Flip This!

By Fred Manteghian • Posted: May 28, 2007

Well, I finally got an HD DVD player. Thanks Shane for helping me decide on a model. In the end, I got the top of the line Toshiba XA2 and I couldn't be more pleased. 1080p and one of the best upconverting DVD players around. What's not to like? Feeding my also new JVC DLA-HD1 projector and lighting up a 78" wide (89" diag) Stewart Screen (Studio Tek 130 – 1.3 gain), the picture is to die for.

At least when I have a picture. Shane – thanks again good buddy – sent along a few HD DVDs. I tried to watch one of them last night, Stroker Ace, er, wait, Smokin' Aces, and things didn't go so well. This is one of the HD "Combo" disks. No pretty silk screening on the disk so that you can match it back into its box. Instead, it's HD on one side and standard definition DVD on the other.

I put in the HD side, naturally, and sat back as the Universal leader popped on the screen (oh, it's a honey on HD!). As the earth turned to black though, I heard the XA2 start a search and destroy mission with the disk. Less than a minute later, it gave up and put an error message up on the screen. The error message looked very serious, very definitive. A true octal address. I was impressed with the level of detail. Too bad the programmer for the XA2 wasn't sitting next to me. He'd probably want to step through the bootup again in debug mode which, quite honestly, would probably take longer than a nuked bag of popcorn, so in a way, it's good he wasn't here. I have no patience for computers past my day job.

You know what they say about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result? Except, with high definition, this can actually be a fruitful approach. Unfortunately, this time, further attempts (opening and closing the tray, powering up and down) yielded either the same error message or simply a black screen (Kudos to JVC, by the way, the screen was dark enough with no signal to cause me to trip over sneakers – that's called the Converse Ratio test)

Anyway, I flipped the HD-DVD over and proceeded to watch the standard def side, with no problems. In case you're interested, the movie in any format is only slightly better than the Universal logo in HD. (This blog doubles as a movie review.)

I hear combo discs aren't working out perfectly everywhere. Other folks have run into problems with other combo discs like Children of Men and Good Shepherd.

Anybody else out there with an XA2 and a combo disc that won't play?

Comments

Submitted by George Papantonopoulos on May 29, 2007 - 4:49am.

I have the same player (the european version) and the same projector by the way. I had the same problems with almost all universal's combos (good shepherd, children of men, hollywoodland and smoking aces) imported from USA. I solved the problem with hot running water and cleaning them after with a fluid and a piece of cloath I had for dvds. Lately I had a 8 digit message when I tried matrix reloaded. I was desperate as the problem was not getting away with the above trick. I tried almost 20 times. Suddenly after playing it with xbox 360, it played with the toshiba. Never heard or see something like that.

Submitted by Anthony Claxton on May 29, 2007 - 9:14am.

Had the same problem with a 1st generation RCA. Downloaded fix from internet. Problem solved.

Submitted by Shane on May 29, 2007 - 11:05am.

COM and Good Shepherd have been acknowledged as flawed by Universal and they're offering exchanges. Email here: USHE.ConsumerRelations@worldmarkinc.com

Submitted by Shane on May 29, 2007 - 11:10am.

Our guy David Vaughn had some issues with Aces on his HD-A1, and asked me to check it with my XA2. It played fine on my XA2, with the latest firmware. Fred- you're in the carazy next-gen zone now. Have you uploaded new firmware in your XA2? Try it and see if it works. BTW- I've also heard of the hot and cold runnign water fixes. Checked both legs- thought for sure someone was pulling one or both. Pain in the ass or no, I'm doing a return before I'm going to those lengths.

Submitted by David Vaughn on May 29, 2007 - 4:35pm.

Mine would play just fine unless I went to the chapter selection screen, then it would freeze the A1 as well as the XBOX 360 drive. If you just hit play, it would play OK. Isn't new technology great!

Submitted by Fred Manteghian on June 4, 2007 - 8:39am.

The firmware on the new XA2 was at level 1.0 it appears, but upgrading to 1.7 didn't do a darn thing to solve the "combo" problem, though it does start up faster and, I'd swear it sounds better now too.

Submitted by Tim Comolli on June 10, 2007 - 1:44am.

It's 4:41 am a nd I just woke up the rest of my household by laughing out loud at the "Converse Ratio test" comment. Let's see JVC put that in an ad for their projector....