Cool Tech Reviews

Things are moving fast in the high definition DVD world although it’s still not clear whether Blu-ray or HD DVD or both will eventually get the nod from consumers. Anyhow, in the HD DVD camp after a very short run for the first generation players, Toshiba announced their second generation players (HD-A2 and HD-XA2) last September and while the HD-XA2 is just beginning to appear in stores, the HD-A2 has been available for a while and is getting uniformly great reviews.

David Katzmaier at CNET (from 2006):

The new player also has an improved remote control with keys arranged in a much more logical fashion than those of the HD-A1’s bulky clicker. Otherwise, the two players are identical: The HD-A2 has 1080i output, not 1080p; the HDMI jack still uses the 1.2 spec; and image quality should be exactly the same.

1080p and HDMI 1.3 are reserved for the new step-up model, the HD-XA2 (December, $999). The benefits of 1080p are hard to pin down–in fact, given a display that de-interlaces 1080i correctly, and most do, we expect the picture quality improvement from 1080i to 1080p output to be minor, if not nonexistent. HDMI 1.3’s chief video-quality benefit, according to its backers, is better color depth that’s less subject to false contouring, among other problems. It’s worth mentioning that you only get the benefit of HDMI 1.3 if you mate your HDMI 1.3 source to a display with HDMI 1.3, and as far as we know, no HDMI 1.3 displays will be available this year…

At first glance, the HD-A2 looks like a better player than the HD-A1, and hopefully the company has indeed addressed some of the first-generation player’s usability quirks. For HDTV owners with $500 to spend on a disc player that delivers phenomenal video quality, it looks like a solid value. The same can’t be said for the twice-as-expensive HD-XA2, which is obviously aimed at buyers who don’t mind paying a lot for cutting-edge features.

Also worth noting is that all 14 of the user reviews are “Perfect” or “Spectacular” except for two users who were expecting to use HDTV’s with only DVI input where there are currently limitations.

B. Greenway at the Home Theater Blog:

The Toshiba HD-A2 outputs 480p, 720p, and 1080i over HDMI and component and it up-scales standard definition DVD’s over the players HDMI 1.2a output. Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD (core only), Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital and standard DTS processing are supported. The player also sports a rear-panel Ethernet connection, slim-line design and greatly improved load times over its predecessors. The players build quality is still impressive even if it’s not the tank the HD-A1 was. The case is still made of metal and the brushed/stainless flip-down front tray adds to the players overall curb appeal.
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Standard Definition DVD Viewing:

The Toshiba HD-A1 and HD-XA2 were widely lauded for their standard definition up-scaling capabilities, so of course I was quite interested to see how well the HD-A2 performed the same task. The first disc up was my well worn and just as enjoyed Superbit edition of ‘The Fifth Element’. I wanted something familiar for this test and I can’t think of a disc I’ve viewed more throughout the years. The colors were vibrant and well saturated and the overall image was on-par with the up-conversion from my XA1.

I skipped forward to chapter eight where Leeloo is crawling through the air-ducts; the shadow detail, sharpness and overall detail were all spot-on. The motion was fluid and lifelike and the flesh tones were very believable. Overall I was quite satisfied with the A2’s standard definition DVD playback and I never had the feeling that I was missing something or felt the desire to pop the disc back over into the XA1.
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If you happen to go the HD DVD route, I can easily recommend either the HD-A2 or HD-A20 (I’m under the assumption it’s basically a HD-A2 with 1080p output) without reservation.

There’s much more by following the link, but the Toshiba HD-A20 mentioned is yet another second generation player announced earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show that adds 1080p output at a MSRP of $599.

To net it all out, the Toshiba HD-A2 seems to be a great reasonably priced HD DVD player for consumers who don’t need cutting edge features as long as you observe the usual caveats:

• Make sure your HDTV supports what the HD-A2 delivers. (I know it sounds obvious, but as seen above it’s a perennial problem.)
• Realize that that there is a format war going on and this is early days for a new technology so the HD DVD movie selection is limited.
• The technology is changing rapidly and while the second generation players seem solid, you can always expect better and/or cheaper a year from now.

Eric A. Taub reports that Samsung is going for thin on a new line of rear projection TVs:

Samsung, the world’s largest seller of televisions, will introduce at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show a new line of rear-projection D.L.P. televisions that will not be much thicker than flat-panel TVs but will cost about 30 percent less.

The new sets, aimed at those who want a bigger set but cannot afford a plasma TV, will come in 50- to 60-inch sizes. At 10 inches deep, they can be hung on a wall.

10 inches is not exactly thin, but I’ll be interested to see the full specs.

The Wall Street Journal’s highly regarded technology reviewer, Walter Mossberg, weighs in on Microsoft’s Office 2007 which will be launched on January 29 (available January 30). Not unexpectedly he observes what many prior reviewers have, which is that the good news is that Microsoft did something really different to the user interface in this latest version of the perennial favorite office productivity suite. Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news.

The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaced with something new. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone — every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen called the Ribbon. And there is no option to go back to the classic interface.

In Outlook, the Ribbon hasn’t kicked out the menus and toolbars in the program’s main screens, but if you compose an email, or set up a new contact or appointment, you’ll see it.
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These changes in Office, while much less publicized, are far bolder and more important than the mostly cosmetic user interface changes in the highly hyped new version of Windows, called Vista, which comes out on the same day.

After months of working with the Ribbon and other new features of Office, I believe they are an improvement. They replace years of confusing accretions with a logical layout of commands and functions. They add easy and elegant new options for making documents look good. And they make it much simpler to find many of the 1,500 commands that Office offers, but had buried in the past.
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But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid. In my own tests, I was cursing the program for weeks because I couldn’t find familiar functions and commands, even though Microsoft provides lots of help and guidance.

There’s more in the article including suggestions on which users are going to like the new changes (power users and complete novices) and which aren’t (everyone else), but even that is tempered by problems for power users who have heavily customized their Office 2003 menus and toolbars extensively and can’t do the same in Office 2007. However, there’s another point worth considering and that’s why bother? There’s really no compelling reason to rush out and upgrade an existing version of Office just to get this new user interface and the other rather specialized enhancements.

There’s also another problem for home users which Mossberg mentions and Microsoft Watch’s Joe Wilcox describes at more length. In a nutshell, 80% of the Microsoft Office 2003 retail store sales are for the Student and Teacher Edition which allows installation on 3 computers of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook for the relative bargain price of $150. It is supposed to be for households which include either a student or a teacher, but no one ever enforced that restriction. For Office 2007 the Student and Teacher Edition has morphed into the Home and Student Edition, but along the way the Outlook email client got dropped and and OneNote (a note taking application) got added, so if you want Outlook 2007, you’ll have to shell out more. You can either bite that bullet or try a free alternative to Outlook like Thunderbird, but for that matter there are free alternatives to Office as well (e.g. OpenOffice) which is a subject for a whole other post.

To net it out: While Microsoft has invested a lot of effort in the user interface changes in Office 2007 and the result is not bad, it’s hard to find any reason to upgrade immediately. Most new office productivity suites get purchased when PCs are replaced and Office 2007 won’t change that at all.

Update Jan. 5: A similar reaction to the ribbon from Jonathan Blum at Fortune.