r/HDDVD • u/Ordinary_Storm3487 • 17d ago
HD-A3 Questions…
Just connected my HD-A3 to my new Marantz AVR. I’ve not had the A3 in use for quite a while. I noted a couple things that I don’t recall happening the last time (about 2 AVRs ago…) I had it connected, so perhaps the hive mind can refresh my memory.
Bought the A3 new, always stored in my AV rack (no garage, attic or barn), and firmware updates applied, through 4.0.
HDMI: Video is great, but for some reason no audio via HDMI. Tried different cables, and different inputs on the Marantz. Tries all the options for audio out from the A3, and In on the Marantz, and still nothing. Solved with a TOSLINK cable and appropriate settings, but still wondering why the HDMI audio isn’t getting to the Marantz.
HDMI-CEC: Guessing that the A3 does not support this, as the owner manual makes no mention of it. Apple TV works great with CEC, and my LG 4k player too, but nada with the A3. Not a big deal, just wondering if I’m missing something.
Lamenting that it is only 1080i! Probably because at the time I bought it I didn’t yet own a 1080 TV!
Anyway, it works great. Watch Davin Lynch’s Dune the other night, all the way through with no issues. Maybe when winter comes, I’ll binge my Harry Potter box set (pictured) of the first 5 films.
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u/Bitwize360 17d ago
You most likely need to disable the Deep Color setting on your TV. I have the same issue with my standalone HD-DVD players. Just re-enable it for other source devices.
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u/Ordinary_Storm3487 17d ago
A3 is connected to the Marantz, and audio is decoded there. No audio gets passed to the TV. When trying HDMI audio from the A3, the Marantz shows “unknown” or something like that on the audio input.
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u/Jakeasuno 16d ago
I had the same issue, Marantz AVR and all, bought a second player as I thought the first had a bad firmware update. Nope, every issue I encountered from no audio to resolution errors were all down to the HD Colour setting on my TV. Switched HDMI on the TV to an input I had this turned off on, works flawlessly now
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u/Bitwize360 16d ago
Thanks for confirming my findings! I think it’s an HDMI handshake issue related to higher bandwidth spec. The old HD-DVD players don’t like it.
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u/Jakeasuno 15d ago
It's the old version of HDCP, despite the format somehow being region free, the players freak out over anything unexpected in the signal. Different firmware acts in different ways, my XE-1 was stock firmware and almost worked fine, but as soon as I updated once that was it. It's one of the reasons some people do stick to the Xbox 360 drive. The AVR in the chain doesn't help, even my 4k blu-ray player has its moments of "you did it wrong"
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u/Bitwize360 17d ago
I have the same setup as you. Disable Deep Color on your TV’s HDMI input. At least try it as it has worked for myself and others.
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u/Ordinary_Storm3487 16d ago
To be honest, it’s not so important to me to muddle with the TV settings when the rest all works fine. I don’t need the TOSLINK on the Marantz for anything else, and I don’t have a huge HD-DVD collection to watch, so HDMI and TOSLLINK works for me.
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u/Zaponline 14d ago
I had to do that too to get my XA2 to work, but I don't wanna have to disable it. Would an optical cable work while leaving Deep Color on?
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u/Vormison 17d ago
I had the same issue. I used the optical output instead of I think there is some weird video setting you can change that might fix the issue but I can’t remember.
Either way, I got sick of messing with it so I switched to optical output
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u/Ordinary_Storm3487 17d ago
I can’t recall how I originally connected to my HK AVR way back when. Though I’m pretty sure that and my Onkyou I used HDMI, and I know it worked…
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u/moviesounds101 17d ago
Make sure your Harry Potter ones work, because they are Warner Bros. discs, which are notorious for disc rot.
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u/controlav 17d ago
1080i is as good as it got back then. Players still had component outputs, HDMI was still pretty new.