Video Asylum

Posted by Dalton (A) on June 01, 2007 at 11:21:20

In Reply to: RE: How's the XA2 treatin' ya? posted by Jack G on June 01, 2007 at 09:55:55

So far, so good Jack. I haven't had a lot of time with it yet. I have watched "Poseidon", which I'm using as a reference/calibration disc. Yeah, I know it's not a very good movie. But I'm a sucker for disaster at sea movies and the original version, "The Poseidon Adventure", is a long time favorite. "Poseidon" has great visuals (if admittedly terrible characterization) including both spetacular cgi effects and elaborately detailed real sets. You can see where the $200 million production cost went (apparently not enough of it went toward a good script). Is the picture quality better on the XA2 than the A2? I'm not sure. Both have excellent detail resolution. I think I see smoother color rendering in the faces of the actors. But truthfully, both are more than satisfactory as far as picture quality is concerned as far as I can tell with my Optoma HD70 which is really the weak link in the system. The Optoma HD70 does not have the best color depth or sharpness, but is a good compromise while I wait for 1080p projectors to come down in price.

What impresses me most is the sound quality with the HD-XA2. Set up only took a few minutes using a Radio Shack dB meter and the Toshiba's test tones and on-screen prompts. Using the analog outputs I am able to access the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack on "Poseidon" and it sounds much smoother and detailed than the low resolution Dolby Digital track through the A2's optical output. Bass resolution is especially improved over the A2 and dialog is clearer and more natural sounding. For instance, before the wave hits there is a announcement over the noise in the dining room that I could never quite make out in Dolby Digital. Now I could clearly hear it: "Brace for immediate and heavy roll". I have a Vienna Acoustics Oratorio center speaker and this is the first time it really sounds great with DVD. I can hardly wait for the shipment of HD-DVDs I ordered from Amazon, which includes a couple of concert videos.

I have also watched a little bit of "Field of Dreams" on HD-DVD. There's some disturbing pixelation or noise present in the twilight sky near the beginning of the movie as Kostner is hearing voices in his cornfield. But that could be the projector. So far I am very satisfied with the HD-XA2.