upscaling
Games
Castrade Game Box Converter Connects, Upscales Consoles To Any Monitor
8:58PM John Herrman | Expensive adapters combined with endless scaling woes can make connecting a console to your LCD monitor or project a daunting prospect. Castrade’s Game Box makes the process as painless as possible. More »
Entertainment
Don’t Mess with DVD Upscaling Foreplay, Just Buy Blu-ray
6:00AM Mark Wilson | The high definition scientists over at HD Guru make a possibly obvious but nevertheless important point. You should not buy a DVD upscaler—though not for the reason you think. It’s not because DVD upscaling doesn’t bring some benefit to watching DVDs on HDTVs; it’s because most TVs are upscaling already. More »
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4:30PM Nick Broughall | It’s tough to decide whether Toshiba is being incredibly intelligent or incredibly stubborn in their decision to back upconverting DVD technology instead of Blu-ray. I mean, they were certainly burnt – badly – by Blu-ray with that whole HD DVD format war, but is their decision to stick to DVD smart?
Take their latest DVD player, the XD-E500 DVD upscaler. It’s marketed on the fact that it can take your vanilla old DVDs and upscale them to HD-like quality with 1080p output. That sounds pretty good (although the press release says that standard def DVDs are 480p – not in Australia, Toshiba!). But then there’s the price: $199.
Sure, the Toshy’s got some pretty catchy-sounding tech on board (XDE Technology, anyone?) for upscaling, plus DivX playback, HDMI CEC connectivity and a host of connections, but is it worth $200 bucks? Sony’s latest Blu-ray player has an RRP of $449, but you can pick it up for $380 online, and it will not only upscale your DVDs, but playback Blu-ray movies as well. Even at $150 for the Toshy, don’t most people already own a DVD player?
Still, if the infinite format war takes Blu-ray as its next victim, Toshiba will probably be the company laughing all the way to the bank. More »
Toshiba Stays The Upconverting DVD Player Course
4:30PM Nick Broughall | It’s tough to decide whether Toshiba is being incredibly intelligent or incredibly stubborn in their decision to back upconverting DVD technology instead of Blu-ray. I mean, they were certainly burnt – badly – by Blu-ray with that whole HD DVD format war, but is their decision to stick to DVD smart?
Take their latest DVD player, the XD-E500 DVD upscaler. It’s marketed on the fact that it can take your vanilla old DVDs and upscale them to HD-like quality with 1080p output. That sounds pretty good (although the press release says that standard def DVDs are 480p – not in Australia, Toshiba!). But then there’s the price: $199.
Sure, the Toshy’s got some pretty catchy-sounding tech on board (XDE Technology, anyone?) for upscaling, plus DivX playback, HDMI CEC connectivity and a host of connections, but is it worth $200 bucks? Sony’s latest Blu-ray player has an RRP of $449, but you can pick it up for $380 online, and it will not only upscale your DVDs, but playback Blu-ray movies as well. Even at $150 for the Toshy, don’t most people already own a DVD player?
Still, if the infinite format war takes Blu-ray as its next victim, Toshiba will probably be the company laughing all the way to the bank. More »
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Philips Cinema One Squeezes Home Theatre System into Tiny Round Box
11:59PM Kit Eaton | As mentioned in the liveblog, Philips has stumped up a new home theatre system that’s as small, and almost as round as, a soccer ball—for those of us bored of boring, standard rectangular entertainment gadgets. Though it’s tiny, it fits in an iPod dock, a five-channel amp, six speakers and a subwoofer built into the base. It must be pretty cramped inside, since it’s just 27cm across, and only 17cm high. The DVD player can cope with DivX, MPEG-4 and WMV, and upscales to 1080p over HDMI and the CD player can read MP3 discs, and it’s got USB-in. If that’s whetted your appetite, you’ll have to wait as there’s no info yet on timing or price. But the press release is below. More »
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Toshiba XD-E500 Upscaling DVD Player: Their Plan to Not Fight Blu-ray
2:01PM Matt Buchanan | Don’t get me wrong, Toshiba’s XD-E500 is a decent 1080p/24fps upscaling DVD player–it toasted one of their own upconverting players in the demo, and they’ve gotten pretty good at doing it. It’s got three different intelligent processing modes, two of which are really solid–sharp (which only sharpens where it’s needed, not the whole picture), colour (dials up blues and greens plus sharp mode), and contrast (deepens blacks, probably the worst mode because you lose some dark detail). More »
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US$4300 Kaleidescape 1080p DVD Streamer Reviewed (Still Not Real HD)
12:41PM Benny Goldman | Sound & Vision gave a gushing review to the Kaleidescape 1080p player, a DVD upscaler that streams movies from a home server for the price of a nice used car. They especially liked the Gennum VXP video processor chip, which upscales DVD content to vividly sharp 1080p detail, with very accurate colours and high contrast. The Kaleidescape’s updated ability to play content without importing it to the server first was also a big draw. But seriously, US$4300? Come on. More »
Music
IOGEAR’s Portable Media Player Upscales Video to 720P, Bears World’s Most Generic Name
6:00AM Jason Chen | IOGEAR’s portable media player, actually named Portable Media Player, may look as generic as its name on the outside, but actually has some good features on the inside (but no screen). There’s the most unique one, the ability to upscale video files to 720P for display on an HDTV, but there’s also XviD, DivX, MPEG1/2, and full DVD menu support as well as a bunch of audio support. With a 120GB drive on board, the US$349.95 price tag doesn’t seem all that steep, but there’s probably little to no chance that most people will have the use of playing back 720P video on the go, on other people’s screens. Maybe if you traveled a lot and wanted to watch your own movies in hotel rooms? [IOGEAR] More »
Entertainment
Gefen Home Theatre Scaler Plus, 1080p Goombas
1:26AM Mark Wilson | Home Theatre Scalers are simultaneously becoming less and more relevant in my eyes: they’re more relevant as more people own HDTVs, but less relevant as the HDTV buyers purchase other HD components. Still, the Gefen Home Theatre Scaler Plus will be a nice solution for some setups. The Mac Miniesque Gefen upconverts a small but decent selection sources to 1080p (2 HDMI and 3 analogue sources), but what we find most promising is its ability to upconvert game consoles. While there’s only so much improvement that upscaling can do, the Gefen Plus only delays the A/V signal by one frame, meaning that it’s viable to play SNES’ Super Mario World in semi-stunning 1080p. If you’re interested, the Gefen Home Theater Scaler Plus runs $US499. [product via slashgear] More »
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8:15AM Seamus Byrne | At last week’s Panasonic launch event, one item that jumped out at me that was otherwise completely undiscussed was the new PTX5 2.1 channel home stereo. It’s small, it’s pretty, and it has serious audio chops while also playing the role of DVD player so it’ll do the ‘complete’ solution in a very small space. Warning: it isn’t cheap.
Panasonic doing stereos? Here’s the scoop: Matsushita (the company behind the Panasonic brand) also owns a little number called Technics. Oh yes, THAT Technics! The engine behind the PTX5 is all Technics, baby, and it all starts to make sense when we cranked this little number and it filled what was a space larger than most living rooms I’m ever likely to spend time in. They’ve made a nice choice to keep the two channel speakers relatively small while giving the sub a bit more substance to give that bottom end some serious grunt. More »
Stealth-launch Panasonic SC-PTX5 is a sexy 2.1 channel stereo
8:15AM Seamus Byrne | At last week’s Panasonic launch event, one item that jumped out at me that was otherwise completely undiscussed was the new PTX5 2.1 channel home stereo. It’s small, it’s pretty, and it has serious audio chops while also playing the role of DVD player so it’ll do the ‘complete’ solution in a very small space. Warning: it isn’t cheap.
Panasonic doing stereos? Here’s the scoop: Matsushita (the company behind the Panasonic brand) also owns a little number called Technics. Oh yes, THAT Technics! The engine behind the PTX5 is all Technics, baby, and it all starts to make sense when we cranked this little number and it filled what was a space larger than most living rooms I’m ever likely to spend time in. They’ve made a nice choice to keep the two channel speakers relatively small while giving the sub a bit more substance to give that bottom end some serious grunt. More »
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