Death blow to Toshiba's SRT/SUC/Res+ upconverter: It doesn't work in real-time!

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by CraigW

I am not sure. I think Toshiba's grand plan is to have a player that can do extensive inter-frame interpolation to get closer to BD quality. But as it has already been pointed out, the technology and hardware to do extensive processing is both time and cost prohibitive.

Indeed, the processing flowchart as shown on amazon displays no sign of multi-frame voodoo:



It goes one frame at a time, using "non-linear" scaling.

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by Grubert

...It goes one frame at a time, using "non-linear" scaling.

According to the graphic, that's "non-liner scaling."

There's your voodoo.

Edit: Oo! With "wide rage scaling" too!

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Joe Cain

According to the graphic, that's "non-liner scaling."

There's your voodoo.

Edit: Oo! With "wide rage scaling" too!

Yep, that was hilarious. But I thought making fun of their spelling errors was too cruel.

[CptGreedle]

Any chance other retailers will drop Toshiba products with this fiasco?
They start and prolong a costly format war, and now they try to halt the adoption of Blu-ray... i would remove Toshiba products from my shelves if I had a store.

[Blaumann]

Originally Posted by Joe Cain

According to the graphic, that's "non-liner scaling."

There's your voodoo.

Edit: Oo! With "wide rage scaling" too!

Would this work for movies with many one-liners then?

[Tok]

Originally Posted by Blaumann

Would this work for movies with many one-liners then?

Yes, it adds a stutter to them.

Example:

I'll be back --- > I' I'l I'll bb bb be bbb bb b bb back

[Mr3dfx]

Oooooo here is a direct quote from To$hiba
"The effect of enhancements may vary depending upon disc content quality and display device capability/functionality/settings. Depending on the quality of the DVD disc, some video noise may be visible."
YAY!!! Near Blu with extra added bonus...NOISE!! and it's free!
Source
I'll stick with my Reon chip in my Onkyo, I know it's not perfect but $150 will buy me six blus, thanks though, To$hiba.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Grubert

Indeed, the processing flowchart as shown on amazon displays no sign of multi-frame voodoo:



It goes one frame at a time, using "non-linear" scaling.

That looks like what you do with Photoshop's unsharp mask after upscaling..

[walk on the blu side]

To think Toshiba actually thought this would work, they are a pathetic company. I could watch about 3 average length movies in the time it would take to wait for their SUC to convert the video.

[Blubaru]

Don’t they have this new player on the market now?

I haven’t heard of anyone needing to wait multiple hours to just see one movie

[Grubert]

Originally Posted by Blubaru

Don’t they have this new player on the market now?

I haven’t heard of anyone needing to wait multiple hours to just see one movie

That's because the set-top player (XD-E500) doesn't do Super-resolution upscaling.

[CptGreedle]

Originally Posted by Blubaru

Don’t they have this new player on the market now?

I haven’t heard of anyone needing to wait multiple hours to just see one movie

It is not the same technology, but I think even the newest one they are advertising isn't due out till later this year.
But really, they have a long way to go to make this even a marketable product.
With prices for Blu-ray dropping to near $200 this holiday season, who cares about SUC and XD and whatever else ISN'T HD?

[Beta Man]

Couple thoughts....... And Yes, I own Blu-ray and HD DVD players.... (had to throw that in there since I commented on it)

1) Long load times in Blu-ray were a point of contention with the HD-DVD fans .... and we're talking about 30 seconds or so???? What's 3 hours then!!!!

2) There is so much confusion right now with "Joe Consumer" People are buying HD DVDs, and Blu-rays, and finding out they don't work in their SD-DVD player..... and getting pissed and returning them, etc.... look at the Blu-rays found on ebay by sellers who thought they were SD-DVD (and you know someone capable of setting up and using an ebay account to sell is even more computer/tech savy than "Joe Consumer" ) Look at the bad reviews on Amazon that people leave b/c they bought the wrong format.



I honestly don't even think the hard-core HD DVD fans who want nothing more than Blu-ray to fail, will buy into this...... they'll start the "My HD DVD player upconverts just as well" campaign....

[Eternal_Sunshine]

German review of the XD-E 500:
http://www.hdtv-praxis.de/modules.ph...=2&page_id=554

Translation (I'm a native speaker):

"It's crap."

[mattym]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

German review of the XD-E 500:
http://www.hdtv-praxis.de/modules.ph...=2&page_id=554

Translation (I'm a native speaker):

"It's crap."

wow yeah they dont mince words. Reading the firefox translation makes it sound like Yoda wrote it, lol

[Mentasm]

Originally Posted by Beta Man

Couple thoughts....... And Yes, I own Blu-ray and HD DVD players.... (had to throw that in there since I commented on it)

1) Long load times in Blu-ray were a point of contention with the HD-DVD fans .... and we're talking about 30 seconds or so???? What's 3 hours then!!!!

I honestly don't even think the hard-core HD DVD fans who want nothing more than Blu-ray to fail, will buy into this...... they'll start the "My HD DVD player upconverts just as well" campaign....

Try 3 minutes to load certain titles. Honestly, I know this is a BD-only site, but BD won the format war, do you really still have to get your digs in at HD DVD supporters? Aren't we past that?

[Icemage]

How did I miss this topic?

Pretty amusing reading all around, I must say.

Couple of quick impression responses to points brought up earlier in the thread:

On SUC/SRT/Toshiba:
Toshiba basically set themselves up for failure when they announced their SUC technology so quickly after the demise of HD DVD. It doesn't help their cause when they stressed that it would provide "up to 960p resolution".

I'm surprised they even felt it would be a good idea to even mention such a technology if they knew (as they must have) that the technology would not be possible in real-time; the computing requirements are just far too high, and by the time computing power in CE devices becomes plentiful enough to implement something like that in real time, it's very likely that the transition to HDTV and HD sources will have progressed to such a point as to make such technologies obsolete.

On the format warring:
We really need to let the format war go. Life is good, Blu-ray won, we've got one format on shelves now, yadda yadda. I don't host any personal hatred for Toshiba (heck, I recommended one of their laptops to a family member not too long ago), though I can understand why people here (ESPECIALLY here) would still harbor some ill will.

On former HD DVD supporters doing their best impressions of Japanese soldiers in the Philippines:
Who cares what these deluded folks say or do any more? All their keystrokes by the hundreds of thousands per day will not bring their beloved red cased format back from the dead. Perhaps some day they'll come out of the wilderness, but I sincerely doubt it if they haven't done so already.

[aristotles]

C/Net review
http://reviews.cnet.com/video-player...?tag=mncol;lst

LOL

They suggest turning off the SUC feature for better quality.

[dialog_gvf]

The bottom line:
The Toshiba XD-E500's XDE picture enhancements don't live up to the hype. While it's a solid upscaling DVD player, its high price makes it a hard sell.

It will be interesting to see if this review is subjected to future .... umm .... refinement.

[PS3FAN]

Advice Dog Says:

I bet only three of you get the joke.