Playback and Usage
The HD-E1 can read just about every optical disc you throw at it, bar Blu-ray (obviously!). HD-DVD, CD-R/RW’s, DVD-VR/R’s are all supported, however MP3, WMA and non CD-DA formats aren’t. The HD-E1 supports every resolution except 1080p. Instead, the maximum resolution supported by this player is 1080i, which is more than enough for all but the most discerning users.
HDMI is the connection of choice, and I had little choice as my Xbox 360 connects to my 32" Samsung via Component. Upon connecting the HDMI cable up to my Samsung the TV immediately detected a ‘live’ connection and brought up its setup menu so I could start tweaking the colour/sound settings. The display was sharp, vivid and crystal clear through HDMI and the video was smooth without any frame loss at all. I had an initial panic moment when the audio from Planet Earth had an echo effect to it, but then I realised that the sound was coming out from both the RCA analogue outputs connected to my amp, as well as from the TV speakers via HDMI. Activating the TV’s internal mute quickly resolved that issue. Doh!
So I had things up and running. I decided to try out a couple of films just to see how the visual quality (if any) differs from the lovely picture I was used to from the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player. I threw in Van Helsing, and up popped its main language menu. I selected English and then the player froze. "Balls…" was my initial reaction when I realised that the player had hard locked up and not even the front On/Off button would reset this thing.
I hadn’t read the manual at this stage but through impulse decided to hold down the On/Off button for 10seconds. These players are close to mini PC’s in their own right, and since that method shuts off most PC’s I figured why not. It worked and the player powered down allowing me to retry my failed attempt at watching Van Helsing. This time I got past the menu, into the movie and was able to mess about with the menu and all it’s sub menu’s without any hassle.
Next up was Tokyo Drift, one of the best looking HD transfers I have seen to date. I had no problem at all with this title. Shaun of the Dead was next, and once again everything was fine after messing with the menus and playing the first 30mins of the film. The Fast and the Furious was next, and this locked up on the menu as before, but this time it wasn’t a hard lockup.
In short, I tried 8 films in total, which gave me 4 lockups in various spots. With my patience running thin, I turned to the AVForums to see if others were experiencing the same problems, as I was expecting a lot of people to be in the same situation. Indeed they were and a kind soul informed me that my player must have been on its stock v1.1 firmware, which was very buggy and quickly superseded. I fired up the player and sure enough it was on its v1.1 firmware, with the latest version being v2.2 that fixes a lot of initial problems.