IFA 2008: Toshiba's REGZA ZF LCDs Use PLAYSTATION3 Technology to Upconvert Videos

As expected, this year's IFA show from Berlin has brought to light quite a large number of extremely innovative products, providing certain features that we could only dream of just a few years ago. And that's also the case with the new REGZA ZF line of LCDs from Toshiba, which employ the Cell processors (also encountered in the case of Sony's famous gaming console, the PS3) in order to upconvert the video signals to full HD.

The new technology, dubbed Resolution+, takes advantage of the Cell's processing power and achieves pretty much the same results as the company's XDE upscaler (which we've talked about in an earlier article), as it's capable of sharpening details and smoothing edges, without affecting the overall image. This feature could actually prove extremely successful, since there are quite a lot of users out there who haven't made the leap forward to Blu-ray and are relying on DVDs for home entertainment.

Beside Resolution+, the two new models from the Regza ZF series (the 40-inch 40ZF575D and the 46-inch 46ZF575D) provide just about everything one might expect from a high-end, modern HDTV LCD set. Thus, they offer 1080p resolution, a 30,000:1 contrast ratio, 6 ms response time, as well as enhanced Active Vision M100 HD 100Hz 5:5 pulldown processing, for high-quality images.

Moreover, the LCDs are coveted with a full range of connectivity options, which include no less than four HDMI plugs, component video, RGB and PC input interfaces. In other words, you can hook up just about anything you might think of to these things.

The worst part about Toshiba's new REGZA ZF HDTVs is the lack of pricing and availability information, especially since we're talking about a couple of products that, should they actually manage to deliver just what the manufacturers tout them to, will most likely become instant smash hits.

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