Toshiba's XD-E500 upconverting DVD player caught in stores

We'll apologize on our tipster's behalf for the quality of this shot, but evidently, he wasn't able to pass it through Toshiba's completely mind-boggling XDE upscaling technology before forwarding it onto us. Anyway, we reckon you can get the point -- the XD-E500 upconverting DVD player is filtering into stores, so those looking to make their current DVD collection look its best should probably take notice. Or not, whatever.

[Thanks, Philip]

[dsstrainer Posted Sep 14th 2008 11:49AM]

Wow... another run-of-the-mill upconverting DVD Player....

How is this news?!?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2008 12:33PM]

It's not "run-of-the-mill"; it basically juices up the upscaled video with additional sharpness and noise reduction, contrast and saturation. It's DVD on steroids. I've owned a number of upconverting players, last of which was an Oppo, and no matter how much better one model would upconvert than the other, they still looked like upconverted DVDs--soft, lacking in color depth and contrast range. I picked up an XDE from Amazon the moment it was out, just to see what it did.

kamikaZi is right on with his assessment; when you're up close trying to look for the magical results (as one is wont to do with Blu-Ray), it is jarringly disappointing--even horrid--to look at. But when you're at the proper viewing distance, you notice that it *is* doing something. It's probably a videophile purist's nightmare with all the electronic enhancements they put on the DVD signal, but for a Joe Schmo, I'd say it would make watching more enjoyable.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2008 1:06PM]

i saw one at best buy last week. no big deal.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2008 4:56PM]

Waste of money!
XDE picture enhancements don't live up to the hype. Still a good upscaling DVD player but too expensive.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2008 10:06PM]

circuit city has been selling it about a month now. It came in 3 days after it was announced. How do I know? I unloaded it from the truck n put on the shelves. CC FTW!!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 15th 2008 11:08AM]

I live in the middle of no where. On the border of utah and colorado , this has been on my shelf for about a month.... this hype is a little late. and hook this thing up to the same tv vs bluray . bluray wins.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2008 5:08AM]

what the "get over it Toshiba" commentators seem to forget every time is that millions of people in Europe and the US have "HD Ready" TVs that display 1280x720 or 1366x768 NOT 1920x1080 (so-called "Full HD"). They have them in 'mid' sizes (say 32-42"), and they own dozens (maybe 100s) of standard def dvds some of which they treasure. The fact is that while blu-ray (or any other native 1920x1080 syatem) looks brilliant on big, true HD displays, and looks somewhat better on the mid size, HD-ready screens, it doesn't look that much better on the latter - at least not $/£100s better. And the upscaling on most BR players is nothing special compared to (say) a dedicated (and pricey) OPPO for example. So, Toshiba are onto something after all - a dedicated and 'towards top-end' upscaler that aims fair and square at the (millions of) mid-size, mid-definition folk who don't have PS3/Blu-ray, don't want to shell out $/£20+ for every new movie they buy, and just want to play their collection on their nice new 'HD ready' kit. Welll done Tosh: hope you mint it. Then plough the proceeds into what we all look forward to in a couple of years - a truly gobsmacking Tosh BR player with XD-quality upscaling.