Toshiba announces new and improved XDE600KE DVD player
Toshiba may have finally bitten the bullet and announced a Blu-ray player, but it's not about to give up on the XDE DVD upscaling technology borne out of the format war, and it's now rolled out its latest XDE player alongside its Blu counterpart to balance things out a bit. As with the previous XD-E500 model, the new XDE600KE player promises to upscale your DVDs to full 1080p with noticeably better results than a standard upscaler, and give you all the features you'd expect from a non-bargain priced DVD player, including a full complement of outputs, and Toshiba's own Regza Link technology for all your Regza needs. Also new to this model is a USB port, which will let you view pictures, play MP3s and, yes, even DivX movies. No word on a price just yet, but Toshiba says it'll be available sometime this fall -- in Europe, at least. Head on past the break for a few more pics.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dl @ Sep 3rd 2009 1:33PM
$79.99 same as XDE500 model.
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/dvd/xdedvd.asp
Ken @ Sep 3rd 2009 1:51PM
I feel sorry for whoever is responsible for P&L for this division. Irrelevant without BD.
Richard D. Clark @ Sep 3rd 2009 2:46PM
If this upscaling technology is so great why aren't they putting into their upcoming Blu-ray player?
Jim @ Sep 3rd 2009 2:53PM
I bet they do put XDE into a higher-end BD player.
Fargus @ Sep 3rd 2009 4:20PM
agree, there no way this chip isn't in their high end blu player.
DrXym @ Sep 3rd 2009 4:58PM
I suppose it depends if the people making their blu ray player are the same as the people making their XDE DVD player. Most brand names, Toshiba included outsource a lot of their manufacturing so while it might say Toshiba on the outside, it might be made by somebody else. In the case of Blu Ray I think this is even more likely at least for the 1st generation device. Anyway XDE is just glorified upscaling with edge enhancement / contrast / saturation modes, not the super-resolution which was heavily promoted after the the demise of HD DVD and still largely MIA.
mntwister @ Sep 3rd 2009 3:16PM
I've never seen the technology in use, I've been using the Samsung 2550 Blu-ray player to upscale, which has the Reon HQV chip. Anyone seen or read about the 2 methods of upscaling or seen them compared (XDE and HQV)?
Jim @ Sep 3rd 2009 4:17PM
I have not seen it for myself, but all the reviews I read said that indeed the Toshiba XDE is better than HQV overall.
besi @ Sep 3rd 2009 11:42PM
toshiba should release a bluray player around 150$ put the xde in,and get almost the same stuff as the WD media player also.that would take care of toshiba problems.
squiggleslash @ Sep 4th 2009 7:33AM
You mean their problems of having too much money?
squiggleslash @ Sep 4th 2009 7:37AM
Surprised it doesn't have an SD card reader, I'd have thought Toshiba would want to push SD cards over USB sticks given SD's kind of their thing.
Again though I can't get excited about this. It's another DVD player with a gimmick to make it stand out a little compared to the other me-too devices. Some kind of marginal support for real HD, such as DivX 7, or 3XDVD, and an Ethernet port would turn this into a device I'd be interested in, but even then Toshiba's habit of crippling their devices so they will not play, say, region free PAL discs in NTSC territories would make me think twice.
Alpha1 @ Sep 4th 2009 10:28AM
@squiggleslash
I don't know about this brand new puppy, but my XDE500 does play PAL discs in NTSC territory, and can be made REGION FREE with a little hack you input with your remote.
squiggleslash @ Sep 5th 2009 9:42AM
That's good news. I asked around when I found my HD-A2 had issues, and was told it was a common Toshiba thing. It's especially bizarre that an HD DVD player would have these problems given the frame rate issues don't apply.