Having lost out to Blu-ray in the High Definition format war, Toshiba is fighting a rearguard action with some interesting upscaling technologies. Resolution+, increases the sharpness of Standard Definition signals to what Toshiba claim is near HD quality.

Andrew Line, UK TV Product Manager at Toshiba commented: "With Resolution + technology, we’re able to offer consumers the ability to instantly upgrade whatever it is they might choose to watch – broadcast, standard DVD or otherwise – to a resolution much closer to High Definition. There is a marked improvement in the quality of the final image, and we’re very excited by the benefits this technology can offer."

Resolution+ sits alongside Toshiba's other innovative upscaling technology, XDE, which has been designed to work with DVD's. Resolution+ focuses solely on improving the sharpness of Standard Definition signals coming into the TV. Designed to take a lower quality video source and create a cleaner sharper picture to present on-screen, Toshiba claim the results are very close to High Definition quality.

Early indications suggest that the ZV series does an excellent job with poorer quality sources such as Freeview, reducing the levels of 'noise' to minimal levels. However, Resolution+ looks more like an 'Edge Enhancement' technology which simply sharpens up the images rather than performing some form of modern day alchemy and turning SD pictures into HD.

Whether Resolution+ will turn into a mainstay of Toshiba's LCD TV technology remains to be seen, but what Toshiba have managed to produce so far with the ZV series are a couple of large panels that produce some of the best results with poorer quality Freeview we have seen.

The ZV series from Toshiba is now in the UK now.

Toshiba 42ZV555D  

Toshiba 46ZV555D