PRODUCT REVIEW — JULY 13, 2006
Toshiba HD-A1SN HD DVD and
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray Players
Blue laser high-definition DVD players are finally here. How do they work? Are they worth it? Should you run out and buy one now, or sit on your hands for a while?
It’s been near impossible to avoid the topic of blue laser HD discs. Everyone’s been talking about them. Forums are abuzz with discussions of the pros and cons. Columnists debate what success the competing forums will meet with. Analysts wonder if prices are too high and how that will affect market penetration.
And the guy at the bottom of the totem pole – you, the consumer – can’t make up his or her mind whether to buy one now, or wait. The problem is compounded by questions about display device compatibility, long boot-up times, and limited availability of movie titles and other HD content.
Figure 1. Samsung’s BD-P1000 (top) and Toshiba’s HD-A1 (bottom)
I managed to procure a sample of each player for review. Thanks to some fortuitous timing, I had a few native 1080p front projectors in house, along with a couple of native 720 models. All were equipped with HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) inputs, which are prominently featured on both blue laser players. I also had some video scalers on hand for HDMI compatibility tests.
Best of all, the Samsung player came with the ability to output 1920x1080p, although the actual refresh rate was not listed in the owner’s manual, and it took some digging around back at the Samsung factory in Korea to find out what it was (59.94 Hz). This made up for the disappointment of 1080i-only HDMI output from the Toshiba player.
Funny thing is, the lack of progressive playback didn’t make a whole lot of difference in the end. Read on, and you’ll find out why.
OUT OF THE BOX
These two players couldn’t be more different in appearance. Toshiba’s HD-A1 is a big box, resembling a thin personal computer laid on its side. Measuring 14” D x 4” H x 17” wide and weighing 16 pounds, it’s slightly larger than my first DVD player, a 1997-vintage Sony DVP-S7000U.
Samsung’s BD-P1000 looks a lot more like a contemporary DVD player, although it’s not exactly tiny either at 13” D x 3”H x 17” W and 9.3 lbs. (My current studio DVD player is a Panasonic RP56, which is only nine inches deep.)
Stylistically, the Samsung player looks nicer with its black, blue, and silver finish and sloping front panel. The Toshiba player looks more like an old JVC HM-DH30000U D-VHS deck – all business, although it has a combination black and silver appearance.
Figure 2. Rear view of the BD-P1000 (top) and HD-A1 (bottom).
From a connection standpoint, the two players are almost mirror images. Each provides one composite and one S-video output (crazy, isn’t it?), plus three RCA jacks for component analog (YPbPr) HD video connections. There’s also that HDMI interface for an all-digital path to your display.
For audio output, you’ll find two RCA jacks (stereo analog audio), six discrete RCA jacks for 5.1 decoded surround sound, and coaxial (SPDIF) and optical (Toslink) jacks for digital connections to your AV receiver. The HD-A1 adds a LAN connector for Internet downloads of software updates and possible links to movie Web sites found to yet-to-be-released HD DVDs.
Samsung adds a pair of memory cards readers so you can view photos through the player. These include the larger compact flash, Micro Drive, Memory Stick, and Secure Digital types. Toshiba doesn’t support those, but instead provides a pair of USB 2.0 ports for controllers when playing yet-to-released HD DVD video games.
Neither player has a serial port for remote control in a home theater setup – you’ll have to do it with an IR blaster.
OPERATION AND MENUS
The supplied remote controls couldn’t be more different. Samsung’s resembles a standard combo remote and can control your HDTV along with the Blu-ray player, and is the smaller of the two. It’s not backlit (a nuisance in a darkened theater) but does provide all of the standard DVD functions.
Toshiba’s TV/player remote, which is about 15% longer, has a more futuristic look with silver buttons against a glossy black background. Button functions are lettered with lighter text. Unfortunately, my remote did not have a working backlight! In a semi-darkened room, it is nigh impossible to read these buttons.
The fact that they are long bars instead of small round shapes does make it easier to find them without looking, but you can’t be sure you are pushing the right button 100% of the time. The control layout is not quite the same as your garden-variety DVD player.
Figure 3. Toshiba’s remote looks great, but the backlight didn’t work.
Figure 4. Samsung’s remote is a bit more mundane, but functional.
You’ve probably heard that it takes a l-o-n-g time for these players too start up and play a movie. I timed several different operating cycles with a track stopwatch just to see exactly how long. The results surprised me:
- HD-A1, power on to “LOAD” or “NO DISC” prompt – 50 seconds
- HD-A1, time to read disc after loading and ready to play – 30 seconds
- HD-A1, time to play loaded disc after startup – 10 seconds
That means it could take you a minute and a half to see a menu on a movie after you’re turned on the power. Samsung’s player was a bit more expedient:
- BD-P1000, power on to “LOAD” prompt – 5 seconds
- BD-P1000, time to play disc after loading – 31 seconds
OK, so the BD-P1000 isn’t exactly a speed demon, either. Keep in mind both players also read red laser discs (DVD-RAM, DVD VIDEO, DVD-RW, DVD-R) and audio CDs, so they need a little time at start-up to determine (a) if the content has been coded for blue or red laser playback, (b) what audio and video formats are used, (c) if the content is legal and secure, and (d) if a valid HDMI-equipped display is present so that output can be used.
The menus are pretty basic. Toshiba lets you choose from three different aspect ratios (16:9, 4:3, 4:3 letterboxed), turn black boost on or off, and select 3:2 pulldown and processing (Film, Video, or Auto). As mentioned earlier, there’s no option for 1080 progressive output; just 720p and 480p through the HDMI and component video jacks.
The HD-A1’s audio menu lets you send signal out through the SPDIF coaxial and Toslink outputs as bitstream (Dolby, DTS) or pulse-coded modulation (PCM) audio. (There have been some comments in reviews of the step-up model HD-XA1 that Dolby Digital + tracks are actually converted to PCM, then re-encoded as DTS for playback.)
Digital audio can also be sent out the HDMI connector in the bitstream or PCM formats. There are also options for dynamic range control (a compression circuit) and dialog enhancement for two-channel (stereo) playback.
You can configure the on-board Ethernet connection so it can work with your home IP network — at least, the manual shows you how. But I never got it to work, whether using the dynamic host control protocol (DHCP) setting through my LAN interface, or setting the various IP addresses manually.
If you are able to get the Internet connection working, you can tell the HD-A1 to go look for software updates. That function is in the last set-up menu, along with a clock setting. Yes, the HD-A1 works more like a PC than a DVD player, and the clock setting and DHCP configuration should dispel any doubts in that regard.
Note that the LAN connection is not required to verify that the disc and player are in full compliance with AACS copy protection. That handshake is done between player and disc using a sophisticated key that can determine if an illegal copy of an HD DVD is being played. If so, the HD-A1 will simply shut down. (If an illegal copy was made from that player, the player’s keys will be saved to the disc and on subsequent playback, the player is supposed to be disabled — permanently.)
When it comes to output resolution, the HD-A1 offers 480i/p, 720p/59.94, and 1080i/29.97 through its analog component video jacks. You can toggle among these from the RESOLUTION button on the remote. The HDMI output delivers 480p, 720p, or 1080i as user-selectable output resolutions “on the fly” while a DVD is playing, but in my tests (see below) the initial resolution setting often didn’t match the native resolution of the projector.
The BD-P1000 has a similar setup menu. In audio mode, you can choose between bitstream and PCM audio, turn PCM downsampling (96 kHz to 48 kHz) on and off, and switch a dynamic boost circuit (again, compression) on and off with Dolby coded audio. In a nice touch, Samsung has included a 5.1 channel setup with a switched test tone for calibrating surround speaker levels.
In the video menu, you can choose from three different aspect ratios (16:9, 4:3, 4:3 letterbox) and four analog output resolutions (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i). You can change the HDMI output resolution only when the DVD is stopped, and you’ll have to go into the player menu to do it, unlike the HD-A1.
There’s also a black level enhancement and a choice between HDMI connections to an integrated HDTV or a monitor. Samsung’s manual doesn’t elaborate on this function, but it may have something to do with the unusual native pixel resolutions of computer monitors. (Those use DVI interfaces.)
If the pixel resolution is not in the standard HDMI tables, the HDMI driver can’t configure itself to the optimal display resolution and signal timing. Or, the monitor may have to “zoom up” or shrink down the 720p and 1080i high-definition video to fill its imaging area.
IN OPERATION
I tested both players with a variety of front projection systems. JVC’s DLA-HD10K, reviewed elsewhere on this site, was my first Guinea pig. Not surprisingly, it would not work with the Toshiba HD-A1 through an HDMI connection because the JVC projector is strictly a 1080p device (1080p/50, 1080p/59.94, and 1080p/60). Since the HD-A1 only outputs 1080i/29.97 through HDMI, that test ended quickly!
Surprisingly, the BD-P1000 wouldn’t work correctly with the DLA-HD10K, either. The player set its HDMI output to 720p/59.94, which the manual defines as the default setting in the absence of full EDID. And, of course, the DLA-HD10K won’t display 720p video.
So — no 1080p/60 playback from either machine was possible to a native 1080p/60 home theater projector, unless I used analog 1080i YPbPr connections from both players and a go-between video scaler (in both cases, NEC’s TheaterSync and Silicon Optix Whitehorse).
You can see the absurdity of this — taking HD content encoded natively to the discs as digital 1080p/24 frames, converting them to analog with interlacing and 3:2 pulldown to get to analog 1080i/29.97 output from the HD-A1, then de-interlacing and compensating for 3:2 motion errors in the TheaterSync scaler to get the signal back to digital (DVI-D) 1080p, maintaining 3:2 pulldown to achieve a 59.94 Hz refresh rate. Yikes!
How about driving the HDMI inputs directly on the TheaterSync scaler? No dice in either case. The HD-A1 showed “HDMI ERROR 1” each time I tried this trick, while there just wasn’t any video to be seen from the BD-P1000.
My next tests with another 1080p native projector (a prototype) showed much the same problems – an “HDMI ERROR 1” when connected to the HD-A1, and no video from the BD-P1000. To make matters worse, the custom video scaler/switcher that will be packaged with this projector wouldn’t work with either HDMI connection.
How about 720p? Optoma’s new HE7300 DLP projector worked just fine through its DVI-D HDCP port with the Samsung player, which initially set HDMI output resolution to 720p, matching the projector’s native resolution and making both machines as happy as clams. Not so the Toshiba, which again displayed the dreaded HDMI error code.
Results were much different with a Sanyo PLV-Z4 LCD projector. Here, the HD-A1 set itself to feed 1080i through PLV-Z4’s HDMI port, while the BD-P1000 also set itself to 1080i output. Neither player automatically configured to 720p to match the PLV-Z4’s native resolution — I had to do it myself.
Note that, when I did get the HDMI handshake to world, I was able to unplug and reconnect the HDMI cable from any projector while a movie was playing and not crash either player. The movie would simply stop, and then resume playing once the EDID was re-established. (One odd note — if I switched from the HE7300’s DVI input to any other input while a Blu-ray disc was playing, the Samsung player did crash and had to be rebooted.)
IMAGE QUALITY
What can I say? HD movies and video were spectacular in all cases, even when I had to process each player’s analog HD video outputs through a video scaler. Movies had incredible detail and great color (particularly on the JVC projector). 24p content doesn’t suffer as much when interlaced as live video, and that may be due to the inherent motion blurring at slow picture refresh rates.
How about a comparison to red laser DVDs? After viewing the Toshiba HD DVD demo disc and a Blu-ray copy of Memento from Sony Pictures, the family sat down to watch Pirates of the Caribbean as a refresher for this summer’s hit sequel. Again, image quality was beautiful, whether viewed as native 480p or scaled to 1080p.
The difference was in long shots, where small objects and fine detail began to block up on Pirates. No such problem exists with HD DVD and Blu-ray; you’ll see everything in the foreground and background with as much definition as the cinematographer intended. And that is the main advantage of the format.
I did see a noticeable improvement in image sharpness from 720p output on the HD-A1 to 1080i, particularly in the Batman Begins clips. My guess is that the 1080i-to-720p conversion in this player is simple and uses sequential 540p frames. In fact, 720p image detail wasn’t particularly improved over 480p output.
Image quality was much closer between the 720p and 1080i HDMI/analog outputs on the BD-P1000. Clips from Memento had about the same amount of detail and sharpness on the 720p native projectors with either input format. Only with native 1080p projectors could I see added picture detail with a 1080i signal.
As far as audio quality goes, I used the standard Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. Some HD DVD movies will be encoded with enhanced Dolby and DTS tracks, such as Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD. DD+ has a nominal bit rate of 1.5 Mb/s, compared to conventional DD at 384 kb/s. DTS formats will include DTS High Resolution and Master Audio. (To enjoy the benefits of any of these formats, your surround sound decoder must be able to process the higher bit rates.)
My studio AV receiver dates back to about 1999 and can’t handle much more than conventional Dolby Digital 5.1, but I can say the film clips from King Kong, Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Serenity had more depth and dynamic range than I’ve heard on normal DVDs. That, combined with the higher image resolution, provided more of a theater “feel” to the viewing experience than conventional DVDs.
CONCLUSION
There’s no question that HD DVD and Blu-ray content looks clearer, crisper, and more cinematic than red laser DVDs. In my tests at home, I quickly realized my 82-inch diagonal 16:9 Stewart screen was actually too small to take full advantage of the format, given the viewing distance (about nine feet at the closest seats). In fact, my Sony CRT projector was also unable to do the 1080 content full justice, as subsequent tests with the JVC DLA-HD10K quickly revealed.
But getting there is half the fun, and the HDMI interface issues I ran into were enough for me to caution you readers not to rush out and grab one of these players if you insist on a 100%-digital 1080p connection. Sorry to say, an analog 720p or 1080i hook-up may be the only way you’ll get either blue laser player to work with an older display.
The good news is, even the 1080i conversion from native 1080p film content still results in beautiful images – if your display fully processes both halves of each 1080i frame. Blue laser DVD is definitely a quantum leap over red laser DVD, as long as you have a screen or direct-view display large enough to take advantage of all that extra resolution.
There are still two hurdles to be overcome — the looming blue laser disc format battle, and the high cost of these players. Toshiba’s HD-A1 sells for $500, while the Samsung player will set you back close to a grand. Those prices need to be cut in half if either format is to take off, given that conventional DVD players can be had for $50 to $150, and many people don’t have large enough HDTV screens to see the difference in resolution.
If you’ve simply got to have a blue laser player to match your brand-new 1080p LCD, plasma, or MD RPTV, then you’ll want to check out the BD-P1000. First, make sure your display can handle the player’s native 1080p 59.94 picture refresh rate (Note that this player does not output multiples of 24 fps, such as 48 or 72 Hz.)
Still have your doubts? It certainly won’t hurt to sit on the sidelines for another six months. By then, more players with true 1080p output will be on store shelves and more projector, plasma, LCD, and microdisplay RPTV manufacturers should have their EDID and 1080p compatibility issues resolved.
By then, I also expect prices will have come down quite a bit (rumors have it the BD-P1000 will be under $800 by Q4, when Sony’s Blu-ray-enabled PlayStation3 is supposed to hit the streets at $600) and there will also be a sufficient number of movie titles available for both platforms.
