I thought this post would take several days or weeks in arriving...

For those picking up this thread, I was the third recipient of the remarkable and unexpected generosity of Mark_H who bought me, kenliles and JerryL each a Toshiba XA1 HD DVD player. eek Mark is a self-proclaimed movie lover and HD evangelist and, in return, only wanted each recipient to post back on this forum a fair evaluation of their HD experience.

Mark wanted to address two categories of HD waverers - those who think that SD is "good enough" and those sitting on the fence whose mere sitting (not buying discs and thus not generating a virtuous circle of demand) could contribute to the failure of both HD disc formats. I never needed convincing that HD would be better than SD, but I was most definitely a fence-sitter, not wanting to buy into the failing format. I should say that I was beginning to think I should commit, though I'm not sure if I would have if Mark hadn't pushed me off the fence.

My player arrived today, courtesy of Ken who relayed it from Florida to the UK. A the moment, I only have a single disc - Blazing Saddles, also courtesy of Mark. I'd seen a little HD sport on plasma screens, but I had never experienced HD on a projected screen until tonight.

At the moment, my projector is a "budget" 720p Panasonic AE900 LCD projector. It was bought as a stop-gap solution until I get a 1080p projector. Since I've gotten it, I must confess to being surprised and slightly disappointed with the projector, thinking that the image from a Faroudja-scaled digital SDI SD source wasn't as sharp as it could be.

I turned on the XA1 player and my first thought (once I'd figured out that I had to select HDMI manually :rolleyes: ) was that the on-screen menus, at 1080i into the PJ, looked superb - simultaneously smooth (no jaggies, etc.) and sharp (no blurring or apparent lack of focus, particularly at the edges of letters).

I then put the Blazing Saddles HD DVD into the player AND WAS SIMPLY BLOWN AWAY LIKE I HAVE NEVER BEEN BEFORE IN THIS HOBBY.

What can I say? I expected HD to be better than SD, but I could not believe that this was the same projector. The FBI warning looked great! The Warner title page looked superb. Then followed a HD DVD teaser montage (presumably at very high bit rate) which looked as natural as anything I have yet seen projected.

I only had time to flick through the chapters of the movie. All I'll say is that experience is similar to that of Ken. The picture is so natural and believable that you are just drawn into it. It involving! And remember, this is on a 720p projector! Another word to describe it is quite simply "filmic". And I mean it.

I'd love to spend more time on both watching the movie and writing this post tonight, but I can't. I'll do both in the coming days and weeks. What I will say is that I ordered seven more discs earlier today before this knock-out experience and now cannot wait until they arrive.

I've been planning to replace the AE900 with the JVC HD1 (RS1 in the USA) and actually started wondering whether it is worth it! In fact, I'm sure it will be, but I want to bring across the magnitude of the impact HD DVD had on me tonight. Simply fantastic! Thank you Mark. This is unbelievable! laugh

Roon Developer and ex-moderator of this Forum
I am #25 in the HH1 photo of fame.