Toshiba (Model: HD-A1) HD DVD Player

thefilmaddict

thefilmaddict

Veteran
I see that Best Buy now sells a HD DVD Player. It's made by Toshiba (Model: HD-A1). It says that it can play and upconvert regular DVD's (which is good). It also plays:

HD DVD, HD DVD-R, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, CD, CD-R/-RW, MP3 and WMA formats

I wonder if I can burn a DVD-R Data Disk with some sort of file (created in Final Cut Pro) that this HD DVD player can play. A file that would show my HVX200 DVCPRO HD (720 24p) footage in all (or most of) its glory.

I'm sure that I would be limited to length of HD footage I could put on a standard DVD, but even if it was around 5 minutes, that would work for music videos.

Any ideas if this HD DVD player can do what I want it to do and if it can, what type of file would I need to create?
 
That thing is expensive.

Are you trying to do this for personal use only?

What kind of Hi-Def Ready Television do you own, if so?
 
This is one case I don't plan to be on the "cutting edge" of technology. My first CD player was around $400. As was my first DVD player. My current DVD player was $75 and does more and works just as well as my original. I'll be waiting for prices to come down. :beer:
 
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Yeaaah. It's not that it's not worth the transition, though. It all depend on what's available on HD-DVD format already.

I can say, though, if you just want to have it to display your own HD content on your television set... you should simply find a video-out card that'll connect to your television or HD_Crt television via DVI or HDMI. You'll spend less money, and get WAY more mileage out of it than a 500.00 DVD player.

You could port the 500.00 dvd player to a friends house for some hi-def fun, I suppose. But it's still only what you have on disc, and I don't think shelling out thousands of dollars for an HD-DVD burner is worth that at all.
 
HD-DVD and Blue Ray and NOT worth investing in at this point in time.

You are better of saving your money, and waiting to see:

A) how the format war plays out...will there even be a winner or will both lose
B) how fast the price comes down, and if it even becomes accepted as a standard (or a videophile fomart ala laserdisc.)

Its too early, and I think unless you have a ton of money to blow, and not care about then you are just asking for trouble.
 
Kholi said:
That thing is expensive.

Are you trying to do this for personal use only?

What kind of Hi-Def Ready Television do you own, if so?
Click to expand...

It's around $500. That is a lot for a regular DVD player, but wouldn't be that bad if I could use it as a portable HD DVD player that could play HD video burned to a data DVD-R disk. It would give me a way to watch my HVX 200 footage on a HD TV (not off of a computer monitor or component HD out from my NLE).

I own a Samsung 26" LCD HD TV (for my edit suite) and a 50" SONY REAR PROJECTION LCD HDTV (for my living room).

I would love to watch my finished projects in my living room. The Sony also hides the noise better than the Samsung.

It would mainly be for personal use.

I would also imagine that HD DVD movies look very bice on a HDTV screen (beter than regular DVD), right?
 
thefilmaddict said:
I would also imagine that HD DVD movies look very bice on a HDTV screen (beter than regular DVD), right?
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It depends....most early reviews are saying not enough to make it worth the money.

But those same reviews did not list the TVs used.

You have to HD tvs...but what are the inputs? HDMI? what are specs, resolution?

Unless you have a TV capable of true 1920x1080 or 1280x720, I think its even LESS trying to invest into.

Its exciting that all this is coming to be yes...but be wary of the hype.

Not mention the first of of movies is limited, and most of them aren't very good to begin with.

Honestly, like I said before, unless you have cash to burn its just better to wait.
 
thefilmaddict said:
It's around $500. That is a lot for a regular DVD player, but wouldn't be that bad if I could use it as a portable HD DVD player that could play HD video burned to a data DVD-R disk. It would give me a way to watch my HVX 200 footage on a HD TV (not off of a computer monitor or component HD out from my NLE).

I own a Samsung 26" LCD HD TV (for my edit suite) and a 50" SONY REAR PROJECTION LCD HDTV (for my living room).

I would love to watch my finished projects in my living room. The Sony also hides the noise better than the Samsung.

It would mainly be for personal use.

I would also imagine that HD DVD movies look very bice on a HDTV screen (beter than regular DVD), right?
Click to expand...

I watch HD content on my CRT all the time, whether it's compressed through H.264 or WMV-HD (And let me tell you... Quicktime.com HD movie trailers look BAD ASS on television.).

I have a Samsung 32" CRT with DVI-in port. I run my PC DVI- out to TV and use Quicktime or the old version of windows media player to view a lot of content from this site and from work.

I don't trust LCD's, by the way. THe Bravia is the only LCD that I've seen with acceptable quality.

When speaking about DVD-R holding HD content... it's not worth it. Maybe fifteen minutes, but you're not going to get HD quality full-length movies on a regular DVD-R. The only way you're going to really benefit from having a DVD-R with HD quality content is to get the DVD player (can't remember brand) that plays WMV-HD files. It's a lot cheaper than the Toshiba HD-DVD player and ten times more practical.

As of now, there's not enough HD-DVD movies to justify spending five-hundred dollars on a player to view them.

Seriously, if you're going to spend five-hundred on that? You'd might as well buy a shuttle-pc off of ebay with a DVI out, purchase a DVI to HDMI cable or DVI to Composite cable, and tote that around... at least you'll be able to watch full length wmv-hd/h.264 movies on your friends televisions and in your living room. You'll get SO much more milage out of it as well.
 
I recently read an interview with George Lucas in regards to his ideas on the new HD mediums. Now I am by no means a huge fan of GL's film Direction but i do believe he is a smart man when it comes to the technology behind filmmaking and its distribution. It is his belief (according to this interview) that both Blu ray and HD DVD are dead mediums already due to the rapid advance of HD codecs that allow rapid transfer of high def files (h.264 for example). He goes on to say that he believe in the near future people will simply have a server in there house to which HD movies are downloaded and then played back. There is a lot of merit to this, especially when one considers Steve Jobs new position in with Disney and Apples push to have video over internet in different forms. It is something interesting to ponder anyway....

PS - BTW the reviews on the HD DVD machines are less than one would hope.
 
thefilmaddict said:
Blu Rays HD player will be around $1000 and is not out yet. I think that's pricey!
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The only reason I'm even thinking about Blu-Ray, at the moment, is because it's possible that the Ps3 will incorporate blu-ray technology just as it's older brother, the Ps2, did with DVD.

Other than that, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray aren't even something I'm concerned with.

Just think of how much burners for either medium's are going to cost? A freaking PC DVD-Burner, at one point, ran over one-thousand dollars. There's no way I'm going to join in that revolution any time soon. I'd seriously rather build a HTPC and take advantage of the many things you can do with it aside from playing an HD-DVD.
 
Glen Hatsumi said:
I recently read an interview with George Lucas in regards to his ideas on the new HD mediums. Now I am by no means a huge fan of GL's film Direction but i do believe he is a smart man when it comes to the technology behind filmmaking and its distribution. It is his belief (according to this interview) that both Blu ray and HD DVD are dead mediums already due to the rapid advance of HD codecs that allow rapid transfer of high def files (h.264 for example). He goes on to say that he believe in the near future people will simply have a server in there house to which HD movies are downloaded and then played back. There is a lot of merit to this, especially when one considers Steve Jobs new position in with Disney and Apples push to have video over internet in different forms. It is something interesting to ponder anyway....

PS - BTW the reviews on the HD DVD machines are less than one would hope.
Click to expand...

He's not far off from the truth. You remember those big ass laser discs that people used to rave about?

Guess what's probably going to meet a similar fate? LMFAO

Dude... a 480p trailer for a hollywood movie, encoded in H.264 is only 16mb... You could probably sink a full-length H.264 Matrix movie in under 4 gigs (I should take the time to calculate this, but I'm being lazy so this could be way off)... that's one DVD. Same thing for WMV-HD.

At best, I'd say wait for the new slew of DVD players that are going to be able to support WMV-9, which should allow you to play back WMV-HD.
 
Kholi said:
The only way you're going to really benefit from having a DVD-R with HD quality content is to get the DVD player (can't remember brand) that plays WMV-HD files. It's a lot cheaper than the Toshiba HD-DVD player and ten times more practical.
Click to expand...

Anyone know where I can find a player like this? It sounds like a better way to go right now.
 
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=96

I don't know anything about it. As I said, I go straight through PC to HD-CRT. I may be interested in something like this, to simply port it to a friends house....

... but that's a huge maybe.

I'm sure someone will come and argue with me on why this is a bad way to spend the money... but honestly I don't think it's a good idea at all to spend five-hundred dollars on an HD-DVD player when you can either build a HTPC-networked... or buy this thing and burn the WMV-hD or Divx-HD file to a dvd and play it back from the Link Player.
 
Glen Hatsumi said:
I recently read an interview with George Lucas in regards to his ideas on the new HD mediums. It is his belief (according to this interview) that both Blu ray and HD DVD are dead mediums already due to the rapid advance of HD codecs that allow rapid transfer of high def files (h.264 for example). He goes on to say that he believe in the near future people will simply have a server in there house to which HD movies are downloaded and then played back.
Click to expand...

I like the server idea. I have a bunch of DVD's that collect dust now. The main reason for buying them was for the extras -- I'm big into behind the scenes and directors commentary. I would go for the home server thing and stop buying/renting DVD's if they would also include extras on the server.

Right now, I'm into Netflix. HD DVDs or Blu Ray offered on Netflix sounds like a good solution for today as far as being able to watch HD Hollywood movies.

That's a different discussion. I'm more concerned now about being able to watch my HVX200 HD footage with a portable player. I would hate to have to bring my G5 downstairs just to watch my projects on my big screen HD TV. Perhaps I should have purchase a laptop (DAMN!).
 
I JUST FOUND THIS ARTICLE ABOUT NETFLIX AND HD DVD'S...

The online DVD rental giant Netflix certainly made a splash yesterday, announcing that they would be renting out both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs as soon as they become available. This is somewhat surprising, as Netflix's CFO had previously declared Blu-ray the winner, but with the constantly changing landscape, it appears they have decided better to support both than to risk backing a loser.

Now more information has come to light, as they have also revealed they will not be charging any additional fee for high-definition DVDs. They state the content cost for them will be the same, so is it possible that there won't be a premium price for next generation DVDs? At this point we still really can't know how this will effect the end consumer, but high-definition TV owners who already subscribe to Netflix or are thinking about it are assured of easily available content, no matter what format they choose.

I LIKE WHERE NETFLIX IS GOING WITH THIS -- DISTRIBUTING BOTH HD DVD AND BLU RAY AND KEEPING THE MONTHLY MEMBERSHIP FEE THE SAME. THAT'S GOOD NEWS.
 
Glen Hatsumi said:
I recently read an interview with George Lucas in regards to his ideas on the new HD mediums. Now I am by no means a huge fan of GL's film Direction but i do believe he is a smart man when it comes to the technology behind filmmaking and its distribution. It is his belief (according to this interview) that both Blu ray and HD DVD are dead mediums already due to the rapid advance of HD codecs that allow rapid transfer of high def files (h.264 for example). He goes on to say that he believe in the near future people will simply have a server in there house to which HD movies are downloaded and then played back. There is a lot of merit to this, especially when one considers Steve Jobs new position in with Disney and Apples push to have video over internet in different forms. It is something interesting to ponder anyway....

PS - BTW the reviews on the HD DVD machines are less than one would hope.
Click to expand...

This exactly where we are headed....the death of physical medium. Look at the idea behind P2...you still need something to aquire and transport your medium to the computer for editing....but its tapless, DVDless, you are essentially recorded to a solid state hard drive.

Physical media is very close to being a thing of the past...itunes, P2, other companies vying to get a hold on selling movies online.

And the PS3 is not rumored to have Blu-Ray it WILL have Blu-ray...and like blu-ray...its keeps getting delayed to the market...sony will never learn.
 
thefilmaddict said:
I JUST FOUND THIS ARTICLE ABOUT NETFLIX AND HD DVD'S...

The online DVD rental giant Netflix certainly made a splash yesterday, announcing that they would be renting out both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs as soon as they become available. This is somewhat surprising, as Netflix's CFO had previously declared Blu-ray the winner, but with the constantly changing landscape, it appears they have decided better to support both than to risk backing a loser.

Now more information has come to light, as they have also revealed they will not be charging any additional fee for high-definition DVDs. They state the content cost for them will be the same, so is it possible that there won't be a premium price for next generation DVDs? At this point we still really can't know how this will effect the end consumer, but high-definition TV owners who already subscribe to Netflix or are thinking about it are assured of easily available content, no matter what format they choose.

I LIKE WHERE NETFLIX IS GOING WITH THIS -- DISTRIBUTING BOTH HD DVD AND BLU RAY AND KEEPING THE MONTHLY MEMBERSHIP FEE THE SAME. THAT'S GOOD NEWS.
Click to expand...

Keywords: When they become available.

But, it's your money. If you want that Toshiba, go for it. =DDD
 
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