Toshiba Strikes Back With….DVDs?

It’s been awhile since the HD format war has ended. It was a bloody mess, many Toshiba and Sony employees lost their lives in the struggle. Luckily it’s all over and we now have a definitive HD format. So that means that Sony has won the war; right?

It looks like Toshiba isn’t giving up in their fight for dominance in the DVD market. It should be noted that Toshiba isn’t trying to take a fight against Sony like they did with HD-DVDs (whooo, that was a close one). Instead Toshiba is looking to improve upon the DVD market, and give owners a brand new way to experience DVD movies.

Toshiba’s new DVD player, XD-E500 looks to play DVDs in a brand new way. They promise that this player upscales DVDs at a greater rate than competitors out on the market. The XD-E500 is considerably more expensive than a regular upscale DVD player, $149.99, but is half the price of the cheapest Blu-Ray option. Due to this pricing it seems as though Toshiba is trying to rule the middle market, which I don’t think is a very good business decision.

At a tech demo of the new player there have been many reports saying that the picture did look more crisp than other players. But is this little bit of extra crispness enough to justify how much more it costs? People who are big sticklers for higher quality have already invested in Blu-Ray. The people who haven’t are still more than likely on a budget, so why would spending more on something with a little bit greater quality be a good thing? Sometimes ruling the middle ground is a good thing; I just don’t think it applies in this situation.