Toshiba knows no shame, plans to release super-resolution DVD player

Nothing too notable here -- just that Toshiba is apparently fixing to unveil a brand new DVD player in the age of Blu-ray that will be "capable of producing high-resolution images from regular DVDs." As you're laughing heartily, ponder this: are we looking at a simple upconverting DVD player? Or will that Cell-based SpursEngine chip bring "super-resolution" to a standalone deck? According to unnamed sources cited by Daily Yomiuri Online, the planned release "signifies an effort to recover from a humiliating setback suffered in March after announcing its decision to withdraw from its HD DVD business." We really cannot fathom why Tosh would even dream of fighting BD with souped-up DVD, but reportedly, it plans on marketing the unit "as a device with which consumers can enjoy a broader array of content than is available in the Blu-ray format." Congratulations Toshiba -- we thought it couldn't get any lamer than HD VMD, and you handily proved us wrong.

[Via VNU Net / Yahoo, image courtesy of DangerousIntersection]

[tt @ May 30th 2008 3:32PM]

Congratulations engadget -- we thought it couldn't get any lamer than being such Blue Ray fanboy site as you are right now, and you handily proved us wrong.

[David Vogt @ May 30th 2008 3:37PM]

Oh please, do you expect them to be HD-DVD fans? And if they are fanboys of ANYTHING, it's Apple and Eee PC's.

[Mike C @ May 30th 2008 3:41PM]

Don't forget Pleo.

[HarHar @ May 30th 2008 3:49PM]

911: 911, what is your emergency?
tt: Help. I have been hit. Please send the waaaambulance immediately!

[bolezhinkov @ May 30th 2008 3:52PM]

fanboy = reporting on new technology and related news.

wait, thats not what it means at all.

[roflercopterer @ May 30th 2008 4:00PM]

It's not blu-ray fanboyism, its incredibility at the idea of taking on blu-ray with an upconverting DVD player (lets face it, that's all this can and will ever be).

[Jeremy @ May 30th 2008 4:09PM]

incredulity

[Jon Doe. @ May 30th 2008 6:51PM]

No I expect Engadget to have a bit of dignity by not twisting the knife in any furter. However as expected dignity and Engadget are about as close together as napalm and chocolate milk.

[Rob @ May 30th 2008 10:11PM]

Judging by the h264 videos I've downloaded, even 1080p ought to be able to fit on a regular DVD as long as a codec better than mpeg2 (LOL) is used.

[gabe @ May 30th 2008 3:31PM]

bluray is so hype - the only real losers are the consumers who purchase the hi def dvds.

[HarHar @ May 30th 2008 3:44PM]

Blu-ray looks great on my tv. Maybe not on your 13 inch goldstar? Maybe...

[gabe @ May 30th 2008 3:49PM]

haha is this like my dick is bigger than yours? :rofl:

come on now - lets act grown up.

Yes im bigger

[Zak @ May 30th 2008 4:58PM]

Upscaled DVDs don't look as good as Blu Ray discs that have been remastered for Blu Ray specifically. I've compared them back to back, there's a huge difference.

[Jensen @ May 30th 2008 5:05PM]

If you have an older display, an SD source is fine because your display is unable to show you all the goods from a great HD source.

It's a totally different story if you have a cutting-edge display. Upscaling players with the best DVDs won't hold a candle to the best from hi-def (blu-ray, HD DVD, HTPC, blah blah blah) sources. There is a huge difference with clean hi-def sources... but only if your display is capable of it.

As for this new Toshiba product, I don't see the point. There is only so much you can do with interpolation of an SD source.

[Wwhat @ May 30th 2008 8:00PM]

Do you people really have to say a HD source is better than an upscaled DVD source? And did you really have to test that to realise that? Common now guys.

[Mehdi Cheddadi @ May 30th 2008 3:31PM]

sony is doomed

[Wwhat @ May 30th 2008 8:06PM]

Better than doom3ed I guess.

(Uh oh, now I deserve a low rating for my lame joke, but I can't stop myself hitting add)

[MARSHAK @ May 30th 2008 8:45PM]

wait a sec it plays doom?

[True_Darknight @ May 30th 2008 3:32PM]

Oh oh oh now this sounds like a good idea!!!

Use normal DVDs and upconvert them to... oh wait....

there's only but sooo much you can pull from a 480P source!!!

and yes this will make them enough money to forget about HD-DVD... NOT!.

Now if they had done this ebfore... it would make mroe sense

[Canadian Bacon @ May 30th 2008 4:26PM]

Getting our joke-making cues straight out of Borat are we?

Well done sir....very nice NOT! joke. Bravo.

[Magnificen7 @ May 31st 2008 4:43AM]

Bacon, dude, NOT jokes have been since well before Borat came out. You just jumped on something you thought made it popular.

[OSnix*-geek @ May 30th 2008 3:34PM]

I guess this is all under the guise that any DISC format is even going to survive the next couple of years. FIOS, U-VERSE, and 700mhz here we come! I just wish they had it in my area.

Download is going to win here, people are moving away from all physical formats (photos, cd's, books, .... movies), you get it.

[Coolone3000 @ May 30th 2008 3:46PM]

Disc formats are gonna be around for a long time to come. I honestly can't believe that you think discs will disappear anytime in the near future! Even if downloading movies becomes big, people will want to be able to save that movie and move it around wherever they want, therefor you need discs. I would rather go buy the physical format, then decide what format i want to convert it into. Hard drives are too unreliable and SSD's aren't even close to affordable and also lack the capacity. Don't be such an idiot!

[Hooterman @ May 30th 2008 4:07PM]

"I just wish they had it in my area"

You just hit it on the head on why your comment is wrong. The amount of people that have, or even have access to fast enough internet for downloads to seriously hurt optical media is way to low in the US.

[benny boy @ May 30th 2008 6:07PM]

The broadband infrastructure in the UK is already very slow due to people downloading shows and movies off of the BBC iPlayer etc. and without upgrading the entire country's broadband, it will stay this way

And I don't think that will be happening in the next few years. This is the same story in soo many other countries as well. So, everyone who is saying that physical media will be replaced within the next 10 years is sadly mistaken.

[peestandingup @ May 30th 2008 8:15PM]

Hooterman said: "The amount of people that have, or even have access to fast enough internet for downloads to seriously hurt optical media is way to low in the US."

You mean sorta how no one has an HDTV yet??

Number of households with HDTVs: 25%
Number of households with broadband: 47%

Broadband is being adopted at a much faster rate overall than HDTVs, wired & wireless. And I don't even wanna get into how Blu-ray is doing on that scale.

[Hooterman @ Jun 2nd 2008 12:45PM]

@ peestandingup

The broadband percentage that you're using is also based off of 256kb/s being considered broadband. I'm sure the stellar performance that you'd get trying to download/stream movies on a connection like that would completely win people over and show them why that solution is so much better than using a disc.

[Adam @ May 30th 2008 3:34PM]

Laugh all you want... perhaps i'm in the minority here but many of my friends and family can't even tell the difference between upscaled regular dvd's and hd content. If the results of this "super-resolution" is anything close to this: http://compression.ru/video/super_resolution/super_resolution_en.html than color me impressed. If the price is right, I could see this selling very well.

Adam

[JLTate @ May 30th 2008 3:55PM]

Combine that with modern codecs on a dual layer 9GB DVD and suddenly it /is/ comparable to Blu-Ray, except that the media and drives would be drastically cheaper.

[Hooterman @ May 30th 2008 4:00PM]

I hope this stuff looks better than those examples, or else Toshiba is in more trouble.

And how can you and your family not see the difference in HD? Unless you guys are watching your movies on a 26" Vizio, the only way you wouldn't be able to tell the difference is if it's hooked up incorrectly. Wrong cables, wrong settings, not actual HD content, etc.

[X820 @ May 30th 2008 4:18PM]

Either you're blind or you have a sucky TV. It's time to get a new 1080P TV.

[Jon Acheson @ May 30th 2008 4:21PM]

It's all dependent on the quality of your TV.

I have a 27" 1080i CRT HDVD. You can see the difference on my setup, but it's like a 10% improvement in quality with the Blu-Ray.

My brother got a nice 42" 1080p LCD, and I took my PS3 over to show him some content while he waited for his HD satellite install. On that set, the Blu-Ray looked much better, because you could see all the detail, while the DVD looked much worse because you could see all the artifacts.

[vdogg89 @ May 30th 2008 4:47PM]

you can't tell a difference? I think you need to get your eyes checked or else you are trying to compare an upscaled dvd with regular compressed TV quality HD. Try viewing a dvd next to a 1080p blu-ray.

[Anonymous Coward @ May 30th 2008 10:45PM]

I'm seeing a lot of buyer's remorse in this thread, when deep-down somebody knows they spend a bunch of money on a useless piece of shit so they go online and take their deep negative emotions out on people who were smart enough not to invest in said piece of shit. A good movie is enough to stand on its own and not need a 5,000 dollar TV and a 600 DVD player to enjoy it. I enjoyed Empire Strikes Back as much on my 20" Walmart SD TV hooked up to my 15 year old stereo as you did on your 1080p 80" HDTV, and deep down you know this.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 3rd 2008 3:31AM]

HAHAH... Well, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference either on a 19" Trinitron CRT

[Laron @ May 30th 2008 3:33PM]

hey, I know that guy..

[wakeboredb @ May 30th 2008 3:35PM]

So this player will Super Up-Convert?

I guess we'll all marvel at how this new player really SUC's.

[andres @ May 30th 2008 5:28PM]

looks like its going to be a peice of S.H.I.T. (super high-tech innovative technology)

[Chris Knight @ May 30th 2008 3:36PM]

Does it upscale the audio quality as well? Yeah, thought so.

[David Vogt @ May 30th 2008 3:36PM]

Can't take more resolution from where there is none.

[Bryan Thornsberry @ May 30th 2008 3:39PM]

Johnny Consumer and his $349 doesn't know that...

[JLTate @ May 30th 2008 3:58PM]

Not true. There's always a better interpolation algorithm.

Take a look at 120Hz TVs. For 24fps video they do a damn good job at recreating those extra 4 pictures between each pair of recorded frames.

[don @ May 30th 2008 4:49PM]

Look and Learn

http://compression.ru/video/super_resolution/super_resolution_en.html

[thethirdmoose @ May 30th 2008 4:59PM]

Erm... I think they just play the same picture for 1/24th of a second (5 frames)


But I have been wrong before. There was that time in '95... and um thats it.

[Vidikron (FU) @ May 30th 2008 5:18PM]

I agree with the OP. As good as these algorithms may be, they will never produce anything other than fake comp generated detail. I'd rather have my resolution come from a true HD source rather than from a chip's best guess. This is very similar to optical vs digital zoom on digital cameras.

[Tom Oliveri @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:07PM]

no no no this is brillian!!! they are fighting blu-ray with DVD's!! allow people to put those ultra-compressed 1080p MKV files on a standard dirt-cheap DVD and BAM.. right in the kisser, BAM.. right in the kisser....

[Neeko @ May 30th 2008 3:51PM]

That sounds like a good idea.

[mikejonas @ May 30th 2008 4:05PM]

As I mentioned in my other post, this is probably 3XDVD or some related technology that puts HD video on DVD media. The problem is that basically it's another HD format. Sure, it's backwards-compatible and will probably upconvert DVDs, the players will be cheaper, the prerecorded media will be cheaper on both the manufacturing and retail aspects---but weren't these already HD-DVD's advantages over Blu-Ray?

The only way I could see this as being useful is if they made it a RECORDER as well, and work the angle of this being an affordable way for people to archive the HD recordings from their HD camcorders. I'm doing it right now with my Mac and Toast 9, but I'd love a standalone console solution.

[BluesK1d @ May 30th 2008 4:11PM]

That would be nice if they support Matroska on DVD media. Currently the only thing that does that I am aware of is the Popcorn Hour device (not on optical media though).

[ChiWax @ May 30th 2008 3:41PM]

Cause buying "Juno", "27 Dresses", "Dan In Real Life", etc. etc. isn't lame. Nice try people....Q