Toshiba XD-E500 DVD Player Upconverts to 1080p

Toshiba has unveiled its XD-E500 DVD player with the company's eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology.

The EX-E500 upconverts 480i/p up to 1080p/24fps and takes "DVD picture quality to a whole new level."

It does not support HD DVD or Blu-ray but delivers "a near HD experience with enhanced detail and richer colors."

The upconverting player does have HDMI-CEC, DivX certification, JPEG capability and MP3 and WMA playback.

Toshiba says "some video noise may be visible" on the upconverted image, depending on the quality of the original DVD. The company also says some DVD-R/DVD-RW discs may be incompatible because of "laser pick up and disc design."

Also, without providing specifics, Toshiba says some recording media or recording formats will not be supported.

"Consumers have embraced the DVD format like no other technology and invested in large libraries of their favorite movies," says Toshiba director of product planning Louis Masses.

"As the market moves towards high definition, XDE lets them experience their existing DVD library and the tens of thousands of DVD titles in a whole new way.

Toshiba announced plans to drop HD DVD in February. The company, to this point, has not revealed plans to adopt Blu-ray.

Toshiba's profits plummeted 95 percent in Q1 2008, attributing the losses to the departure from the HD DVD business.

The XD-E500 will ship in August for $149.99.