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Toshiba have unleashed the quad-core (yes baby, 4x the power!) HD SpursEngine SE1000 processors. The SpursEngine SE1000 will be installed Toshiba’s Dynabook Qosmio G50 Series, F50 Series and FX Series. Whilst you may be drooling onto your keyboard at the thought of all the HD goodness, hold those horses as Toshiba have gone and spoiled the effect by combining the SpursEngine SE1000 with a standard DVD player and an upscaler.

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WTF? - That’s like putting a Ferrari engine in a Skoda (for those of you who have never heard of a Skoda, there’s a reason for that…). OK, maybe we’re exaggerating a teeny bit as the HD quality generated by the SpursEngine SE1000 still manages to be above average but it would have been soo much better had Toshiba swallowed their pride and added Blu-Ray players to their G50 Series, F50 Series and FX Series along with the SpursEngine SE1000.

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All the machines the SpursEngine SE1000 will be rolled out on will come equipped with some pretty high end specs including the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT and Core 2 Duo CPU. The main differences between the models will be the Hard Disk space and screen size.

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So what happened then?

Toshiba just threw in the towel, they’re not gonna make HD DVD’s any more.

How come?

Well Wallmart, Bestbuy and Warner Bros all jumped shipped and are now all exclusively dating Blu-Ray. The writing was on the wall for HD DVD and it said ‘You’re gonna loose….big’.

Were Blu-Ray all nice about it?

No. they rubbed HD DVD’s face in it as any self respecting organisation would.

So i guess they’re about to get paid, huh?

Can you say kerching!? The Blu-Ray Association is about to get paid like Bill (Gates). Every Blu-Ray disc and drive that gets produced means they get a royalty. If you think about it, by the end of this year every PC will probably have a Blu-Ray player inbuilt and PS3 sales will no doubt be picking up too….

So is anyone sticking with HD DVD then?

Yes LG are watching and waiting. They are going to continue making and supporting HD DVD for the early adopters and hope to capitalise on the lack of support from anyone else. LG is HD DVD’s only friend in the world right now….

Sucks for HD DVD then. What’s it means for us then?

Well all of us who had the foresight to buy a Playstation 3 (ahem) it’s business as usual. Those who bought a HD DVD player…well…enjoy your nice new paper-weight….Remember BetaMax? No? Well that’s where you’re heading….

So is that it?

Well not until the end of March so if you’ve got a dual HD DVD / Blu-Ray player, be on the lookout for some bargains as studios rush to off-load their HD DVD back catalogues.

So if HD DVD and Blu-Ray were actually people, how would the conversation go?

Blu-Ray: Check-mate baby! We’ve reached critical mass and we own this mutha! Ya heard!?

HD DVD: Well we’re going to be moving out anyway…this place isn’t our style…we’ll be looking at other ventures…

Blu-Ray: Whatever biatch, get the hell out.

HD DVD: We were leaving anyway. We think that our decision to exit the format war will benefit the consumer more than -

Blu-Ray: You still here? You need to leave man I got money to make.

HD DVD: There’s no need to be rude we were just-

Blu-Ray: Yeah yeah BetaMax , uh, I mean HD DVD, I feel for you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out….

HDTV Reviews don’t usual talk about HD DVD Players in their own right but we’ve decided to diversify our output and see what happens. The Toshiba HD-EP30 is a compact HD DVD that packs a big punch. Playback capabilities include HD DVD Video, DVD Video, DVD VR, CD Audio and CD-DA.

Now with the battle between HD DVD and Blu-Ray heating up, some of you may wonder which platform you should get. The answer is - it’s still hard to say. Although Warner and 80% of Studios are going Blu-Ray, the 2nd and 3rd biggest film studios are still on the HD DVD bandwagon - exclusively so it’s likely that the war between the two formats will be ongoing for some time yet.

The Toshiba HD-EP30 takes an age to boot up. This is an annoyance as you’d expect better with new technology. On the plus side it does come with a couple of extras such as 2 free HD DVD’s to get you started and a bundled HDMI cable (which is great).

If you have a selection of American SD DVD’s prepare to be disappointed as the Toshiba HD-EP30 will not play your Region 1 SD DVD’s. Toshiba needs to release a region un-locker quickly…. The region lock problem does not affect HD-DVD’s which will make it a minor problem in a few years.

What is good about the Toshiba HD-EP30 is the excellent job it does on up-scaling standard DVD’s. Even older DVD’s look great so if you have a choice between this and an ups-caler the Toshiba HD-EP30 would definitely be the better option.

Toshiba 37X3030

We have a few bees in our bonnet here at GadgetHeat, one of them being the motion blurring on many HDTV’s on the market and the attitude of many manufactures seems to be one of ‘put up and shut up’ (unlike the near flawless Samsung LN46A650).

This is evident from the start in the Toshiba 37X3030. Although Toshiba claim that it has a 24fps (Frames Per Second) capability (which would effectively eliminate motion blurring) the Toshiba 37X3030 cannot actually do anything much with it as it is not fully 24fps compatible. Confused? We know we are….

What is the point of having a feature that is not fully implemented? What this means in effect is that in action sequences or in any panning shots we get the dreaded HDTV blur that makes you yearn for your old CRT monitor. Watching sports in standard definition on the Toshiba 37X3030 is a struggle because of the speed of motion so you will have to sit a reasonable distance away from the set to be able to tolerate it.

Another gripe is the fact that you cannot input 1080i/p through VGA on the Toshiba 37X3030. You have to use HDMI or component. You may see this as a small problem as all Blu-Ray and HD DVD players these days have HDMI connectors / slots but if you have a Xbox 360 (non-Elite) be warned that you will have to use component to get the HD experience on some games.

On the plus side (yes there are some pluses) watching up-scaled DVD’s or HD DVD / Blu-Ray on the Toshiba 37X3030 is amazing. You will have to adjust the settings to suit your room and viewing distance but once that is done you should get the full 1080p benefit from this HDTV.

The Toshiba 37X3030 is a classy looking television set and the piano black finish makes it stand out somewhat from the usual HDTV crowd. It’s not a dust magnet either in particular.

For the price (around £600 - 700) the Toshiba 37X3030 is pretty good for a Full HD (1080p) television and if you have Sky HD and the such you won’t be disappointed - just make allowances for some pixilation when it comes to fast moving images.

We don’t usually review televisions under 32 inches but we thought, hey, why discriminate on size? Besides i’ve got a 26 incher myself and it ain’t half bad…. The Toshiba 26C3030DB is …. ugly. Yeah I said it, the thingis ugly. Looks like a throwback to the late nineties (can you beleive that we’re almost a decade into the 2000’s?).

Now all HDTV’s start at a 7/10 at least for picture quality but, taking that into consideration, the picture quality of the Toshiba 26C3030DB is average in the HDTV scale of things as is the sound. It only comes with one HDMI port which would really annoy me as you would have to keep unplugging your console, HD / Blu-Ray DVD player, Sky box or any other HD Source.

The built-in Freeview receiver is a plus as is the card slot that enables you to activate top-up channels, however, the reciever is not as strong as it could be and side-by-side with a standalone freeview set-top box in a poor reception area the Toshiba 26C3030DB will come off worse in terms of picture quality.

For a main TV, i.e. for your living room or lounge, the Toshiba 26C3030DB would not be my television of choice. For an additional TV or a dedicated console television then the 26C303DB becomes more viable. It’s currently under £350 online so it’s a bargain in that respect for a high definition television. So if you’re a bit short of cash and desperate to get your hands on a HDT, not too fussed about picture purffect quality and are only going have one HD source this would fit your bill….I guess.

Tags: LCD, Digital, HD TV, High Definition Television, 1080p

..just maybe…still has it….The Toshiba 32C3035 displays in 1080p so it’s a definate cut above some other HD LCD TV’s but it’s no match for the Bravia (in all honesty, what is? apart from maybe the Samsung…). Saying that, for the price (around £400 ish) it’s definatley value for money in that you get a high spec name brand quality TV at a lower price than you would get on the high street. Were going to HDTV review this latest Toshiba and see what we can unearth…

Design wise the Toshiba 32C3035 is a departure from the norm in that the speakers have moved ‘underneath’ so to speak rather than by the sides of the screen as per the norm giving it a rather funky feel. In my eyes, 95% of all LCD TV’s look good and this modification makes the Toshiba 32C3035 stand out from the pack however slightly.

Watching blu-ray or HD-DVD through one of it’s two HDMI ports gives a fantastic quality of picture and really, if you’re just looking for a great (and I do mean great) picture, easy to use setup and a decent price then the Toshiba 32C3035 definately ticks those boxes.

What can be a problem is the contrast settings in dark and murkey films (such as The Warriors and any other movie where everything more or less goes on at night). You will have to be fiddling with the settings a bit to get that pitch perfect image during darker scenes and this is mainly due to the ‘true black’ setting which is excellent and yet can cause problems viewing the aforementioned scenes.

The Toshiba 32C3035 also uses 50-60Hz which is absoloutly fine for most uses but of course not as thrilling as the 100Hz used in the pricer HD ready TV sets (we have this at a great price in our HDTV shop).

The Toshiba 32C3035 is definatley a good buy for those wanting a solid HD ready TV without too much fuss and an upgraded viewing expereince. For those with about £100 more to spend I would recommend the Bravia series before anything at the moment.

100Hz is currently the upper limit for commercially available LCD HD TV’s at the moment and you could usually expect to pay upwards of £1000 for one so to find one with a good make and build for under £600 sounds too good to be true.

The Toshiba 37WLT68 straight out of the box gives a crystal clear picture and if you compare it with a Toshiba 60Hz HDTV of similar spec the difference it immediate. Blurring is less of a problem with the Toshiba 37WLT68 due to its M100 100Hz processing technology however, as with most other LCD TV’s pixilation can occur from time to time especially with background images which is a disappointment considering that it is otherwise such a high spec HD Ready TV.

The range of input output options is impressive with 3 HDMI ports, VGA, component, S-Video amongst others with the only niggle of the Toshiba 37WLT68 is the habit of reverting to 4:3 aspect when the HDMI input for the DVD player is changed.

A really annoying negative of the Toshiba 37WLT68 is the response times. The remote control sucks to be frank and changing anything or getting information up on screen will leave you twiddling your thumbs from time to time as you wonder whether or not the thing has crashed, but no, it’s just taking its sweet time. This may sound like a minor point in comparison to all the other considerations when buying a HD Ready TV but if you’re like me, I want my gadgets to respond immediately and not leave me hanging waiting for response.

This is a generic problem so if you do plump for the Toshiba 37WLT68 there’s no point returning your remote control to Toshiba for a replacement as it will not be any better.

Looks-wise I don’t see how anyone can complain about the Toshiba 37WLT68 as it is proper gorgeous and in an average sized living room it will look great on or off. Hope you enjoyed this HDTV Review, as with all our other HDTV’S, we have it at a great price at our store.