have read on there web-site that untill a firmware update there hd players will not decode 50hz, so what hd discs will they play ?

Hi John

The first gen. players like HD-A1 and HD-XA1 where for Japan and US markets, where they have 60Hz. So this was probably not such a big problem for them...

The secong gen. player like HD-E1 and HD-XE1 wil be the first series for europe. But they found a hardware bug in a chip from an external supplyer. Since there was no software workaround, they had to produce a new series of these chips, and the release date was pushed back.

happy watching
Adrian

All HD-DVD movie disks originating from a film source are encoded in 1080p/24Hz, regardless of region. So these kind of disks are not an issue.

Perhaps some video sourced material is recorded at 50Hz.

At the moment the 1st Gen toshiba will play all commercially available HD-DVD disk from all the originating regions - i.e. USA, Europe and Japan. Not sure if this will remain the case in the future if 50Hz video sourced material starts emerging on HD-DVD.

Allan

allan, just to clarify on your comments, i noticed the cheaper toshiba hd-dvd player dosn't output upto 1080p only 1080i, so without the firmware upgrade for the 50hz frame rate 24hz, will it still play hd-dvds from all regions,

John,

A few points here (and I hope I don't drone on too much) :

1. Although the more expensive of the two toshiba players claims to be 1080p it's actualy what I would call 'fake' 1080p. I say this because what it does is it generates a 1080i/60Hz signal from the 1080p/24Hz source (just like the cheaper player) but toshiba have stuck an extra chip in there, just prior to the output, to generate 1080p/60Hz from the 1080i signal it generated. You're not actually getting the raw 1080p signal directly off the disk.

2. Films are encoded at 24 frames per second. A 1080i/60Hz video signal is capable of carrying all the original image information that is encoded on a 1080p/24Hz HD-DVD disk. Most display devices these days can accept a 1080i/60Hz signal, the display device will simply de-interlace this in exactly the same way as the chip in the more expensive toshiba player does and the result will look exactly the same. In other words, the 1080p from the more expensive player is of no benefit to you over the 1080i from the cheaper player, it's basically a marketing feature. Having said that, the more expensive player does have some additional useful features but the 1080p it offers is not one of them.

3. The only useful form of 1080p output to look out for is 1080p at 24Hz - ie the player outputting the image directly from the disk without any intervention. The reason for this is that you potentially have the opportunity to feed this to a display that is capable of accepting and displaying it without ever having to go through the frame-rate conversion process to 60Hz anywhere in the chain. 24 doesn't divide evenly into 60 and therefore the result is always slightly juddery. Region 1 DVDs have always had this judder problem. If you've never noticed judder on a Region 1 DVD then don't worry about it, although larger displays might make it more obvious. So far the only new format player to offer 1080p/24Hz is the new Sony blu-ray player.

4. Finally, to get to your original question. I had a look at the Toshiba web-site to see what it says about this 50Hz issue. From the web-site:

"HD DVD discs containing high definition content at a field rate of 50Hz or a frame rate of 25Hz cannot be played on HD-XE1 without a firmware update. Firmware update is expected in the future."

What I wrote in my previous reply still stands. So far, all HD-DVDs have been recorded at 24Hz regardless of region. For film sourced DVDs this situation won't change and the 50Hz/25Hz issue is irrelevent. Maybe some European video sourced disks might appear in the future (e.g. live concert disks) which may be an issue without the firmware update that Toshiba mentions.

Allan

so just to re-cap, what sound out-put would you get from the toshiba via optical when plugged into an n-vi, would you still get DD 5.1 and DTS

With the arrival of HD-DVD, Dolby Digital (as we know it from DVD) has gone. It has been replaced with Dolby Digital Plus - see description on the Dolby website here. To maintain compatibility with existing AV processors the Toshiba player does all the decoding of Dolby Digital Plus (or Dolby TrueHD) and then re-encodes the result as a DTS signal for output from the optical connector.

Allan

Regarding displays that can handle 24 Hz input directly - which 1080p LCD / Plasma displays can do this? (I'm in Canada)

DL

The latest Pioneer 50" 1080p plasma will handle this. There are likely to be others but that's one I know of for sure.

Allan