Loser of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war Toshiba has announced the first product packing the company's video upscaling technology, XDE (eXtended Detail Enhancement).

XDE simply converts the picture of a bog standard DVD from 480i/p to 1080p, hitting a high-definition enabled telly with high-definition resolution. The new upconversion technology will start shipping this month in Toshiba's XDE-500 DVD player, with a price tag of just $149,99 in the US.

The XD-E500 also features contrast, sharpness and colour modes. Sharp mode analyses the picture and improves details, colour mode makes greens and blues and outdoor scenes far more lifelike, whilst contrast makes dark movies more visible without washing the picture out. Sharp mode and contrast mode can be used together and would probably look good for one of the new Batman movies.

The price is about the same as four spanking new Blu-Ray discs over here in Germany. Simply buying an XDE-500 so one won't have to replace one's DVD collections with horribly expensive Blu-Rays and being able to watch them in high definition ought to make sense to a lot of punters. Toshiba started developing XDE after it lost the next-generation disc wars to Sony and its Blu-Ray consortium. It will be interesting to see if launching a low-cost DVD player which upscales DVDs to near HD-quality is going to give the Blu-Ray gang a headache. If XDE catches on, expect Blu-Ray prices to drop. The XDE-500 also supports DivX, WMA, MP3, JPEG and sports a HDMI connection.

'Consumers have embraced the DVD format like no other technology and invested in large libraries of their favourite movies. As the market moves towards high definition, XDE lets them experience their existing DVD library and the tens of thousands of DVD titles in a whole new way,' says director of product planning Louis Masses. 'Toshiba is delivering to consumers what they want - a high quality experience at an affordable price.' Let's see if he's right about punters buying an HDTV and opting for XDE over Blu-Ray. X