The remote control is pretty well laid out, except for the Stop button. I think they should have swapped it with the pause button. I found myself hitting stop when I meant to pause. Why is this a problem? If you hit Stop more than once, when you hit play again, the player starts the movie/disc from the beginning instead of from where you left off. It would have been easier to find the correct button if the remote was backlit, but there is no lighting on it at all. You just have to go by feel when you are in the dark, I guess.

Subjective Viewing Tests

I have watched dozens of normal DVDs and a handful of HD DVDs in the four months I've owned this projector. I currently have it connected to my Panasonic PT-AX100U projector. This is a 720p unit, which (as of this writing) recently replaced the popular Panasonic AE-900U. My new projector seems very picky with respect to HDMI and resolution. For example, I own an older Sony DVR (Digital Video Recorder) and it always needs to have the resolution manually set to 720p while it always worked fine with the older projector via the HDMI port. In any case, the HD-A2 HD DVD player always works correctly with my new projector and I never need to reboot it or mess with settings to get the picture looking perfect. For testing in my system, I utilized a Denon AVR-3805 receiver for audio and Infinity Kappa speakers for mains, center and surrounds. An SVS PB12-Plus/2 subwoofer took care of all low end duties. So, with a fairly new projector, and some older but still very good audio gear, I moved into the testing phase.

The start up time of this player is about 40 seconds from the time you hit the On button to the time you can eject the tray and put a disc in. That's really slow. If a disc is left in the player, it will auto start it upon power-up. There is an extra 15 seconds to load a standard DVD or an extra 25 seconds to load an HD DVD. It really does seem slow, but it is tolerable for me, especially since it takes about a minute for my projector bulb to warm up and get to its full brightness. Those who are firing of macros with a universal remote control or RF-based system probably won't notice the delay.

HD DVD: The Last Samurai
It had been several months since I had seen this film. I own both the HD DVD and the standard DVD and did a comparison by flipping between the HD-A2 with the HD version and my Oppo DV-971H with the standard DVD. To be honest, the video quality on this disc was a little disappointing. I could tell that things were a little bit cleaner, but it was certainly not worth the money I had paid. I have since learned that this particular disc had a lower quality transfer then most other discs, and it was obvious. However, I did notice a big improvement in the sound quality of this movie. The gun shots sounded clearer and the music was certainly better, as well. I was actually quite surprised at how much better the sound was. In any case, the player seemed to do its job, even if the movie didn’t have great video.

HD DVD: King Kong
I was also able to compare this HD disc with the standard DVD. I could see a very noticeable improvement on the video during this test. The color seemed just a bit brighter and more pleasing. The scenes in New York with the cars and cabs were very clean and you could discern minor details that just weren’t available on the standard DVD. One huge difference was the quality of people’s eyes. Yes, that’s right, you could see that they weren’t just black and blue dots for eyes, but you could actually see some of the detail as well. This was especially nice on closers shots of people’s faces and it just made the whole experience seem more lifelike! Well, it was as lifelike as it can get with a giant computer animated gorilla…

HD DVD: 300
If you have not seen this movie you probably should! The HD DVD version of this movie seems just as good as I remember from the local theater. Usually, my home theater is better than the local cineplex, but I drove 50 minutes to get to the best theater in the state of Iowa. So anyway, I’d like to stress that this movie was just as impressive on my home theater as it was in a state of the art, all digital, extremely well designed and equipped movie theater. You may read reviews about and how the movie is kind of grainy or how the color has been played with, but that’s the way they wanted it to be. You can watch the green screen version on the HD DVD in a small window while the main movie plays, if you like. That’ll give you a comparison with no artificial grain or color correction. Of course, there aren’t any background graphics, but it is very cool that the player can play two full bandwidth video streams at the same time! I was very impressed!

DVD: Finding Nemo
I watched this just a couple of days ago, and it’s a movie my whole family enjoys. I have gotten used to the video quality on HD DVD so taking a step back to normal DVD was a bit disappointing for me. However, I will say that the HD-A2 did a great job at the upconversion. The colors were good, and there was very little blocking. Of course, the sound and video detail wasn’t as good as a Dolby TrueHD movie, but it’s still very watchable.

HD DVD: Digital Video Essentials
This is a pretty cool disc I recently picked up. It is a dual-sided disc with the original DVD version on one side and the new HD version on the other side. The HD side has a very well laid out menu, and is much more intuitive to use than the original. In any case, the player seemed very responsive as I flipped through the menus, and it would even continue playing content while it overlaid the menu system on top so you could find your next test. I was able to tweak my projector brightness a bit with this disc, and found that one of the default video modes was nearly perfect for color and hue. I did, however, verify that I was unable to get the HD-A2 to pass the blacker than black signal in my particular system.

Conclusion

After using the HD-A2 for the past 4 months, I would certainly recommend it to any user who is looking for high definition video and audio! Even though it is a little slow to start up and slightly cumbersome to fast forward or rewind during video, it does provide a very satisfying experience for the next generation of home movie watching. Of course, its upconversion for standard DVDs is very good, as well! Lastly, if you are still using a receiver or processor that doesn’t accept HDMI audio, then this unit will downconvert the HD audio to DTS to provide the highest bandwidth stream available for better quality sound. This unit can be had for less than the $299 MSRP in many places (rumor has it going for under $200 by the 2007 holidays) and it will certainly be even less with the HD-A3 on the market, so it is a great value for HD video and audio! Remember kids, in the first years of standard DVD, the nice players stayed in the $600 plus range, and they didn’t have nearly as many features as this unit. When it’s all said and done, I’d buy this player again!