The consumer electronics world has been abuzz for months in anticipation of HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition DVD players. But there has also been much speculation about the prospects for either format given the incompatible standards, high player prices, and limited number of movie titles available for purchase. But as I found out in some recent testing of the Toshiba HD-A1 and Samsung BD-P1000 models, there’s another set of issues that’s not getting as much attention: interconnection.

Both players are equipped with analog high-definition component and HDMI outputs, with the promise of optimum picture quality through the latter interface. The HD-A1 offers 1080i/30, 720p/60, and 480p/60 display rates through its HDMI port, while the BD-P1000 adds 1080p/60 to that list.

That’s all well and good, as long as the HDTV display being connected sends complete Extended Display Interface Data (EDID) to either player. The problem is there’s no guarantee that will happen.

Neither the Toshiba nor the Samsung player could directly drive two late-model 1080p home theater projectors - one LCOS, and one DLP - in my tests. Both projectors had DVI or HDMI interfaces, and both supported fast 1080p refresh rates, including 50Hz, 59.94Hz, and 60Hz.

The Toshiba player simply displayed "HDMI ERROR 1", while the Samsung player defaulted to 720p output and locked out its 1080p function. The HDMI inputs on a pair of new 1080p home theater video scalers were dead in the water as well, resulting in the same errors and default settings.

How about 720p? One 1280×720 LCD projector got a default connection of 1080i through HDMI from the Toshiba and Samsung players. A 720p DMD projector got lucky and hooked up its DVI-D port at 720p with the BD-P1000, but crashed the HD-A1. In fact, if the input on the 720p DLP projector was changed from DVI to anything else while a Blu-ray disc was playing, the BD-P1000 froze up for several minutes.

Fortunately, old-fashioned analog 720p and 1080i output was still available from both players. Even though Hollywood has talked about restricting component video resolution to ¼ HD (960×540), it didn’t happen with any HD DVD or Blu-ray movie or test discs I used. (I still had to de-interlace those 1080i signals to convert them back to 1920×1080p/60-DVI through each video scaler, though.)

Conclusion? There’s no question that image quality from either disc format - even in analog 1080i mode - is significantly better than standard DVDs. But regular DVD players aren’t nearly as persnickety with HDMI and DVI hook-ups. And the long boot-up times (90 seconds to disc play on the HD-A1, 36 seconds on the BD-P1000) are aggravating.

HDMI interfacing problems with home theater-class video scalers are not good news to early adopters, who are spending $500 or $800 for the Toshiba players and $1000 and up for the Blu-ray offerings. Adoption of HDMI 1.3 by display manufacturers will go a long way to fixing these glitches, but that could take another product cycle or two, pushing into 2007.

You might want to sit this one out for a while…