CarlB
Prominent Member
I was hoping to retire my Denon 3800 DVD player after years of loyal service, and I thought the upscaling abilities of the XE1 would be perfect for the job.
It most certainly is up to the task, R2 SD discs look greaton the XE1! Sure, the lipsync problem is there and often seems worse than ever on SD, but I can happily use my digital coax and audio delay, something I can't do with the analogue input. All good news, except for the fact that over 800 of my 850 SD-DVD collection is Region 1.
Now, I have another couple of cheap Toshiba 'supermarket' players in bedrooms, and both were easily modified to multiregion playback with a simple handset code, and have worked flawlessly with everything I throw at them. I remembered an AV Forum podcast of way back (Podcast #14) that included an interview with Toshiba about their upcoming HD-DVD players, but I had not heard the podcast, so decided to give it a listen yesterday.
During the interview, at no point does the Toshiba employee mention any possibility of region-free SD playback on the new HD decks. In fact, at one point in the interview he says he must stress that region coding for SD is enabled, in line with the DVD forum. Now, of course he had to say that. Toshiba cannot market a machine as multiregion in violation of the DVD Forum rules, but I just thought it was odd that he re-emphasised this point on a couple of occasions. I then read the forum thread about the podcast, and it was only Phil (Hinton) that ever mentioned the machines would presumably be easily hackable, as per other Toshiba machines in the past. Phil does not (and probably cannot) expand upon whether this was speculation or comments made off the record, and I wouldn't expect him to do so, but we are now on the second generation of HD-DVD players and there has never been any mention of a working region hack for the Toshiba decks.
Will we ever see a handset hack or will it be a hardware mod? Is it down to the fact that the constant firmware updates will keep rendering any hack impotent?
Personally, I waited a long time for this machine and have never been so disappointed with a CE device. I bought this specific machine for its analogue output, and yet I can't get it to function adequately in my system. I bought it as a previous customer expecting to be able to play all my DVD discs, and I can't, which is something I can easily achieve on a £30 supermarket player. I bought it to support the UK operation which is now deathly silent on all issues and has not responded to my service call or emails.
If I had a multiregion handset hack I would frankly be quite a bit happier as I would have a great upscaling DVD player in my possession, and feel that I had bought something worthwhile. I know Toshiba cannot be blamed for selling the machine in alignment with DVD Forum rules, but I just think considering all the reported issues with this new technology they really need to start thinking about appeasing some customers if they want to get anywhere at all with this.
It most certainly is up to the task, R2 SD discs look greaton the XE1! Sure, the lipsync problem is there and often seems worse than ever on SD, but I can happily use my digital coax and audio delay, something I can't do with the analogue input. All good news, except for the fact that over 800 of my 850 SD-DVD collection is Region 1.
Now, I have another couple of cheap Toshiba 'supermarket' players in bedrooms, and both were easily modified to multiregion playback with a simple handset code, and have worked flawlessly with everything I throw at them. I remembered an AV Forum podcast of way back (Podcast #14) that included an interview with Toshiba about their upcoming HD-DVD players, but I had not heard the podcast, so decided to give it a listen yesterday.
During the interview, at no point does the Toshiba employee mention any possibility of region-free SD playback on the new HD decks. In fact, at one point in the interview he says he must stress that region coding for SD is enabled, in line with the DVD forum. Now, of course he had to say that. Toshiba cannot market a machine as multiregion in violation of the DVD Forum rules, but I just thought it was odd that he re-emphasised this point on a couple of occasions. I then read the forum thread about the podcast, and it was only Phil (Hinton) that ever mentioned the machines would presumably be easily hackable, as per other Toshiba machines in the past. Phil does not (and probably cannot) expand upon whether this was speculation or comments made off the record, and I wouldn't expect him to do so, but we are now on the second generation of HD-DVD players and there has never been any mention of a working region hack for the Toshiba decks.
Will we ever see a handset hack or will it be a hardware mod? Is it down to the fact that the constant firmware updates will keep rendering any hack impotent?
Personally, I waited a long time for this machine and have never been so disappointed with a CE device. I bought this specific machine for its analogue output, and yet I can't get it to function adequately in my system. I bought it as a previous customer expecting to be able to play all my DVD discs, and I can't, which is something I can easily achieve on a £30 supermarket player. I bought it to support the UK operation which is now deathly silent on all issues and has not responded to my service call or emails.
If I had a multiregion handset hack I would frankly be quite a bit happier as I would have a great upscaling DVD player in my possession, and feel that I had bought something worthwhile. I know Toshiba cannot be blamed for selling the machine in alignment with DVD Forum rules, but I just think considering all the reported issues with this new technology they really need to start thinking about appeasing some customers if they want to get anywhere at all with this.