Average Reviews:
(More customer 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.
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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.
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