XDE -- Engadget

XDE posts

Toshiba's "timesculpture" ad is bullet time meets Feist, or something equally impressive

by Paul Miller, posted Nov 11th 2008 at 10:18PM

Yeah, we confess we're nerds and watched all that behind-the-scenes stuff on the Matrix DVD -- when it's the only DVD you own, you gotta get your money's worth. If you'll recall (don't try and deny it), the much-lauded "bullet time" effect was accomplished by surrounding the leather-bedecked Keanu with dozens of digital still cameras to capture every millisecond of his limbo moves from every angle. Commercials aplenty soon co-opted the technology to push their wares, but Toshiba is flipping that formula here, hiring an ad agency with its very own bullet time variant called "timesculpture" to plug Toshiba's XDE technology. A circular rig with 200 Gigashot HD camcorders and 20,000 gigabytes of data later, they created this little number, which mixes full motion video, Matrix camera moves and a healthy dash of hipsterism. Check it out after the break.

Continue reading Toshiba's "timesculpture" ad is bullet time meets Feist, or something equally impressive

Toshiba's XD-E500 upconverting DVD player caught in stores

by Darren Murph, posted Sep 13th 2008 at 11:21PM

We'll apologize on our tipster's behalf for the quality of this shot, but evidently, he wasn't able to pass it through Toshiba's completely mind-boggling XDE upscaling technology before forwarding it onto us. Anyway, we reckon you can get the point -- the XD-E500 upconverting DVD player is filtering into stores, so those looking to make their current DVD collection look its best should probably take notice. Or not, whatever.

[Thanks, Philip]

Toshiba stubbornly launches the un-Blu-ray, XD-E500 DVD player

by Thomas Ricker, posted Aug 18th 2008 at 1:33AM

Oh Toshiba, has it really come to this? After a humiliating loss to Blu-ray, Tosh just unveiled its new $150 XD-E500 DVD player. It's no run o' the mill DVD player mind you, this unit touts Toshiba's new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology -- that super-duper resolution upconverting tech meant to fill the void between ubiquitous upconverting players and Blu-ray. Unfortunately, the player demonstrated offered just "subtle but noticeable sharpening of the image" when compared side-by-side (in a controlled demonstration) with an unnamed $70 upscaler -- to its credit, Tosh did not try to compare its new player with an HD-capable Blu-ray machine. Still, more than twice the price for "subtle" hardly sounds like a compelling purchase to us.

Update: Official press release is now out which, oddly enough, helped us upconvert our 480i/p cynicism to full-blown 1080p/24fps skepticism.