HDTV Lounge

The Toshiba HD-E1 is one of the first lower priced HD-DVD players which does not have a very large price tag of at least $1500 or more. The HD-E1 is available for about £350 ($700), the second generation player is much slimmer and cheaper than the first set of HD-DVD drives, so does it cut any corners with the cheaper price tag?. TrustedReviews have taken a look at the HD-E1 and say “there’s a single HDMI 1.2 port, which will be the preferred connection method, but there’s also a set of component video connectors, an S-Video port and a composite video port. Being that Toshiba is offering the HD-E1 at such a bargain price compared to the competition, it comes as no surprise that a few compromises have been made on the feature set. The HD-E1 will happily output both 720p and 1080i resolutions, but it falls short of outputting a 1080p signal. The more expensive HD-XE1 will support 1080p output.

HD DVD playback proved to be awesome, especially when coupled with a 1,920 x 1,080 panel. The King Kong disc that proved to be so impressive when I tested the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive pulled out even more stops when coupled with the HD-E1. Surprisingly it wasn’t the HD DVD playback that impressed me the most with this player, it was the standard DVD playback. The HD-E1 will upscale standard DVDs to 1080i and the results are very, very impressive