Comments on: Toshiba XDE DVD Player: Better than Blu-Ray?

By: Carlos Rodriguez

Carlos Rodriguez — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:16:47 +0000

You know guys, it will all depend on the ability to buy the same movie for the same price.
Right 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!!!

By: Andre

Andre — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:35:36 +0000

Also when testing out the Toshiba XDE make sure to pause a scene with like people eyes for example, then turn xde off and back on the extra detail this player provides is amazing.

By: Andre

Andre — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:32:35 +0000

I got rid of my bluray player and got the Toshiba XDE for $99 CAD, bluray was cool but at $20 to $30 a movie it was way to expensive, I goto walmart and can get 2 to 4 dvd's for $10 and they look amazing on my 50″ panasonic plasma with the Toshiba xde player. A++ highly reccomend this player if they added support for hd divx/xvid/wmv it would be perfect.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:25:08 +0000

I think Toshiba is just trying to recoup their losses from the "format war" and since they no longer have an HD format to support they are trying to make DVD look better and I don't have a problem with that really as long as people know what they are getting and it is not high definition.
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.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:36:30 +0000

My opinion on the future of watching movies, will be through wireless networks through a central media server. With the development of wireless HDMI and other wireless technologies, it will just be a matter of plugging in senders and receivers to your Home Theatre, Loungeroom/Bedroom/Kitchen TV, and watch all your content off the server. Optical discs may still be used, drop it into the media centre... or a peripheral attached to it, and watch your disc. Everything else would most likely either be recorded from cable/free-to-air, or downloaded via the internet.

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.

By: Jaffrey

Jaffrey — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:46:01 +0000

The rapid adoption that studios perhaps were expecting of Blu Ray once the format war was over hasn't really materialized. The overall Blu Ray market is probably still in the 2-5% of the DVD market.

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!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:00:32 +0000

Can someone help me out here?

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.

By: Rich86

Rich86 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:00:13 +0000

I am pleased as punch to see Toshiba following through on the development of improved upconverting SD-DVD players. I have a large collection of SD-DVD titles and welcome any new reasonably priced players that enhance their performance on my 1080p television. I do not see this as a replacement for my HD-DVD player – or eventual blu-ray player. But I do see these developments as a way to avoid double dipping blu-rays of already owned, well mastered anamorphic SD-DVD's. Keep up the good work Toshiba!

By: squiggleslash

squiggleslash — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:10:24 +0000

It's not just price. For Blu-ray to succeed it has to be a more useful format than DVD. VHS was replaced by DVD because DVD was capable of consistent quality, it was more convenient, it had features VHS didn't, and all you needed to do to take advantage of it was buy a DVD player. (The only thing VHS had going for it was a recording feature, and that was an irrelevant issue for pre-recorded media and nothing about DVD meant you couldn't keep a VHS recorder around.)

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

By: Ian Bell

Ian Bell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:54:02 +0000

Looks like that Samsung Blu-ray player doesn't do the best job upconverting videos.

http://media.digitaltrends.com/digital-trends/sams...

Here is a video review. Might want to hold onto your Oppo or Toshiba upconverting player.