HD-DVD in Action
I went to the HD-DVD demo at Fry's in Plano today. Unfortunately the the store wouldn't let me take pictures. So no spiffy images to share like I had for the Blu-ray demo at Starpower a couple of weeks ago. The Toshiba player they were using was a HD-XA1 running a demo disc on a Toshiba 1080p set, but I didn't get the model number. No real HD discs were available yet, though they did have mock-up boxes on display for Aeon Flux and Batman Begins. The demo disc containted trailers for The Dukes of Hazzard, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Serenity, The Interpreter, King Kong, Batman Begins, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Constantine. Everything was encoded with mepg4. All the trailers were full 16x9, not OAR, but that's not unexpected. The disc also contained a split screen demo showing SD on one side and HD on the other. The footage wasn't from an actual film, it looked like some travelogue type stuff. Like Blu-ray's splitscreen demo, the HD-DVD one was faked to make SD look a lot worse than it usually does. The HD side was far sharper and clearer. The SD side was fuzzy with little detail and kind of looked like a laserdisc transfer from 1997.
As for the trailers, they were a mixed bag. Some were crystal clear, such as King Kong, Corpse Bride and 40 Year Old Virgin. They looked so good it was almost as if looking through a window. I was actually impressed, and I'm usually pretty jaded about these things. Other trailers looked like they weren't encoded as well and had some mild mpeg noise. But they still looked better than any HD I've seen on satellite or cable. And honestly, they looked better than the encoding I saw on the Blu-ray demo a few weeks back. Just based on the demos I'd call HD-DVD the winner in the image department (and before someone accuses me of being a flack for the hd-dvd side, I happen to have both format's players pre-ordered). Of course, I think the BD demo disc has been around a year at least and is older, so hopefully they'll improve the quality on the real discs. These demos are nice, but until we see real product from both sides it's hard to really compare one to the other.
One thing Toshiba really needs to work on is training their reps and keeping them up to date. The rep running the demo didn't really know anything beyond what was in the scripted spiel. So unfortunately I don't really have any new information to report beyond what is already known. The guy didn't even know if the players output 1080i or 1080p. He had pretty much no info beyond what's on Toshiba's website. Less even. Here's a typical conversation I had with him:
Me: "When will the player be released?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: So it'll probably be around April 18, when the first Warner titles come out?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "So that would be around the 18th then."
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "I like cheese."
He wasn't able to answer any questions I had. Not exactly the best way to represent your format. Toshiba better be thankful their demo looked so good, because they sure as hell aren't going to get any sales off the knowledge of their sales rep. I did get a nice hd-dvd pen and cd/dvd disc case from the demo though. :)
As for the trailers, they were a mixed bag. Some were crystal clear, such as King Kong, Corpse Bride and 40 Year Old Virgin. They looked so good it was almost as if looking through a window. I was actually impressed, and I'm usually pretty jaded about these things. Other trailers looked like they weren't encoded as well and had some mild mpeg noise. But they still looked better than any HD I've seen on satellite or cable. And honestly, they looked better than the encoding I saw on the Blu-ray demo a few weeks back. Just based on the demos I'd call HD-DVD the winner in the image department (and before someone accuses me of being a flack for the hd-dvd side, I happen to have both format's players pre-ordered). Of course, I think the BD demo disc has been around a year at least and is older, so hopefully they'll improve the quality on the real discs. These demos are nice, but until we see real product from both sides it's hard to really compare one to the other.
One thing Toshiba really needs to work on is training their reps and keeping them up to date. The rep running the demo didn't really know anything beyond what was in the scripted spiel. So unfortunately I don't really have any new information to report beyond what is already known. The guy didn't even know if the players output 1080i or 1080p. He had pretty much no info beyond what's on Toshiba's website. Less even. Here's a typical conversation I had with him:
Me: "When will the player be released?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: So it'll probably be around April 18, when the first Warner titles come out?"
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "So that would be around the 18th then."
Toshiba Rep: "We're working with the studios to synchronize the release of players and software."
Me: "I like cheese."
He wasn't able to answer any questions I had. Not exactly the best way to represent your format. Toshiba better be thankful their demo looked so good, because they sure as hell aren't going to get any sales off the knowledge of their sales rep. I did get a nice hd-dvd pen and cd/dvd disc case from the demo though. :)
