Helios Labs Intros $99 Upscaling DVD Player

Helios Labs has announced its H2000 upscaling DVD player, bringing standard resolution HDMI, component, and VGA video sources up to 1080i for just $99.

Helios Labs has announced its H2000 upscaling DVD player, designed as an affordable option to enable consumers to take standard resolution video in a variety of formats and upscale it to 720p or 1080i resolution for display on high definition-capable displays.

“H2000 offers the most HD upscaling options,” said Helios Labs’ CTO Roy Ping, in a statement. “You can let it upscale all your content to 720p/1080i, or you can allow it to output an unprocessed 480i/576i video signal and allow your TV/external video scaler to do the work. This will help customers maximize its performance and consequently, ensure you have a much clearer, distortion-free image.”

The H2000 is a region-free DVD player that can upscale video in MPEG-4, XviD, DivX, and MPEG-2 format via HDMI, component, or VGA inputs—plus, of course, the unit will happily upscale standard DVDs. Output include composite, component, S-Video, HDMI (and DVI with a converter), and VGA. The unit can also play MP3 and standard audio CDs, and supports 5.1 channel audio on co-ax and optical outputs.The player also supports the VobSub subtitle format, which should increase its appeal to foreign film fans.

And even better: Helios Labs says the H2000 should land at North American retailers in August for a price of just $99.