Toshiba XD-E500 review

The most exciting DVD player we've seen for some time. But can it rival Blu-ray?

Reviews
By published

TechRadar Verdict

As far as DVDs are concerned, this is one of the ultimate decks out there to make the most of your collection

Pros

  • +

    Excellent upscaling

  • +

    Good DVD player

  • +

    Great value

Cons

  • -

    In other respects, this player is a 'no-frills' budget model

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The Toshiba XD-E500 is the world's first DVD player to include Toshiba's revolutionary XDE (eXtended Detail Enhancement) technology, which now works in 'real-time'.

Suddenly DVD is looking very interesting again, despite the hullabaloo surround Blu-ray.

Inside, the construction is neat. The XD-E500 employs one of the Zoran Vaddis chipsets, which are used to good effect by other brands including Arcam. There's also a chip I've never seen or heard of before, innocuously-marked 'TMU655 QR87171'. Toshiba confirms this is the VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chip responsible for the XDE processing.

Check. 1080p? Check. 1080p24? Yes, but don't get too excited, for as it stands you'll probably never
see that particular LED glow. The 24p feature only works with film-derived NTSC footage, in order to get around the visibly-nasty motion artifacts introduced by the pulldown process. Although XD-E500s sold in the UK are NTSC-compatible, they're Region 2-only, and Toshiba did not even consider the 24p feature worth including here.

Connections include an SD component output and RGB Scart, but you can't enjoy the benefits of XDE through these and so you should always stick with HDMI.

Setup is a cinch, not least because the player is so basic. In the menus are options for video output, languages, parental controls and audio output configuration.

A couple of other options – JPEG slide-show and DivX VoD code entry – hint at the scant playback alternatives. In addition to CD-ROMs containing photos and DivX/XviD footage, the XD-E500 will also play CDs and MP3 audio files. Nothing, then, to distinguish it from countless other decks.

No other player, though, has the XD-E500's 'magic button'. You'll find this on the handset. Unexcitingly labelled 'pic mode', the button in question engages the all-important XDE processing. There are three XDE modes; the first switches in detail enhancement, while the next two combine this property with colour and contrast enhancement respectively. Another press of the button turns off XDE altogether.

Unfortunately, you can't tweak the degree of enhancement provided – they're fixed 'presets' designed by the Toshiba development team.

In its normal state, the XD-E500 turns in a creditable performance with DVDs. On a Full HD projector (ViewSonic's excellent Pro8100) fine detail is a perhaps a little on the subdued side.

This does help, however, to mask picture artifacts. Image depth and colour reproduction, though, are both excellent. In particular, saturated colours benefit from a beautifully life-like rendition.

Now, that's with XDE off. With its first setting – detail – engaged, DVDs are given an obvious boost.
But let's get one thing straight from the start. XD-E500-processed DVDs are no substitute for Blu-ray; no system can introduce detail that wasn't present in the first place. While Blu-ray stores video natively at a resolution of 1920 x 1080, PAL DVDs max out at 720 x 576.

However, it would appear that XDE has some kind of selective edge enhancement. It seems to examine the picture and identify areas where there are lots of black/white transitions (areas of detail), and then apply some kind of sharpness filter to these. Whatever makes it tick, the important thing is that it works.