Toshiba XD-E500 Upconverting 1080p Extended Detail DVD Player

Other products by Toshiba

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 16.9 x 2 inches ; 1.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001D9IWIY
• Item model number: XD-E500
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #550 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)

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  #3 in	Electronics > Televisions & Video > Disc Players & Recorders > Upconverting DVD Players
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• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 18, 2008

Product Description

Manufacturer's Description -- August 18, 2008
Toshiba's new xDE (Extended Detail Enhancement) DVD player aims to save your DVD collection. First, the xD-E500 converts your standard DVDs from 480p to full 1080p resolution.  But that is not all... oh no, that is not all. xDE uses a chipset with parameters specially developed for Toshiba and a combination of user-controlled picture improvement techniques including upconversion, edge enhancement, and color remapping to deliver a new level of near HD video quality from Standard DVDs.

Full 1080p Upconversion

Video upconversion from 480p standard DVD resolution up to 1080p full HD resolution via HDMI takes your current DVDs to a new level, for an amazing viewing experience on today's HDTVs.

Sharp Mode

Sharp Mode provides edge enhancement. By naturally enhancing the edge of a picture, the outline and detail of that picture becomes clearer and more detailed.

Detail Enhancement improves the edge detail where necessary in the picture without added video noise. xDE technology can adaptively control each edge signal in a picture. If an edge signal is high, picture noise is created, on the other hand, when an original edge level is low, xDE technology adaptively enhances edge & noise level, as needed  Added noise reduction technology increases the effect of edge enhancement. The result is a sharper, more detailed image.

Contrast Mode

With contrast enhancement, gradation becomes clearer, adaptively by enhancing contrast. Contrast is enhanced in darker scenes without affecting the lighter scenes. This mode is best for movies with dark scenes, such as a SciFi movie. Since its adaptive, the level of enhancement varies with each scene.

Contrast Enhancement intelligently adjusts contrast levels where needed without boosting surrounding contrast. For example, here is an example of the effect of boosting contrast in a shady area under a tree without adjusting the contrast levels of the tree.

Color Mode

Color Enhancement intelligently adjusts colors only where necessary to provide more vivid color reproduction. For example, grass can be made greener without impacting surrounding colors in the image.

Before Color Enhancement


After Color Enhancement: reds are redder, greens are greener

The above image is intended to help illustrate how a specific function operates and is not indicative of actual relative differences

Premium Styling

The XD-E500 boasts premium styling with a slick high gloss faceplate and textured design. The slim chassis makes it a great addition to your home theater.

Notes:

• This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-Ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.
• To display upconverted 720p, 1080i or 1080p video content, a 720p, 1080i or 1080p capable HDTV or HD Monitor (as applicable) with an HDCP capable HDMI or DVI input is required.
  The effect of enhancements may vary depending upon disc content quality and display device capability/functionality/settings. Depending on the quality of the DVD disc, some video noise may be visible.
• Some DVD-R/DVD-RW discs may be incompatible due to laser pick up and disc design. Some recordable media or recording formats may not be supported. Compatibility with other HDMI-CEC™ products will vary by manufacturer. Some products will not be compatible at all or may only allow for limited functions.
• Viewing 24 frames per second requires content created in 480p / 24 frames/sec and an HD display capable of accepting a 1080p/24 Hz signal.

Product Description
1080P Upconverting Detail Enhanced DVD Player

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

152 of 166 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Tail of Two XDs', August 24, 2008

By	Black Adder (USA) - See all my reviews

Ever since HDTVs came on the scene DVD players have boasted they improve DVD to "HD" quality, most only delivered marginally better pictures at best. Thankfully recent players have come a long way offering some really exceptional pictures from a DVD source.

Given the history of up-processing players and the hype surrounding XD-E500 I couldn't wait to get my hands on this player. For comparison I used my best Up-processing player with Reon-VX HQV. As anyone who has one knows the Reon chip offers one of the best pictures available.

Wondering about the "Two" part of the title now? Well I didn't get carried away and buy two. What happened was the first player sent was defective. It was not obvious at first because I didn't know what to expect, but during the comparisons I and my 3 other testers noticed only a very slight difference over the Reon chip, so small it wouldn't be worth buying. I was about to write a scathing review, luckily I first contacted George, a fellow HD nut. He bought the XD the first day they were available and was surprised I was so disappointed. He then said I must have defective player because the XD blows Reon out of the water.

Long story short, I contacted Amazon and they express shipped a replacement. George was right it blows Reon right out of the water.
The Picture is impressive, very impressive. The better the DVD transfer the better the picture.
New movies like The Bank Job look extraordinary. It was difficult to remember that it was not a true HD picture.

Star War IV looked sharper than ever, the best I've seen outside the theater. The backgrounds of the ships, corridors, lighted buttons, and droids all had richer detail that really stood out. I should note while Star Wars looked sharper it was evident to me it was not HD especially in exterior shots. This probably has more to do with the age of the film, some of the flaws I noticed will probably be present in any release.

Toshiba included a Mbps meter, neat feature. Also a tool for getting an idea of what is being done.
From what I can tell the XD essentially doubles the DVDs natural Mbps.

Bank Job (13 to 14 Mbps), Star Wars IV (17 Mbps), 5th Element superbits (7-8 Mbps), Pirates of the Caribbean I (15 to 16 Mbps), *highest Mbps noticed

Is it HD? No, and it does not claim to be.
Does it look close to HD? Yes, at times it can fool the eye. The three modes (Sharp, Color, Contrast) do a very nice job compensating the picture and can add significantly to the picture.

I only gave the XD 4 out of 5 stars because I feel there are a few small flaws to be worked out and improvements to be made.

Make no mistake this is revolutionary technology. I also believe that this is just the beginning of this technology. Improvement are inevitable. Better software, improvements to the hardware and the much talked about implementation of DVD 2.0 next year.
Kaleidescape already offers a DVD player which does a similar job. In fact they claim it does a better job boasting that it makes DVD look as good as blu-ray. Doubtful, however their system connects to a server and downloads additional data to improve the picture. Maybe this is the next step for all players when DVD 2.0 & DVD DL come to fruition.

In a way this player feels rushed out, quickly put in production an configured for the easiest and most rewarding optimization. Simply put my impression is that if Toshiba tweaks the settings better quality could be achieved. Although part of impression it was rushed might be because we were told to expect this player by December and here it is available in the middle of August.

Considering the price of top of the line up-processors this one is quite a deal at the current price and is likely to get better as they become cheaper to make and as other manufactures start to make their own versions of this.

This player does what it promises. It provides unprecedented DVD picture quality and is a decent DivX player as well. This is a perfect player for anyone who has a large DVD collection, or who prefer DVD to the alternatives.
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08-25-2008

Small Update: The XD-E500 seems to have a issue with aspect ratio. It stretched 4:3 material to fit the screen. Wouldn't be a big issue except, well I prefer it in the correct aspect and the two sources were low quality classic films which look worse stretched. If I find a solution I'll update again.
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No solution yet, all settings correct, the DVDs in question display properly on another DVD player. It should be noted that this is a glitch common to a lot of players.
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Region free via remote control:

- open the tray
- type 2403960
- press 9
- close the tray
- turn the player off and back on again

Worked for me. XD is able to playback Region 2 PAL DVDs now.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
09-29-2009
9 Month Update:
It is now tail of 3 XDs.

The XDE sent as a replacement by Amazon last August died over the Memorial Day weekend. During a Star Trek marathon no less. Maybe it was too much for it. ;) I don't know if it was more embarrassing to admit it was Trek Marathon or that the XD died in front of all my guests.

The symptoms were: at first it froze in the middle of show, pressed stop checked the disc (it was fine) then tried to play it again, then it was stuck at "loading", after it was turned off for awhile it would load the disc but display "bad disc" or "no disc", I unplugged it and left it alone for a day, the next day it load and played the dvd properly but for only 10 minutes then it repeated the cycle as described previously.

I almost didn't buy another one, two things swayed me. The first was the price, much more reasonable than it was last august. The second was I could not get as satisfactory dvd picture from my high end blu-ray player. I tweaked the setting and tried everything I could think of. Whatever I did the picture was not as pleasing as the XDE's.

I almost held off because I firmly believe by this time next year DVD Up-processing will be a new game. Possibly as soon as this holiday season. But I decided for the next year or so I would want another DVD player to save the wear and tear on my Blu-ray player and the XD so far has the most pleasing picture available.

New player arrived to day and I swapped it right out. This one worked properly out of the box, as the second player did. The region free code worked as before. Although it is a later build date the firmware seem to be the same. Same aspect ratio problems as noted earlier.

Among my disappointments with the XD are the lack of quality control. I am very disappointed the second player died. I had a Sony dvd player used regularly for 8 years that I gave away when I upgraded to Blu-ray and HD DVD, never a lick of trouble with it. Not to single out the Sony brand, I have other players last as well but they were not used as regularly.

My other major disappointment is the remote. It can be a bear to use. Well it is probably more the fault of the placement of the receiver in the player rather than the remote. Although when holding the flimsy remote in your hand and having nothing happen it is the remote control that gets the blame.

This is still a great player despite its faults. And still a great player for anyone with a large DVD collection.

54 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ONE STEP BEYOND , August 28, 2008

By	Humberto Martinez "Humbi" (FLORIDA) - See all my reviews

As an owner of a SONY Blu-ray and a 2 TOSHIBA HDDVD players, I was very hesitant to believe that a standard DVD player could do a better job at upscaling standard DVD's than the Hi-Def players. SURPRISE!!!, it does. Not only does it upscale to 1080p/24fps, but it reduces the noise of the upscaling process, and almost eliminates the edge or halo effect of standard DVD's.
A complete machine with HDMI, component, composite, S-Video, optical and coaxial sound outputs.In addition, there are already suggestions that the region lock can be removed to make it an ALL region player!.
My only complaint is that the unit does not center the 4:3 DVD's in the 16x9 screen, but it stretches them to fill the screen like the older players. This can probably be improved with a firmware update from TOSHIBA.
I think,for the price, this unit is a savior of the DVD collection we own but often times are embarrassed to show once we have become spoiled with HD titles. For the price, you have nothing to loose and much to gain.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, August 30, 2008

By	Barry Shatswell (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I tried this product to see what it would do for the video quality. What I have learned is that it not only lived up to what was advertised, but it exceeded it. I am so impressed with the video AND audio quality that I had to write a review. The sound is incredible in clarity and separation. The video has breathed new exciting life into my DVD collection, so much that I want see each of them again just to experience the incredible picture quality. Even the older DVDs are significantly improved. Those will never be Blu-Ray quality, but are at their best on this player.

High quality product. Two thumbs up!