Toshiba fights back in HD wars

[SAT-WORLD]

Toshiba’s HD-DVD creation lost its battle with rival Sony’s Blu-ray disc format back in January, when it pulled the plug on HD-DVD. But it now seems that Toshiba is coming back into the format wars with all guns blazing, especially if its XD-E500 DVD player delivers on its promise.

The XDE500 is claimed to be a significant improvement on Toshiba’s existing DVD upconverters in that it is designed to handle full 1080p/24fps – and expected to retail at $149.99. At this price it will be highly competitive with Blu-ray, although only side by side comparisons can start to make any sort of judgement as to whether DVD will always be a poor man’s Blu-ray. In fairness, Toshiba do not claim their XDE technology wholly matches Blu-ray, but it could be a boon to those consumers with a large library of DVD movies which they don’t necessarily want to junk in favour of Blu-ray.

It is also yet to be seen whether consumers are prepared to buy into XD-equipped devices when “ordinary” DVD upconverter/players – even from Toshiba – cost barely half that sort of price. The XDE promises multiple outputs and flexibility in terms of 720p/1080i or 1080p displays.

Toshiba's Louis Masses said: "XDE is not just a branding of our existing upconverters. XDE is a new feature [and] technology which improves the picture quality of upconverted DVDs even further and brings them to a level closer to HD. The goal is to simply offer the best picture quality we can from existing DVDs."


Source:Rapid Tv News