Toshiba XD-E500 Upconverting 1080p Extended Detail DVD Player

Comment: I bought my XDE back in August 2009. It has worked fine up until a few days ago. Yes, I experienced some of the problems that others have described on this site (picture break-up, green squares or whatever). THE XDE PLAYER IS NOT BROKEN!!! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS USE A DVD LENS CLEANER!!! All these people came on Amazon and wrote negative reviews about this AMAZING DVD player for no reason.

Yes, I used a DVD Lens Cleaner and GUESS WHAT? ... The XDE worked & went back to normal!!!

To anyone considering buying an XDE: Don't listen to the ignorant people who gave a negative rating to the XDE.

It makes new movies look great! I watched my "Smokin Aces" DVD at 1080p and it was very close to HD (I also have a Blu-ray player). Most movies I watch at 720p.

I would recommend this to anyone who loves their DVDs. Let's face it, there are a lot of DVDs that aren't available on Blu-ray yet (& some may never ever go to BD).

The 3 Xtended Detail Enchancements are good. I only use the contrast for dark movies. The sharp feature will make old movies look worse. The color enhancement is okay, it really does make the colors look better, but I rarely use it.

The only thing missing from the XDE is a digital noise reduction feature. Other than that, this is a four star DVD player!!!!

I highly recommend the Toshiba XDE!!!

Comment: I purchased the XDE in June of 2009 and have been extremely impressed with the picture quality - I actually love the sharpness setting and to me, on my tv, (a Samsung 720p/1080i 16x9 CRT 26"), this makes the picture pretty darn close to a true HD dvd. After reading the recent reviews here, I'm pretty frightened as it seems many of these units have quality control issues and/or a short life span. So far, mine has been flawless and I hope it stays that way. Perhaps the new version of this, the XDE 600 will not have the same issues. The picture truly is remarkable and breathes new life into regular dvd's. Doing a test of the XDE modes on a freeze frame proved to me that the sharpness mode really made a difference. I froze a frame on an actor's face and when the sharpness mode was engaged, facial hairs became visible and the individual beard stubs of his five o-clock shadow became detailed and sharp. I could never go back to watching my collection on anything else!

Comment: We received this DVD player as a gift in December 2008. During the first use, we got the green pixels that everyone else received. We returned it to Amazon. We used it infrequently. This week, the DVD stopped and the screen had brownish-pink diagonal lines. It wouldn't eject the dvd and then wouldn't turn on. We had to disassemble the player to retrieve the disc and will just throw away rather than put it together.

Comment: I'm on my 2nd player; the first one simply froze after a week. Unplugging it fixed that problem--at least temporarily--but I wasn't sure how long it'd last, so I exchanged it. (Yes, I got the same model. I don't learn my lesson.)
So the new one was fine for 3 months. Now it periodically doesn't output an HDMI signal on startup--cycling the power fixes the issue--and sometimes emits a giant burp through the audio (which I don't have running through the HDMI output).

It looks a little cheap, and feels even cheaper. But that's pretty much what to expect from electronics at this price point. The physical buttons on the unit are small and unresponsive, but that's what the remote is for.

The picture quality is fine. I can't say it's a huge step up from my previous non-upscaling DVD player. Perhaps my expectations were too high on this front.

Comment: I purchased this player earlier this year and like most people have mentioned the upconvert picture quality is excellent. Also, like many people have mentioned the player is extremely defective and has a very short life span. This is why I am only giving this item one star. One can argue that I happened to purchase a lemon which can happen from time to time and is not indicative of the general population. This is a valid point but my gripe is that a defect should be a rarity and not a common occurence for a product that a consumer spends his hard earned money on. Based on the number of negative reviews for this player it seems to me there are more defects than not. Toshiba clearly didnt do a very good job on quality control which is a shame because when it works its really good. My DVD player died right in the middle of a movie. The screen turned into a jumbled mess of green pixels (which is a very common issue if you read some other user reviews) and I knew immediately that the player was dead because I remembered when I first purchased this item I ignored those negative reviews that told me to avoid this faulty product. Don't make the same mistake I made.