Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Looking for a DVD player

I agree, Netflix is the way to go. It has also allowed me to see some great movies that I never would have found in my Blockbuster, or for that matter even looked for.

The Toshiba HD_DVD models do excellent upconverting.

As I think I mentioned before, my $200 A2 makes some of my standard DVDs look better than some of my poorer HD-DVDs

You got an A2 for $200 I haven't seen it cheaper than $250 around here.

I concur with the HD DVD player recommendation, you midaswell get one as DVD's will be a thing of the past in the next 5-7 years.

Was a 1 day sale at Futureshop. I think they were also this cheap in a few places on Black Friday or whatever they call that crazy shopping day thing in the states.

To address your question about HD-DVD (without getting into the format war/DRM issues), yes, HD-DVD will look better than DVD on a 720p screen. DVD's resolution is 480p maximum (sans upscaling). HD-DVD will do 1080p, but afaik, it will also do 720p just fine. In any case, I'd rather remove pixels than add them--you're going to get a better picture that way.

SD DVD is not going anywhere for a long while. Another thread on here said on Black Friday there where 57,000 High Def. players sold, and 600,000 SD players sold.

I look at most people in my life, friends, family, co-workers. Most of these people don't even have an HD TV. They have at least 2 or more DVD players not including their computer and mini van. I can't see them having to replace all the DVD players in their house yet alone dealing with a new format. They all think SD DVD is great and upscaling SD DVD is awsome. And many just have dialup for internet. To say the SD DVD or DVD in general will be a thing of the past in 5 years is very optomistic.

They all remember the VHS vs Beta and some got burned and others realized how lucky they were not to get burned. None of these people I have talk to are even remotly interested in HD DVD or Blu Ray, they want nothing to do with it.

Lets face it, the mass public doesn't want the best quality, If that was true, Beta would have won, DVD Audio and SACD would rule instead of CD and MP3. The mass public wants good quality and ease of use and that is what SD DVD, CD, MP3 gives them.

For crying out loud, I have a hard enought time getting my family to remember to get me 'widescreen' DVD's for gifts.

Paul

I got my A2 at walmart for $98

The only issue we've had with our A2 is that with some SD DVDs the picture will go to a blank screen and pop right back up at random. We were watching 'The Aviator' a couple of nights ago and it did this 3 times within 5 minutes, very annoying. I also found that if the player is turned off and turned back on it seems to take care of the issue but it's a royal PITA to have to run through the complete menu selection to find the scene in the movie where we were. I've never had this happen while watching HD-DVDs. (you know, the *expensive* DVDs)

I wonder if the 2.7 firmware update will take care of this?

As far as upconverting through HDMI I can't tell much of a difference between our Denon 2910, Oppo 980H (maybe a slight edge over the other two) and the A2 ... if Oppo ever came out with an HD DVD player, I'd be all over it.

I would update your firmware for sure. I have only watched like 3 SD movies on my A2 with the 2.7 update, but I have never had that issue with the 2.5 or 2.7 updates