Toshiba Unveils DVD-Enhancing Technology

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Turning lead to gold.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/TV_theater/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210101497

In releasing XDE, Toshiba apparently is looking to take advantage of people's lukewarm response to Blu-ray...

which is slowly killing itself with jack shit for title selection/variety and insanely high prices.
Move over BetaMax, DAT, UMD, and MiniDisc -- BluRay is gonna trump all of you as the solution nobody asked for to a problem that really didn't exist.

[guns1inger]

If people aren't buying blu-ray because they don't wont to fork out for a HDTV, why the hell would they buy an upconverting DVD player whose only benefit is only visible on a HDTV ?

[jagabo]

A $150 DVD player that can upscale better than an $70 player! Who would have guessed it! And probably with material that was specially chosen to give the Toshiba player the advantage.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/18/toshiba-returns-dvd

Tosh showed the the same disc in an XDE player and a standard, $70 upscaling model on a side-by-side LCD HDTV to hacks. The AP hacks agreed that it showed a marked improvement.

Of course Tosh did not show it against a Blu-ray player...

Oh, and great. Just what we need. Another **** Bly-ray thread.

[lordsmurf]

Another **** Bly-ray thread.

[ron spencer]

Toshiba needs to improve HD DVD....is this it?

HA HA

[mpack]

If people aren't buying blu-ray because they don't wont to fork out for a HDTV, why the hell would they buy an upconverting DVD player whose only benefit is only visible on a HDTV ?

OTOH, this idea implies not having to replace your DVD library, in my case that would cost around £6000 ($12000) at current BD disk prices (if the disks were available). So I can certainly see a market for this if it worked as promised, though I feel rather dubious about that bit.

[jagabo]

Did Toshiba show their upscaling DVD player next to a Blu-ray player upscaling a DVD?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I seriously doubt it!

I'm still not sold on up-converting though.
I played some DVDs in my PS3 with the up-convert and really didn't notice a difference on a live-action disc. An animation disc looked like crap with the upconvert turned on.
You can't turn lead to gold.

[guns1inger]

It does seem to depend on the source material a lot. Some discs come up looking soft, others look pretty good. My Firefly series discs look very good just using the TV's built-in up-converter from a native PAL component source. Not Blu-ray, but far better than SD would normally look at that size, and easily as good as some HD broadcast material. Other discs don't come up anywhere near as good.

[computerchuck]

I own a sony 5 disc upconvert dvd player hdmi out 1080p. I'm rather impressed with its upconverting quality. I equally like the fact that if I accidentally purchase/rent a full screen dvd, it doesn't stretch the image to fit the tv. It preserves the aspect ratios. But at the same time im using sony's stereo av receiver which also upconverts hdmi signals to 1080p. dishnetwork sd channels look double sharp than before i purchased the stereo receiver. and I'm not a sony boy because i use the samsung 1080p dlp 61" tv for viewing. my roomate argued with me that blueray will be the next big thing, but I don't think so. I think the best delivery system will be satellite and set top hard drive boxes. (ps3/xbox360/and whatever else pops up) mainly due to hdtv library. I can watch more hd content on satellite than i can purchase on blue ray. and it costs too much for blue rays still. Theres no killer movies to watch on blue ray yet.

[NICEBUD]

And here`s my 2 pence worth.

Love this bit
"Most US consumers are happy with DVDs, according to a recent study by ABI Research, and don't believe Blu-ray provides as big of a quality jump as DVDs did over VHS tapes"





http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/toshiba-goes-back-to-the-future/2008/08/19/1218911669751.html


The ONLY way to stop this cr*p.Make ALL blue poo products the same price as dvd.Then there`s nearly no need for dvd.
But unfortunately there`s far to many GREEDY bast**ds in the way taking far too big cut out of it.

Prices need to be cut NOW NOT NEXT YEAR or the year after that.If this was done right now I think nearly all JO PUBLIC BUY INTO IT.

[mpack]

And here`s my 2 pence worth.

The ONLY way to stop this cr*p.Make ALL blue poo products the same price as dvd.

That wouldn't change my attitude much. It would lower the price, but the move to BD would still have major cost implications, and I'm still bound to consider whether what I get in return - over DVD - is worth it.

[guns1inger]

And here`s my 2 pence worth.

The ONLY way to stop this cr*p.Make ALL blue poo products the same price as dvd.

That wouldn't change my attitude much. It would lower the price, but the move to BD would still have major cost implications, and I'm still bound to consider whether what I get in return - over DVD - is worth it.

Aside from better quality (in some cases) and - slowly - a wider range of extras, you also get a return to a restricted catalogue filled with big selling crap films, bodgy transfers that are no better than their DVD counter-parts (note : Bullitt, or worse, Fifth Element, which is worse than the last DVD release), and of course, who could forget the joys of region restrictions. So many selling points. How could anyone resist ?

[gshelley61]

There's already several excellent up-converting DVD players on the market... Toshiba's so-called XDE processing would have to be really something to improve on what's available now.

Up-converters generally do a great job on film-based content... sometimes they have trouble with video-based content (resulting in some motion artifacts). Some up-conversion players have manual Film and Video settings - the Video setting usually clears up the motion artifacts you can get when up-converting video based content.

[FulciLives]

If I recall the PS3 has film/video/auto mode for DVD Video playback. I have it set to auto most times.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[cal_tony]

Re. Fulci's comment, I'll have to see what my PS3 is set at. One thing I have noticed is that with 3 upscaling players, a Toshiba HD-DVD, a Philips 5960, and the PS3, they all seem to upscale differently, but with the exception of the Philips, they do seem to do a better job than no upscaling on my TV. With the Philips....I don't know...maybe(?) better color but nothing else. Also,the Philips when upscaling will not retain the 4/3 format. It wide screens everything. But on the other hand, As a player, it does have lots of functions that the others don't have.

So, after using using all 3 to upscale DVDs, it seems to me that with movies that already have quality video, upscaling does make a noticeable difference. If the XDE takes the upscale process a step further than what their A3 produces, I think not only would there would be a market for it, but it would also be a welcome addition to my current players.

Tony

[Xylob the Destroyer]

@ gshelley61 & guns1inger:
You're not the first to point out the original source in regards to up-scaling.
Admittedly, both of the discs I threw in for a quick look-see were DVD releases of television shows -- an early season of Friends and the final season of Superman TAS.
I'm definitely willing to give it a chance with something else.
Perhaps LOTR or one of the first 3 Star Wars episodes.
The reference to Firefly makes sense -- I'm thinking something "newer" &/or with some hi-res CGI would probably benefit far more from the feature than a 10+ year old TV show originally shot on video tape or a relatively low production value cartoon.

@ cal_tony:
I saw the setting, but didn't really give it much thought. I have no idea what mine is set to.
I'll have to get the PS3 owner's manual and get a bit more info on this.

I must admit that when the first up-scaling DVD players were released, I was very skeptical, and remain so.
It still seems an awful lot like a dark ages alchemist telling me that he can 'magically' turn lead to gold.

If anybody could provide a link to a white paper or technical guide that clearly explains how up-scaling works and what it does, that would be sweet.
Otherwise I can google it too (I'm not COMPLETELY lazy!)

[gshelley61]

The Superbit version of The Fifth Element is widely considered to be one of the best film to DVD transfers ever done and definitely looks very good when upscaled. Certainly the LOTR and Star Wars DVD's you mentioned look excellent, as well. DVD picture quality does vary quite a bit.

[NICEBUD]

guns1inger wrote

" who could forget the joys of region restrictions "


Ever herd of Dvdfab or Anydvd ?

I also see where your coming from(bodgy transfers) .But what I will say is that if you had two boxes.Box 1 played dvd with all codecs under the sun and an upscaler.Box 2 had everything that the other had but it also played blue poo as well and they where both the SAME PRICE.
Wouldnt you buy one then?
I know I would.But its never gonna happen because of all those GREEDY BAST**DS who`s CUT is to BIG.

As I say again make all blue poo products the same price has dvd products.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

That's simply not going to happen.
I know that the major player in the death of BetaMax was $ony's greedy business practices regarding the licensing of their technology.
I'm not up to speed on what kind of games their playing this time around with the Blu-Ray licensing, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were the same story all over again. Most BR releases are from Sony owned or partnered studios...

[guns1inger]

guns1inger wrote

" who could forget the joys of region restrictions "


Ever herd of Dvdfab or Anydvd ?

These are only helpful if you are happy to rip all your blu-ray imports and reburn them. Why should I ? With DVD I can import titles from anywhere and play them on any of my DVD players. To date, no Blu-ray player can be made region free.

[harrisonford]

There seem to be very little talk about the issue of upscaling from a techinical point of view.

Current DVD's are output in 720P but down scaled to 480p or 480i depending etc. A walk around for this is to have a standard dvd player ported to SDI output port put on your DVD player, SDI is 720p digital in the first place not 480p analog

Since the upscaler would be scaling from 720p to 1080p digital to digital, the quality would be nearly the same as BLOW-RAY or scum-ray.

So why would you buy such a over price piece of crap from Sony royality laidden retards, Sony is the ask-hole of the of the movie and electronics world.

Regards HF

[jagabo]

Current DVD's are output in 720P but down scaled to 480p or 480i depending etc.

No. NTSC DVD MPEG data is stored at 720x480. The latter number is where the "480p" nomenclature comes from. 720p is 1280x720. DVDs do not have that frames size, ever.

[guns1inger]

There seem to be very little talk about the issue of upscaling from a techinical point of view.

Current DVD's are output in 720P but down scaled to 480p or 480i depending etc. A walk around for this is to have a standard dvd player ported to SDI output port put on your DVD player, SDI is 720p digital in the first place not 480p analog

Since the upscaler would be scaling from 720p to 1080p digital to digital, the quality would be nearly the same as BLOW-RAY or scum-ray.

So why would you buy such a over price piece of crap from Sony royality laidden retards, Sony is the ask-hole of the of the movie and electronics world.

Regards HF

Another typically uninformed post from the "Never let the facts get in the way of a good rant" crowd. I am impressed at how you have managed to turn a discussion on Toshiba's new upscaling technology which would be competing with Sony's Blu-ray technology into an anti-Sony rant that abuses the non-Sony product. You haven't even read the original (or following) posts, have you ?

Once again Jagabo has been proven correct.

HarrisonFord = dumbass

[DereX888]

If I recall the PS3 has...

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

WOW! For once you haven't wrote "Sony PS3" but just "PS3"
(like there was a non-Sony PS3, LOL)

That's simply not going to happen.
I know that the major player in the death of BetaMax was $ony's greedy business practices regarding the licensing of their technology.
I'm not up to speed on what kind of games their playing this time around with the Blu-Ray licensing, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were the same story all over again. Most BR releases are from Sony owned or partnered studios...

That's right.
Sony will trip itself over Blu, same as it did with almost everything they "invented" in the past (except for Walkman).
PS3 and Sony-owned movies (more than 50% of world-wide english-language production) iswhat keeps BluPoo alive.
Meanwhile half of the US households (the most developed western country, mind you) is still using analog TVs with resolution suitable for plain old DVDs
By the time everyone will have HD TV sets, the BluPoo will be available only on wikipedia, next to Betamax and MiniDisc

[gshelley61]

Current DVD's are output in 720P but down scaled to 480p or 480i depending etc. A walk around for this is to have a standard dvd player ported to SDI output port put on your DVD player, SDI is 720p digital in the first place not 480p analog

Regards HF

Ummm - no. Blu-ray and HD DVD are both 1920x1080... six times the pixel density (resolution) of 720x480 DVD. DVD's are NOT "720p" and never have been. An SDI digital video output added to a DVD player does not change that. Max D1 resolution (NTSC) for DVD has always been 720x480.

You should probably know WTF you are talking about before you post here.

[thecoalman]

If people aren't buying blu-ray because they don't wont to fork out for a HDTV, why the hell would they buy an upconverting DVD player whose only benefit is only visible on a HDTV ?

Because they already have large libraries on hand and can expand it for fractions of the cost. If this new player even has mediocre results it may very well kill Blu-Ray. People shop with their wallets and that's even truer now with the downturn of the economy. Even if the overall enhncement is mediocre from the perspective of someone that know what they are looking at joe six pack is going to eat it up with a really good marketing campaign. They have
DVD, they know DVD and love DVD. It's a simple format they understand, on the other hand you have new players with all these numbers, specs etc... people are lost.

[samijubal]

Let's not forget DVD rentals too. I have a Hollywood Video near me with a massive DVD rental selection, there's 2 shelves of Blu-ray discs.

If there's a DVD player with considerably better PQ than most, I'd definitely be interested in it.

[gadgetguy]

Let's not forget DVD rentals too. I have a Hollywood Video near me with a massive DVD rental selection, there's 2 shelves of Blu-ray discs.

If there's a DVD player with considerably better PQ than most, I'd definitely be interested in it.

But only if you already have an HDTV. I don't think upconverting DVD players are going to convince the masses that it's time to go buy an HDTV, any more than Blue-Ray did. I know it doesn't convince me.

[samijubal]

HDTV sales are doing just fine. The masses are already embracing the technology. HDTV is awesome. You don't need Blu-ray to be blown away at how much better HDTV is than SDTV, and you don't have to buy anything but an antenna to take advantage of what HDTV has to offer.