Upconverting players are getting better, and Toshiba's XDE DVD player could pose a problem for the Blu-ray camp.
OK let’s answer the question in the title right up front. I’ve been using the new Toshiba XDE DVD player for about a week and it isn’t better than my Playstation 3 (PS3) Blu-Ray player. But Toshiba did some things very right and it (and other DVD players like it) could keep Blu-Ray from ever replacing DVD. This is because consumers tend to buy on price and the majority of them will gravitate towards quality considered “good enough” and the Toshiba XDE to me IS good enough. Home theater owners will clearly still prefer Blu-Ray.
Upconversion DVD
We remain a fan of the Oppo DVD players which have been around for some time. These players provided high quality upconversion for prices around $200. Unfortunately Oppo lacks the marketing strength of a major CE vendor and the competing upconverting players from the majors were cheap imitations of what the Oppo could do.
In a nut shell, what upconversion does is take a regular DVD image and improves it so it looks better on an HDTV set. I’ve been showing folks movies side-by-side comparing an HD-DVD player, Blu-Ray Sony PS3 and the Oppo for over a year now. The consensus is that people can see that the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is better, but they like the Oppo just fine and if I show the Oppo first, rather than last, they indicate that it is “adequate” (ignorance is bliss) enough.
But, part of having a premium experience with a product is how the product looks and presents itself. The Oppo players (yes I have two Oppo DV-981HD sets) aren’t particularly interesting to look at and the remote control is, well, kind of ugly. Oppo clearly invested in the technology and not the appearance of the product. This is what Toshiba addresses with the XDE.
Form AND Function
Most technology and CE vendors compete on features, but few seem to get that products must be attractive. One of the reasons the Apple iPod is so successful is because Apple turns the function-over-form practice upside down. So while the iPod often lacks things like an FM radio that other players have, it is very attractive. What you want, ideally, though is a balance where the device is both capable and attractive. With one exception the XDE does that.
The exception is that the device is not full-depth so stacking it any place but on top is a problem. Now if this is the last device in the stack this is kind of handy because it actually helps you cable the device and on top of some half depth theater in a box systems this probably would be OK.
From the front, the device looks high quality. The XDE logo is lit up in big letters telling the room the player is something special and the resolution (including the 24 frame setting that my Sharp HD TV wouldn’t accept) is displayed. This last feature is rather handy because if the TV doesn’t auto resolve the resolution, you can’t see anything and figuring out what is wrong can be really painful. Many of the HD products, particularly the game systems, don’t have such a display and if someone hits the wrong button you could easily think it is broken when it isn’t.
The remote is a typical Toshiba black remote, it is intuitive and looks good with other remote controls and should (though I didn’t try this myself) program well with any of the major universal products.
Good Enough
When testing the Toshiba XDE, DVD movies, similar to the Oppo, were amazingly sharp and HD-like. Yes you could still see where the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies were sharper (particularly up close to the screen, at a normal 8’ viewing angle) and the picture was, in fact, good enough and appeared to my eye sharper than the up-conversion in any of the real HD players I currently have including the Toshiba HD-DVD player.
I can’t picture anyone with a Blu-Ray player abandoning it for the XDE, but I can see people struggling with the trade-offs of Blu-Ray deciding to get an XDE instead and I doubt Toshiba will be the only vendor who will see this opportunity.
The reality is that there are far more DVDs in folk’s libraries than Blu-Ray discs and far more movies available to rent or purchase in standard DVD than Blu-Ray. In addition, regular DVDs are substantially less expensive to buy. Also, recall that regular DVDs play in some cars, inexpensive portable DVD players, and on most new notebook computers (and many of those that do have Blu-Ray drives, for some strange reason, don’t have enough battery life to complete a movie).
Finally, and I’ve noticed this with Netflix, the Blu-Ray discs seem to be particularly fragile. I have three Blu-Ray machines now and often have to polish the disc (which initially looks unblemished) and then search for a machine that will actually play it, while regular DVDs seem to be much more tolerant of abuse.
Wrapping Up
The problem for this industry is that manufacturers just want to sell hardware and make money. Most, other than Sony (and here strangely it appears to work against them), don’t have any interest is selling movies in any resolution. If they can sell and make more from upconverting DVD players they will do just that.
DVD is the current standard and the XDE player (in my view) is good enough. And if others follow Toshiba and market these types of players, Blu-Ray will have substantial difficulty ever replacing DVD before the market moves to HD on-demand. However, having said that, Oppo is planning on moving to Blu-Ray themselves which suggest a player that can do both great upconversion and Blu-Ray is coming and, if it arrives at an affordable price, might be worth waiting for. Until then I’ve been impressed with the XDE and it has replaced my Oppo as my primary DVD player.
Showing 20 comments
RSSRight now I have stopped buying new movies until the price of the BRAY are at least within a dollar or two of the same DVD release.
Until then this so called format WAR is just a complete farce where DVD will win because of the home users inability and unwillingness to invest MORE for the same product regardless of scan lines, Pixels etc...
Call it a Bang for your Buck WAR more than anything.
I think Blue ray is really a step in the right direction but millions of people out there don't care and and don't need to screen a BEST picture Quality when a DVD version of the same movie will keep the kids just as entertained and the only thing that will keep us watching the screens anyway is a good storyline.
As for FX well they actually look great on my 5 year old Phillips DVD system so until I am willing to invest over $1400.00(price of a decent plasma or LCD and a New BRAY player+ the cost of more expensive BD's I think the Format WAR is just a big expensive TESTING ground to see whether or not the market is ready to spend alot more to acommodate a competitor to the already adequate DVD's.)
Good LUCK BLURAY but I think you guys need a real kick in the pants and a DISCOUNT SALE for people to jump on the bandwagon!!!
High definition is more than just picture it is also more audio formats less compression of video and audio and just more information than standard dvds can hold.
I own a Blu Ray player an HD-DVD and several dvd players and I have a large library of dvds that I play on all three and I can tell you that dvds simply do not look as good as an HD disc when played on an HDTV the needed information is just not there and even the best upscaling will not fix that. Now if you are playing them back on a standard tv no problem you won't no can't see a difference because of the resolution limitations of standard definition tv.
As for pricing well we all know how that goes and I would venture to say that in 5 years or so you will see sub 100 dollar BD players and as the market becomes more and more saturated with players as more and more manufacturers start producing BD players and drives the price of BD discs will also drop to the point of dvd prices today and the dvds will be relegated to the same old bargain bins as the VHS tapes of old, Hey I still have a VHS too 'cause there's even some stuff you can't get on dvd.
And just to comment on downloads of movies I for one don't think that will happen any time soon there are just too many things that people will have to become comfortable with and knowledgeable about to make it work I mean you have to have a high speed internet connection, a home network, a media server and have to know how to connect and administer all of the devices. Not only that you also have to have the patience to wait for who knows how long for your movie to download and then you have to have the room to store all this content if you purchase it and we are talking gigabytes per movie here so lets all go out and buy a couple of terabyte hard drives. It's really just all to much for the average Joe on the street to be expected to do don't you think? And then you don't really own anything tangible what happens when your drive crashes and you lose the last 20 movies you downloaded because you didn't have that second terabyte hard drive to back up to? now you get to download all 800 gigs or more again, provided the sellers offer such an option, you may just be out of luck like if you don't back up itunes. I use Itunes by the way and I do back it up but thats not really a whole lot to back up when compared to HD movies so I think That I would stick with an optical disc thanks it might get broken yes but at least it won't just disappear, well not for 25 years or so at least.
Of course, this would mean that the manufactures wouldn't be able to sell you multiple optical disc players for each room... so there is a conflict of interest there. But the company that can develop an EASY to use system that is just a matter of plug and play and bob's-your-uncle, will make billions.
Wishful thinking or the future? Both I'd say. It's just a matter of time.
Any improvements to DVD has a huge impact since DVDs have far more titles than Blu Ray, and most people watch movies in relatively small screens thereby negating much of the advantage of Blu Ray movies. Furthermore, many Blu Ray movies lack the pure eye candy factor of even HD Channels such as HD Theatre as they tend to be grainy (which is how film is!)
At this point I don't believe the problem is hardware price as much as it is people being satisfied with DVD and having a comfort factor in it. No one that I know of is even considering a Blu Ray player,let alone buying titles on a regular basis!
I understand that the best upconverting isn't truly as good as Blu-ray. However, if one is not ready to buy a Blu-ray, I would like to better understand upconverting. I basically understand what upconverting dvd players do, and that there are differences in internal chips and quality of the upconversion process. My question:
If you have a pretty high-end, new, 1080p TV (50K:1 contrast, 120Hz, etc), does the internal upconverting that the tv itself does get a benefit from also having a good upconverting dvd player? If so, can that be done for $150?
Would appreciate some insight, as I have got a lot of mixed info on that. thanks.
Blu-ray disc sales have been consistently dropping over the last three months, despite a net increase in players. People are buying Blu-ray discs, realizing that they can only play them on their Blu-ray set up (no watching of movies on the TV in the bedroom or kid's TV or whatever), realizing they cost more than DVDs, and realizing the quality difference just isn't that dramatic. They're actually turning back to DVD.
It's also important to realize that $200/$100/$50 Blu-ray players are not going to fix this: buying a player is only one part of upgrading to Blu-ray, you also have to spend hundreds - some would say thousands - of dollars on new TVs. 90% of the population does not own a TV capable of showing any difference at all between Blu-ray and DVD.
Without radical enhancements to ensure Blu-ray is more than an HD format, Blu-ray is dead in the water as a mass market format, though it may carve out a niche like Laserdisc did. Systems like the XDE probably will not make much of a difference in the long run, Blu-ray is inherently too flawed to work in its present form.
That's not to say it can't be modified to work, and if I were the BDA I'd be doing serious work on making it integrate into a more modern, post-optical-disc, view of how people expect media to work. Unfortunately thus far, given the online features that were in HD DVD and are supposedly being proposed in DVD2.0, it looks like the only group that "gets it" are the DVD Forum, and the spat between them and the BDA means it's improbable we'll see progress here any time soon.
For more on my views as to what needs to be done for a real next generation mass market media format to succeed, my blog entry here explains it in more detail: https://squiggleslash.multiply.com/journal/item/159/Blu-ray_DVD_2.0_and_Freedom-loving_Geeks
http://media.digitaltrends.com/digital-trends/sams...
Here is a video review. Might want to hold onto your Oppo or Toshiba upconverting player.
but as rightly pointed out the blu ray discs would not play in any other dvd player i have
and the extra cost of blu discs put me right off.
good enough is good enough for the masses and the movie lovers like me are waiting and have already brought a high def media player ready for uploads
The point is, 80% of the people who go out and buy a flat panel TV (lcd or plasma), they don't know what HD is. They *think* they are watching HD when they switch the viewing mode to 16x9 and watch normal SD on cable.
If their old, non-upscaling DVD player dies. They may be perfectly happy with the quality of an upscaling DVD player. Most of those same people think that a blu-ray player is just a dvd player that makes your dvd's look better, so why buy one for $500 plus when you can get an upscaling dvd player for $100. It's all about education and understanding the technology, which most consumers don't get yet, especially since all the confusion between what HD DVD and Blu-ray were/are.
I have to agree with Rob and Sammy here. As a mother of 3, and an avid movie lover, I still can't justify the price of a Blu-ray player. I wanted something under $200 from a reputable manufacturer. Funai and Sylvania are not that.
I also do not want to go digging arounf Amazon looking for Blu-ray movies under $20. I want the new releases for under $20, not an old release of Animal House.
I do think Blu-ray is for the future, but based on the research I have read, we are years away from it becoming the norm.
As per the movies, at this point all the new releases are on Blu Ray, and you can still play ALL your DVDs on these HD players -upscaled.
As per the BR movies, shop around, like on Amazon. You can find tons of movies for under $20 now.
Toshiba is clearly fighting a battle of the past to try desperately to cling to their good ol' DVD licence fees.
$170 or $150 (it was released at $170 on Amazon), the XDE is still too expensive, specially to -DEGRADE- average DVDs. Go check on AVS forums, they tested the player thoroughly and it's not pretty.
Blu-ray movie selection sucks, you can pick up a nice upconverting DVD player for $200 and get any movie you want for under $15 bucks.
HD DVD lost because of lack of movie support, they actually sold more players than Blu-ray.
Rob hit the nail on the head: Blu-ray DOES look better, but most people will be more than happy with an upconverting DVD player, simply because they would not know the difference.
I'm sorry, but wasn't this the EXACT same reasoning why HD DVD was destined to destroy Blu-ray? You were wrong then, and logic suggests you are wrong now.
Please...
I have to say I also really like the XDE unit as it upscales (IMO) better than my old HD-A2. I and many others have the same opinion on AVSforums.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=10...
Is it the "best" upscaler on the market? Who knows. But what I and many others see is a nice "perceived" improvement in contrast and detail from 8ft onward. I liked it so much, it has replaced the HD-A2 as my main SD upconverter. If you already have a PS3, Oppo, or newer BD player, the XDE is probably not needed anyway.
The unit sells for 149 MSRP not(160-170), and will most likely be lower come Xmas.
In no way should XDE be considered a threat to BD, BD is still the absolute best way to enjoy movies from here onward. But if anything, it's like when VHS came out with "HQ" technology, it just gives a little "oomph" from your old collection, while you slowly build your new BD collection.
I know that you do not mean that the picture (and much less sound) quality of the XDE is actually better than Blu Ray (couldn't resist that flashy title though, could you?), but even your conclusions concerning what is at best a good upconverter are reaching at best, and most likely purely delusional.
The "Good enough" didn't make HD DVD succeed, neither has it prevented Blu Ray from taking off despite the boatloads of cheap DVD upconverters already present on the market.
Toshiba has made a "good" upconverter that is very much alike (on good DVDs, the quality of their process on mediocre DVs - and there's a lot of them out there- is HORRENDOUS) the $200 Oppo,s just as you notice.
You might want to notice that at $160-170, their player will have a hell of a time trying to position themselves against Blu Ray players (real HD) which are expected to get to the $250 (or lower) mark by the end of the year.
You were wrong on the HD DVD, you are also wrong in thinking that Toshiba will make a significant difference with a product that is, after all, just another upconverter (it does not include their "famous" SRT technology, which has since busted, as it is not a real time upconversion process).
Too little, too late, Toshiba is just setting themselves up for yet another failure.
But what's another few Billion yens lost, mmh?