As you probably know only too well, back in the first half of 2008, the Japanese company Toshiba went through an extremely bad period, since it lost the next-generation format war waged against Sony's Blu-ray. However, it looks like Toshiba is not about to abandon its foray into the optical disc market that easily, and, for this reason, it will release a device that can do a very good job at upscaling one's old DVDs in order to look a lot better when their contents are displayed on a high-definition TV set.

According to an article by AP technology writer Peter Svensson, the Japanese company is about to launch a new upscaling DVD player model, dubbed the XD-E500, a device that enables users to view their favorite movies at a whole new level of quality.

While upscaling DVD players are not exactly a fantastic novelty, it seems that the XD-E500 really brings something new to the table. And this important element is the eXtended Detail Enhancement technology, which helps the device provide quite a noticeable improvement and sharpening of the image. Moreover, it would seem that the XD-E500 will be just the first model from a whole new range of devices, all of which will include the aforementioned image processing technology.

Actually, Toshiba is playing a very interesting card here: on one hand, it promotes a format that has proved its worth over time, and on the other, it capitalizes on the consumer's overall disregard/distrust when it comes to the Blu-ray format. Thus, quite a lot of people consider Blu-ray machines to be too expensive and even more think that the format itself is not exactly capable of delivering that much of a different movie-viewing experience from the one provided by classical DVDs (albeit upscaled).

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Toshiba's gamble will pay off in the end, but since we're going through a pretty rough period right now (from the point of view of the economy), with more conservative consumers, they might just have a very good plan.

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