HD DVD And Blu-ray Disc: The Emperor Has No Clothes!
Dear Gary:
I am truly appreciative of the fact that you’ve allowed negative reviews of the Toshiba player by Terry Paullin, and the Samsung player by Danny Richelieu and Greg Rogers to be printed. But I am also disheartened by your seeming lack of support of Terry in the letters section of Issue 112, September 2006.
The main issue he found was poor 720p video quality on the Toshiba. Hmmm… What do you think is the largest segment of the HD display world right now? I bet it is 37, 42, and 50 inches and up. Too recently, the vast majority of those displays were 720p (or 768p). So, for all those people with those displays, THE TOSHIBA HD DVD PLAYERS WILL LOOK NOT MUCH BETTER THAN, OR WORSE THAN, A GOOD UPCONVERTED SD PLAYER! Yet this was completely overlooked. But Terry did, more or less, state this.
And, yes, some of us are fanatics about the remote. I have a Pioneer 59AVi right now. In the past, I’ve had the following Pioneer players: 414, 333, 05, 45a, 47ai, 59avi. After the 333, I felt the remote to the 05 was a step backward, but it turns out that the remote from the 333 was still forward-compatible. I really like the 333 remote. Know what remote I’m using today with the 59AVi? Still, the 333 remote. (I bought another one from Pioneer for $40—one of the best $40 I’ve spent on my system.) So, for someone else to denigrate Terry’s remote complaints is completely out of line.
And then it takes 65 seconds for the player to load a disc. That’s longer than it takes my PC to boot up! That is long enough to go to dinner and catch a movie afterwards! Oh wait, Stacy Lehman must not understand what the word “sarcasm” means.
And I was happy to see Greg Roger’s comments about the bad filter in the Samsung BD player. And then Danny Richelieu’s comments about the use of MPEG-2 video on the current batch of BD discs.
I say, neither the software nor the hardware for HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc is ready for prime time yet. And personally, I’m getting tired of all the rah-rah bullsh*t in most of the home theatre mags overlooking these glaring faults. Early adopters are early adopters, and I am one, but I’m not a bleeding edge kind of guy. I do appreciate you printing the truth, but I wish you’d be more supportive too.
Kevin Brown, Santa Clara, California
mailto: kevin.brown@micrel.com
Editor-In-Chief and Publisher Gary Reber Comments:
I appreciate the excellent points you make. I do think that the 1080i performance of the Toshiba should have been praised as it is excellent. Unfortunately, Terry, unbeknownst to me, used the poor performance downconverted 720p output.
You can E-mail Widescreen Review @ mailto:editorgary@widescreenreview.com