Having lost out to Blu-ray in the high definition format war, Toshiba is still hoping to get a slice of the HD market with their XDE (extended definition) upscaling technology.

XDE technology has the ability to upscale TV images as well as conventional DVD's to 720p, 1080i or 1080p. 

The budget XD-E500 DVD player is the first UK product to feature XDE technology with Toshiba hoping to tempt consumers with a much more affordable HD experience. The player itself is cheaper than any current Blu-ray player and of course conventional DVD's are much cheaper than Blu-ray discs.

The XD-E500 supports DVD-R/-RW, DVD+R/+RW, CD, CD-R/-RW, DiVX along with MP3 and JPEG. It sports an HDMI port along with scart, component and composite inputs.

Toshiba's XD-E500 offers three picture modes, "Sharp" mode , "Color" mode and "Contrast" mode which provide various picture tweaking options.

Toshiba XD-E500