research companies won't even release actual sales figures. Funny how they were throwing numbers around when it suited them eh? Even if this is a short term thing, it's a much needed kick in the pants for the player manufacturs + Movie pricing... http://gizmodo.com/385925/hd-dvds-death-ha...t-talk-about-em and countless other like this have been posted...

Or perhaps their demand dropped to zero and they realised that the only thing driving HD DVD sales are the low prices. Problem is these companies are run by MBA morons that look at spreadsheets all day but have no clue as to what the numbers really mean. They see demand spikes, they raise prices, They see demand fall, they drop prices. Connecting the dots...well that is asking for a bit much.

All. Not sure if you all are aware but there is a well known bug with Analogue output on the Xe1. What you need to do is change the "Digital Out SPDIF" from bitstream to PCM. Yes, I know it doesn't make any sense as this is an analogue setting and changing digital should not have any effect, however enables bass and speaker management. If it helps...

Paramount packaging has been dodgy for a while. NExt Gen, DS9 and Voyager were ok. They went dodgy with enterprise (with the shonky sticky taped plastic holders) and then animated series. The outside shells still look nice, but the inside pack is shockin...

I converted an A2 to E1. Very simple process IF you find the right firmware. There are several versions of downgrade/cross-flash firmware avail - have to get the right one. I hear 3rd generation players (A3, A30, A35, etc) don't have cross flash firmware avail. prob better of getting a US A2/A20/XA2 or 2nd gen Euro player. 3rd gen players are generally same or worse than 2nd gen.