Since Toshiba lost the high-definition optical drive war earlier this year, many have wondered how soon it would offer a Blu-ray player of its own. The answer, at least for now, is "not anytime soon."
nstead, Toshiba is focusing on upscaling DVD players, and it released on Monday the XD-E500 DVD player. The XD-E500 has an MSRP of $149.99, which is twice as much as regular "upconverting" players, but it is less than half the price of a Blu-ray player.
Toshiba demo'ed the player to reporters last week, playing the same disc in an XD-E player and a standard, $70 upscaling (Toshiba) model on side-by-side identical LCD HDTVs. According to reports, the different was subtle, but clearly the XD-E player had a sharper image.
Toshiba is capitalizing on the slow uptake of Blu-ray; a recent study by ABI Research showed that most consumers are perfectly happy with DVD, upscaled or not.
ABI Research principal analyst Steve Wilson said:
"Consumers were happy to embrace standard DVD when that format arrived because the improvement in quality over VHS videotapes was dramatic. Standard DVD didn’t require the purchase of a new TV either. In contrast, while half of the respondents to our survey rated Blu-ray’s quality as ‘much better’ than standard DVD, another 40% termed it only ‘somewhat better,’ and most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players."
Still, it would be interesting to see how a Toshiba Blu-ray player would fare against a Sony one, if for no other reason than possible revenge on Toshiba's part.
Reported by Tech Ex http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/
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