Acknowledging that their new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) tech does not actually replace a true HD source like HD DVD or Blu-ray, Toshiba is hoping to attract all those consumers who are mostly satisfied with their HDTVs and DVDs by offering the XD-E500 up-converting DVD player today.

The new XD-E500 retails for $149 (although it debuts for $179 today at Amazon) and offers DVD up-scaling that’s superior to what’s been offered in their own lower-end models, and probably from other up-scaling DVD players.

The XDE player offers a choice of three video enhancements: (1) sharp for edge detail (2) rich color (3) more contrast, of which you can select two to be active at any time. I’m sure forthcoming articles and interviews will reveal why you can only select two at a time, and we’ll be on the lookout for the inevitable comparisons against the highly vaunted Oppo up-converting DVD players, as well as true HD media.

Toshiba’s website for the new player, http://www.toshibaxde.com hasn’t gone live yet so we don’t really have a lot of pictures to show from the sales pitch, but you can see some before/after enhancement shots over at Amazon.

Toshiba’s product description page states the following:

This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.

In other words, it’s not “The Look and Sound of Perfect” but just “Good Enough.” I’m curious to see whether “good enough” and “near HD” take a hold in the marketplace. I know that you and I are probably not amongst that crowd of buyers, but I’m sure you’ve got at least a few acquaintances who think a big screen is all it takes to have a great home theater.

Microsoft is at the Sundance Film Festival for the coming week demonstrating one of their main contributions to HD DVD technology: HDi, the interactivity layer.

According to this post at Andy Pennel’s developer blog, representatives from the HDi team will be at the Microsoft House for some demos and movie screenings. This is intended for independent filmmakers who may be interested in learning how to take advantage of HDi in their disc releases.

We’ve talked about HDi a few times at the site, and it’s one of the features that demonstrates how the HD DVD platform was well thought out from the very beginning. HDi interactivity is mandated on all HD DVD players, and it’s such a cool and next-gen kind of feature. On conventional DVDs, you have to pretty much stop the whole movie just to revisit the menu and change your various viewing options, but that’s not so on HD DVDs where you can do all of these things while the movie continues to play. You can change viewing options, select a chapter to skip ahead to, or even change your mind and resume viewing, all without interrupting the main flow of the movie.

Some discs have bonus content that augments the viewing experience. For example, in The Kingdom, you can pull up brief explanations about the cultural and political aspects of things that come up in the plot. In The Bourne Ultimatum and on Heroes, you can look up some story related items such as character profiles.

Web-enabled interactivity has also been interesting. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has a “Live Community Screening” mode where friends can watch together from their own homes, and even send each other text messages in a manner similar to multiplayer video games. The simpler web implementations have been more about downloading bonus content, purchasing things like ring tones, or taking quizzes and comparing your results with other viewers. (more…)

I like to avoid “format war” material and prefer to talk more about how to maximize your current or potential enjoyment of HD DVD. But it’s not like you can avoid those topics forever, and they do spark a little bit of interest in some of the more involved enthusiasts.

Here are a few tid-bits from recent news around the web and real life, which qualify as “format war” material, and naturally, they’re mostly good news about HD DVD. If you want to hear bad things about HD DVD (including made-up stuff), then you’ll need to visit the websites that have the other format in their name… naturally. (more…)

At its September 12 Steering Committe Meeting, the DVD Forum approved an extension of the HD DVD format to be implemented on red lasers instead of blue (HD DVD and Blu-ray utilize blue laser diodes). Earlier, we heard that HD VMD used traditional red laser technology to make multi-layer DVDs with upwards of 40GB of storage, but that’s not what this is about. Named HD REC, this format is more about using conventional DVD-R media to store HD content, and Toshiba demonstrated some recorders at CEATEC that implement this technology (and display the new logo).

DVD recorders (not the burners on your PC) allowing you to record TV broadcasts to DVD are a big deal in Japan, and Toshiba’s newly announced RD-X7, RD-A101 and RD-201 recorders bring the ability to record TV broadcasts in real-time. Toshiba says that a single-layer HD DVD-R disc can store about 6 hours of content, while a DVD-R disc can hold about 2. Recordings are stored in the MPEG4 format, which is pretty standard for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Since it uses standard and freely available DVD-R discs, HD REC is an inexpensive way to make high-def recordings for home use. It’s not a replacement for blue laser discs for movie releases because DVD-Rs can only store about 9 gigabytes whereas HD DVD and Blu-ray movies are usually encoded in full 1080p glory, and include audio tracks and bonus materials that fill up the rest of their 25, 30 or 50 gigabyte discs. However, it’s more than enough for personal use.

• PCWorld article with picture

A couple of recent developments seem to demonstrate how Team Blu-ray follows in the business footsteps of HD DVD, and maybe HD DVD has done (or needs to do more) things similar to Blu-ray. My point isn’t to ding Blu-ray as a disc format, but to show that its promoters are finally coming around to realizing that victory is not their birthright.

The first news item is just like a page out of a business textbook, and it’s an example of Team Blu doing something right that I hope HD DVD is already working on.

Hastings Entertainment, a small video rental chain in Texas, announced they’d be taking advantage of the Blu-ray profit-sharing program that puts more Blu-ray discs on their shelves. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed by Sony or Hastings, but Hastings video category manager Mason Goodfellow candidly revealed:

“It basically helped us to spread [Blu-ray] to all of our stores and not have to make that much of a financial investment. We might be able to get in as many as 8 to 10 copies per title [in one store]. Without revenue-sharing, that might have been three to four copies.”

Proving that all Sony execs have to memorize the following statement: “[loosely related event or statistic] demonstrates that consumers have chosen [Sony product],” Marshall Forster, Sony senior executive VP of North America, said of the Hastings deal, “Naturally, SPHE is delighted about this since Hastings obviously acknowledges the fact that consumers have voted for Blu-ray as the high-definition format of the future.”

This rental profit-sharing plan is a great idea. (more…)

New Line Home Entertainment is following in the footsteps of its parent company, Warner Bros., and supporting both high-definition DVD formats. It’s great to hear that New Line is starting their disc business, because they’re the ones who will ultimately put out the long-awaited Lord of the Rings.

New Line’s first disc will be this summer’s hit comedy, Hairspray, but there’s a catch for the HD DVD release: Instead of coming out “day and date” (simultaneous release on all formats), New Line will release the HD DVD version next year because of HD DVD’s lack of region coding.

Region coding is something that’s common in the video game world, and has also made its way to DVDs. It works like this: If you try to play a movie or game from a foreign region, your player will refuse or reject the disc if region coding is enabled. There’s nothing wrong with your machine, and there’s nothing wrong with the disc. It’s just that the content provider has elected to enforce how and when the content should be enjoyed in your region.

One of the supporting reasons for region coding is that (more…)

Is three company or a crowd? Just when you thought there were too many versions of HDMI, Dolby, and DTS to keep straight, comes yet another high-def disc format. Joining HD DVD and Blu-ray on the high-def scene at CEDIA Expo 2007 was HD VMD. Promising 40GB (maybe even more) on up to 20-layer DVD discs, the HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format is poised for launch.

Players feature a lot of the same kinds of specs as on HD DVD and Blu-ray machines such as 1080p, ethernet port, up-scaled video, HDMI 1.3, VC-1 codec. They even have a “5 Free Movies” offer in Europe.

The list price is $199, but units are expected to be $150 when they appear in stores. These slim and good-looking players support VCDs, DVDs, CDs and MP3 CDs. In reading through their press releases for the year, it looks like manufacturer New Medium Enterprises has made a lot of movie distribution deals around the world to ensure a good launch and decent library. Discs will cost a little more than standard DVDs, but definitely less than HD DVD and Blu-ray titles.

It’s easy to write this off as a wasted effort compared to everything happening with HD DVD and Blu-ray, but that’s because (more…)

“Both format players use the same back-end decoders so the video and the audio is nearly similar. And I can’t imagine that an optical mechanism for HD DVD and Blu-ray has a big spread in cost – the expensive part is the blue laser. Technology-wise, there is not a major difference.”

These are some of the comments from Frank Simonis, chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association in an interview over at Tech.co.uk.

Mr. Simonis also thinks that one of the advantages of Blu-ray is that you don’t (or maybe it’s can’t) stop a movie in the middle to pee. Gosh, I had been doing that with VHS for many years, I didn’t know that it was undesirable.

Go read the rest for yourself: Frank Simonis interview at Tech.co.uk

Prominent high-def enthusiast Josh Zyber has taken a few moments to share his thoughts on all the recent commotion about last week’s Paramount news, as well as the hyping of disc sales numbers.

Some of Josh’s points have already been made in comments or articles at this site (and by a lot of High-Def fans on various forums), and it’s nice to see that these opinions are actually shared by a more authorative person like Mr. Zyber.

Pop on over to High-Def Digest to read his piece, and even post your thoughts for him to respond to over in the associated discussion thread in their forum.

Here are just a few of Josh’s points:

• Zyber’s early reviews of Blu-ray titles were negative because the studios were putting out lousy discs compared to HD DVD. He’d like to think that criticism like his has led to an improvement in Blu-ray quality, both formats are much more directly comparable today.

For some unknown reason, Blu-ray titles would come out in MPEG2 encoding, while the HD DVD version used VC-1.

• Comparing sales numbers between Blu-ray and HD DVD is “like boasting an ant is larger than a flea, just before the big shoe of DVD comes down to smoosh them both into oblivion.”

Josh is referring to the fact that DVD heartily outsells Blu-ray and HD DVD combined, and points out that 300 sold more copies on DVD in one week than both formats have sold of everything combined in 6 months of 2007. One format would have to start selling way better before trying to proclaim itself the winner.

• Business is business and if you’re going to point fingers at the Paramount deal, then don’t be hypocritical about Blu-ray’s deals.

He points out that Disney was a contributor to the HD DVD interactivity features, but “surprisingly,” they don’t even use this stuff because they’re Blu-ray exclusive.

• Both formats are going to be around together for a while, get used to it.

That’s how it has worked for many years in the video game world, and all of the competition forces everyone to make better products (at better prices too).

There’s even more food for thought in his article. To a Blu-ray supporter, Josh’s article is going to come off as an anti-Blu commentary. He promises that his next commentary will take on various problems with HD DVD. And I’ll be happy to report on that piece as well. Please do yourself a favor and read his article for yourself over at High-Def Digest.

• A War of Hype, and Paramount’s Big Bombshell