One Week With The LG BH200 = ARGH!!

[ZombWii]

I picked up the BH200 a week ago while Futureshop had them on for $499 and have been love/hating it ever since.

Let me disclose that my set is an 'older' Panasonic CRT 4:3 capaple of displaying 1080i and has only component inputs (or s-video...etc...pfft!)
I adore this HDTV, and have had no problem with my Toshiba HD DVD player.

Having said that...The LG BH200 has impressed me with it's styling, it's easy to navigate menus, adorable button 'sounds, and even it's remote has, for some un-pinpointable reason, made me happy.
More importantly, I've watched both Beowulf and 30 Days Of Night on it this week and both movies looked incredible.

But with the highs, come the lows...and I do hope that LG addresses some of these things, soon.

I am constantly having to go into the "HOME" menu to change my display setup whenever I go between watching a HD disc and a SD disc...
I am, as I said, running over component cables, so upconverting SD material to 1080i is a no go, I know that...But when the BH200 bumps me down to 480p it puts me in full-screen mode. That should be a no brainer...why default to full screen? Gimme Gimme wide-screen!
And after watching something at 480p, if I put in a HD movie, the player, according to the LG's display, is downconverting it to 480p until I go back into the setup and select 1080i or play with the "resolution" button.

This isn't the end of the world I know, but it surely is annoying, and I feel like an idiot after paying $500 for the player, and I'm still stopping the player, and then tinkering with the thing trying to get the setup changed around so we can watch an episode of CSI.

Speaking of CSI...I cannot get the player to display Season 3 of CSI:NY in its proper widescreen form. Completely and totally annoyed with this litttle quirk.
No matter what I do...it is stretched to widescreen. In fact I tried to watch an episode tonight and the disc would not play...I out the disc in, closed the player drawer, it said "reading..." then showed some chapter/title numbers on the display...and then nothing for about 30 seconds...until the player just SHUT RIGHT OFF. Three times it did that, then I tried a Simpson's disc and it worked just fine, and after playing that the CSI:NY worked.
I've tried CSI:NY on my computer's DVD drive and it came up in widescreen right away...so I don't think that its a disc problem.

Beowulf looked great, but took 1:30 to load up! I know that's not unheard of for some Blu discs, but I've never experienced anything like that on HD DVD.
I thought the disc was going to end up unplayable....especially with the CSI problems I'd been having...

I haven't had any of the very commonly complained about video dropouts, but in terms of audio, I have noticed some minor ticks and pops and I couldn't help but wonder if they coincided with the players fan switching on/off.

I can't really hear any player noise at all while operating. It's very quiet, and I like that. My Toshiba A2 makes an audible 'click' when it's fan comes on and you can hear the fan while it's running. At any rate, I was always expecting the fan to cause a quick flicker in the picture or pop in the audio when it clicked on...but it never happened. Again, though, I wonder if the fan is causing some of these problems for us.

So...Dear LG.

Make widescreen the default output when dropping out of HD to 480p or give us a button on the remote for on the fly aspect changes.

or better yet

Make the users selected video setup the permanent default so that I can set the player to 1080i, and playing a SD disc will result in output being dropped to 480p but the player will return to 'default' upon ejecting, that is 1080i, and treat the next disc accordingly by either outputting HD in 1080i or again dropping down to 480p for SD material. That's the way my Toshiba works, and it now makes a lot of sense.

I've read on AVSForum that there is another firmware due soon...I hope it's a good one cause if some of these things aren't fixed in the next 3 or so weeks, it's going back to Futureshop.

Anyone else care to commiserate?

ZW

[ZombWii]

Not wanting to misinform...I will correct myself...
When my BH200 is set to 16:9 Widescreen at 1080i and I insert a standard DVD, the player correctly drops the resolution to 480p and in fact retains it's 16:9 widescreen aspect setting, not changing to full-screen as I had previously claimed.

That notwithstanding, the image still gets stretched and distorted by my television until I manually change the player's aspect to 4:3 Letterbox, which is not an option for 1080i resolution under the current setup software.
This combination of settings (4:3 Letterbox @1080i) is allowed by my Toshiba HD DVD player so that all of my SD discs are displayed properly, and all my HD discs are stretched, but when my TV is receiving a HD signal over component connections, it allows me to switch quickly and easily between displaying a 4:3 image and a 16:9 image.

I would like to see LG unlock the 4:3 1080i settings via firmware.

ZW

[MikeV]

I deal with LG Canada and I'll pass on your concerns.

Hopefully I'll have my BH200 by the weekend.

Mike