the HVD (not HDV) this player uses is going to be a dead format really - it never took off except in a limited way (very limited way) in some parts of asia ..

this is not a new player ...

WMV HD and DiVX HD are going to be more main stream on dvd players and of course blu-ray ..


even rumors are now about that DL media may be just about dead due to cost of production - the cost is not going to drop soon anyway ..

I bought a AVeL LinkPlayer for the interim. I just burn 19 MBit/s 1080i MPEG-2 (Vegas profile) files to a blank DVD-R and they play straight off there without any issues. There are no fancy menus, etc. It also support WMV9 HD and DIVX HD and can play off Harddisk too. Output can be configured as 480i/480p/720p/1080i.

See link:
http://www.iodata.com/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLA&ts=2&tsc=

I've been using an HD 720p/ 1080i output DVD player for the last 18 months now with my Sony HDTV. The DVD player is a Samsung HD931 and it has a DVI output that the NeuNeo doesn't have. It also has component output, but the DVI output has better blacks. It works great, and I figure it will hold me until the Blueray or the next real HD DVD's get here about 2006.

i have a samsung 931 also -- it does upscaling, the one mentioned in the post above plays HD natively stored on the disk

The catch 22 is HOW GOOD is upscaling? If the media is encoded with HD material fine, but how does it handle regular DVD's?, Isn't just really just smoke and mirrors then?

Someone PLEASE correct me where/if I got this wrong:

I'm assuming that unless the DVD itself is true HD (1080i) then all the HD DVD player is doing is doubling the horizontal scan lines by sending twice as many lines to your TV or monitor. So (I remember reading something along these lines) instead of sending lines 1,3, 5, 7, then going back and filling it line 2,4,6,8 it sends two of each or 11,33,55,77 then backfills with 22,44,66,88, etc.. The "benefit" is your eyes preceive a sharper image because instead of 30 passes a second its making 60. If done at a high enough refresh rate so you don't detect flicker, great, otherwise, not good.

I read thru all the reviews and no comment on how it looks playing 720p HVDs.
But yes I agree with what B_JM is saying, it's only using mpeg-2 which is kind of dated and there are players now that'll play native 1080 WMV 9.
Bob.

For sure there's no way to put back what was lost. There's possibly some perceived improvement, most high end projectors do a similar trick which is why running even SD thru them doesn't look too sad. Also there's some TVs that run the image at 100Hz which is visually more pleasing.
Don't forget it will play out 720p mpeg-2, I know how to encode that, don't have a clue how to author that kind of DVD though.
Still for USD 149 it's not exactly expensive and there are a few titles available.
Probably the biggest issue I can see is not having DVI outputs.
Bob.