Toshiba XDE600 1080p Upconverted DVD Extended Detail Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this one on a whim just to try out the extended detail enhancement feature. Of the three (Sharp, Color, Contrast) Sharp worked very well. I have a properly calibrated set, so the other two were pretty much of no use. On newer films Sharp added just the right amount of sharpness to scenes without additional halos or other edge enhancement artifacts (the better the film's cinematography the better it works). With older 4:3 aspect films or non-HD TV shows from the 90s the image is stretch and there is nothing I can do to fix it. My Vizio TV can't adjust for it (it just sees a 1080P image coming from the player and keeps it in its "normal" state - stretched in other words) and neither can the player. That's pretty frustrating and I may end up sending this back for that reason. Need to take stock of how many DVDs I rent that are 4:3. The audio is good/average. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly acceptable. The build quality of the unit is very light. The case of the player feels like a tin can and the remote is as tiny and lightweight as a child's toy. The buttons are very small and unintuitive.
Again, for what its basic purpose is (DVD upscaled playback), it does a great job on 16:9 widescreen material, particularly with Sharp enabled. The image quality rivals at times the Oppo DV-980H (no joke) and is slightly better than the Pioneer Elite DV-49AV. I wished Toshiba had chosen to put the XDE feature into a more quality player from a feature and build standpoint. It would have a real winner then - even at another say, $50 for that quality.
Edit: Well, after a week or so of ownership I feel I was a bit too harsh on the XDE-600, so I bumped the rating up to four stars. The image quality is so good for the low price that I can overlook the deficiencies. Plus I found a work-around of sorts for the 4:3 aspect problem. Set the HDMI resolution to 480p in the player and it will display in the proper aspect ratio on the TV. The only snag is that the XDE settings won't work in anything but 1080p, but since they are mostly older movies (that use that format) I can live with it.

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