Post photos of your media room!

[A Y]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

Nice system Andre.

You should look at the maple version of the Salamander equipment racks. I bet it would match those Orion speakers wonderfully.

How do you like the Oppo 980H?

Thanks. Those are Sanus stands, which I thought were affordable, and functional, since they don't seem to sell my favorite Target stands in the US anymore. I liked the silver and black look to make the stand kind of match the equipment, and not stand out on its own.

The 980H is great: it plays just about everything (albeit sometimes with more mechanical noise from the drive than I like), is very fast, reliable, and can be easily made region-free. I have it output multichannel PCM from SACDs and DVD-As through HDMI to the MC-12, and it sounds very good. Most of my video watching are also BBC broadcasts friends have recorded for me in PAL, and it's nice that the 980 can output 576i (and 480i) to the VP50 Pro over HDMI so I can use the VP50's fantastic deinterlacing capabilites to make the most out of that material. Have you read Kal Rubinson's impressions of the 980H in the most recent Stereophile?

The Toshiba A3 is kind of the opposite. HD gives a fantastic picture, and the sound is very good, but it's an ergonomic nightmare, and is half-baked. You can crash it most of the time if you use the eject button when the player is off, and it's slower than molasses.

--Andre

 

[kronik]

That's interesting - I'm purchasing a gift player for someone and was torn between the HD-A30 and the 981HD.

She may be buying a new television soon so I figured a HDMI/1080P player would be ideal, and if I'm going to throw 200+ bucks at it, she may as well get some high-def playback functionality. The speed and the ergonomics of the Toshiba would be secondary to her, as she's neither a video/audiophile nor much of a technical person.

 

[A Y]

It takes about 30 seconds for the A3 to go from pressing the power button to ejecting the tray, and I think the other Toshibas are no different. Skipping chapters is dreadfully slow, but HD-DVD's overlaid menu system somewhat mitigates that: the HD-DVD menu comes over the video, which is still playing, and you can navigate to different scenes while that's happening. I think the ergonomics of the player may be infuriating for normal people.

Also, HD-DVDs seem to be hard to find locally for sale or rental. I guess it depends on what your friend likes to watch.

--Andre

 

[Bogie]

I wouldn't buy an HD DVD player. Warner just went Blu Ray exclusive and it's pretty much agreed that HD DVD is now a dead format.

 

[Artisan Fan]

Originally Posted by Bogie

I wouldn't buy an HD DVD player. Warner just went Blu Ray exclusive and it's pretty much agreed that HD DVD is now a dead format.

Agreed. HD-DVD is done.