Once upon a time, there was a high definition format called HD DVD. Now, HD DVD was developed by a company called Toshiba, and that company put its heart and soul into this format. Evenutally though, the format died off by the big blu-ray monster. Toshiba was very sad and didn’t want anything to do with the winning format. So do you know what they did? They developed the XDE-E500 upconverting DVD and I spent some time with it today.

The Toshiba XDE isn’t high-def. It isn’t even close and anyone that says it looks like HD is a moron. CEDIA ‘08 is full of true 1080p pictures, being shown on the latest display technology, so the scaled 480p image looked a little out of place. It’s just another upconverting DVD player boys and girls. The ‘improved’ picture looked over-compressed and blotchy, hardly the best picture of the show.