Toshiba XD-E500 Upconverting 1080p Extended Detail DVD Player

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...Read more

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...Read more

Im giving this 4 stars because its lacking a few key things.
Let me preface by saying the picture quality is excellent. I had been using an OPPO 981 to watch my anime collection, and prior to the 550, the OPPO was arguably the best upconverting player you could buy. Comparing the Toshiba to the OPPO, it has noticeably better picture quality. The upconversion is significantly better on the Toshiba than the OPPO. Both seem to process interlaced material about the same, meaning they occasionaly screw up and produce interlace artifacts if the source doesnt have a consistent 3:2 pulldown pattern.

However, the OPPO has a number of features that the 550 is lacking. First, the ability to change the HDMI signal format (RGB or YUV) and black level. However, I can live with this because my HD set lets me change the black level. Second, the different picure modes all apply edge enhancement, which can create some nasty artifacts if your source is not reference DVD...Read more