Toshiba's XDE technology revitalizes DVDsAlmost six months ago to the day, Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD, conceding the HD format war to Blu-ray.
Editors' note:The Toshiba XDE player is tentatively slated for launch in Asia in October or November. Pricing is not available at press time.Since then, we've heard various rumors about Toshiba developing a super-upscaling DVD player using a Cell processor, and all other kinds of wild speculation. Now Toshiba has finally officially announced its new DVD upconversion technology called XDE, as well as the first DVD player to feature the technology, the XD-E500, which retails in the US for US$150.  The idea behind XDE, which stands for extended detail enhancement, isn't that it will compete with Blu-ray, but rather that it will get a little extra performance out of your existing DVD collection and serve as a bridge to high definition--without you having to spend a bundle on new discs. So what's Toshiba's secret sauce to "breathe new life" into DVDs, as the company likes to say? Brace yourself videophiles: Edge enhancement. One of the technologies behind XDE is Sharp Mode, which is supposed to make edges sharp and get "one step closer to high definition." The problem with edge enhancement is that it actually obscures detail and increases noise with high-quality sources like DVD. Now, Toshiba's implementation of edge enhancement is supposedly "smart"--meaning it only adds edge enhancement to certain parts of the image--but in our opinion, generally the best implementation is no edge enhancement at all. In the demonstration we saw--which was far from an ideal home theater environment--the XDE image did look marginally sharper at first glance, but that's usually the case--the flaws are revealed in a more controlled home theater setting. We're hoping to get a review sample sometime this week, so we'll be able to run it through its paces. |
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