Toshiba seems to still be in a sour mood since their defeat of their HD-DVD technology in the format wars. The following article from Twice seems to hold this statement true. The following is an excerpt of the article and my own thoughts afterwards.
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Wanye, N.J. — Toshiba is positioning its first DVD player with eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology as delivering “near-HD” picture quality from standard-definition DVDs and bridging the price and performance gap between current up-scaling DVD players and Blu-ray players.
The XD-E500, available at retail on Aug. 18 for a $149 suggested retail, is targeted to consumers who are heavily invested in DVD collections, aren’t ready to step up to a high-definition player priced at a minimum $400, and would appreciate an up-scaling DVD player “with an added layer of enhancement” that brings picture quality “closer to HD,” said Louis Masses, product planning director of Toshiba’s digital A/V group. XDE technology, however, “is not meant to replace, kill or compete with Blu-ray,” he said.
The introduction is backed by a print- and Web-based ad campaign urging consumers to “breathe new life into your DVDs.”
Read the rest of the story on Twice.com
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Doesn’t matter what you call it: in the end it’s still a standard DVD. This player will simply enhance, even more, problems of the master used for the DVD on the HDTV. I watched the standard version of “Twister” yesterday and it was horrible. People have to understand that an upconverter not only enhances the image by adding “false” lines and contours that don’t exist on the master in the first place but also every dust, speckle, saturation and grain on the master will also be enhanced.
A statement like “…aren’t ready to step up to a high-definition player priced at a minimum $400” is, literally, an oxymoron in the HD world. You spend thousands of dollars on your TV, wiring, accessories and possible HD Cable Box (or dish), yet you don’t want to spend a few hundred dollar more for an Blu-ray player? It’s like buying a car and not wanting to pay the high price of gas.
The same statement is also erroneous because the cheapest player, at the moment, is from Magnavox at 299$, which, I believe you can get at Wal-Mart.
Toshiba also, deliberately, forgets to mention that Blu-ray players are DVD upconverters. Granted, some are better than others, but they still upcovert. The best considered upconverter is actually the one from Sony’s Playstation 3 (PS3 – 399$). It does a great job, but again, doesn’t matter how good it is, some DVDs, like “Twister” simply look bad as opposed to Raiders of the Lost Ark which looks pretty good. Again all depending on the authoring work. Hence, someone buying the XD-E500 from Toshiba would end up with two upconverting player the day they buy a Blu-ray player.
With the XD-E500, some uninformed consumers will think they have HD when they actually do not and people who don’t even have an HDTV but a CRT or EDTV will think they don’t need it. Isn’t this going in the opposite direction that all manufacturers are telling you to go to?
Seriously if you have either a CRT or EDTV then just get a good progressive scan player (which is cheaper) and you won’t notice the difference. Everyone else should get a high definition player and not waste their time with the garbage that Toshiba releases these days. Again, Blu-ray players can play standard DVDs!!!
If I was an investor at Toshiba, I would ask some serious questions at the heads of that department. While all manufacturers, even the smaller one, have embraced Blu-ray and started releasing their players, Toshiba is still lagging behind, offering old technology, going in the opposite direction of traffic. Millions of dollars, which they desperately need after the debuff they took in the last two financial quarters, are slipping through their fingers and going to their competitor.
Buyers beware, let it be Toshiba or any other manufacturer. An upconverting player will never be a high definition player, and that’s the truth!
Filed under: Consumer Electronics, Shopping, Technology | Tagged: blu-ray, consumer products, high definition, Magnavox, movies, sony, toshiba, Upconverter
