Toshiba, sent packing earlier this year in its battle against Blu-ray, is back again with what one might consider a low-budget HD competitor. The technology is called XDE and the first product out with it is the Toshiba XD-E500, a DVD player priced around $150.

XDE, also known as “eXtended Detail Enhancement,” is reportedly DVD upconversion on steroids. Toshiba says of it that “in addition to providing upconversion from 480i/p up to 1080p, XDE offers user selectable picture enhancement modes that allow for greater detail, more vivid colors and stronger contrast that bring standard DVD quality closer to the HD experience.” Three selectable picture mode settings - sharp, color, contrast - lets one bring closer to “true HD quality” their DVD viewing experience.

The initial buzz of the new Intel Centrino 2 chip technology now seems to have died down as related laptops settle into regular purchasing habits. Two last laptops we thought we’d highlight from the flurry of announcements the other week are the Toshiba Tecra M10 and A10. The former has a starting price around $1,400, while the other model has yet to be priced.

These two updated flagship business laptops from Toshiba will include, besides the Centrino 2, other features such as hard drive protection, spill resistant keyboard, fingerprint reader and an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port. You can even have Toshiba throw in a solid state drive if you have a little bit of extra cash to pony up for this option.

Toshiba earlier this week introduced a new laptop series that integrates Garmin GPS technology into the fold. It is called the Toshiba Qosmio F55 and pricing starts at around $1,400.

The Toshiba Qosmio F55 sports a 15.4-inch screen and is powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and NVIDIA GPUs. The integrated GPS technology by Garmin lets you do all the things you’d typically do with a free-standing GPS system and the system include face recognition technology as well.

Gaming notebooks are known for a few things—power, gaming performance and a high price. Your typical gaming notebook will often cost three times or more the amount that you can get a normal notebook for. Not all notebooks for gaming are hugely expensive though and Toshiba has introduced a new gaming machine that has a very reasonable price.

The new Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q701 is a Best Buy exclusive system that retails for $1,549.99. The machine has Toshiba’s slick looking fiery finish with Rouge design. Graphics for the notebook are via NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS discrete card and the CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 processor.

Toshiba this week announced it had updated select models of its Satellite laptops with new processor technology and other features. These models include the Satellite P300, Satellite A300, Satellite M300 and Satellite U400.

These updated Toshiba Satellite laptops feature Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processor technology in addition to other enhancements such as “sleep-and-charge” USB ports and face recognition. You can get the full details via a Toshiba press release after the jump.

The Toshiba Qosmio WXW/79GW gaming laptop means business,(play actually) as it comes with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2GB of DDR3 memory. It also sports a 64GB SSD drive with a 160GB 7200 SATA hard drive. Some other features include a 17 inch WSXGA+ (1,680×1,050), 1GB GeForce 9800M GTX graphics card, a 1.3MP camera, 4 in 1 card reader, HDMI out, USB, Firewire, WLAN, and a DVD super drive.

As if that weren’t enough, it comes to you with this awesome flame skin. The Toshiba 9800M GTX Gaming Laptop will be available in Japan next month. The SSD model will cost $3500.

Toshiba said with pride today it is launching the world’s first laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. It is called the Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V and you’ll find it pricing around $3,000.

The Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V, besides sporting a 128GB solid state drive, also comes equipped with a DVD SuperMulti drive. These two small form factor build-ins allow this laptop to be 0.77-inches thin and around 2.4 pounds. The R500-s5007V’s screen is a 12.1-inch backlit widescreen with transreflective LED.

Toshiba’s got a new Qosmio. The G55. It should go on sale next month with a price of $1,550. Some specs include an 18.4-inch (1680 x 945) display, Centrino 2 CPU, GeForce 9600M GT, 4GB of RAM, dual drives, and the “Quad Core HD processor”. The interesting thing however is the camera-based visual gesture control system. Seems like they’re taking a page from the Wii playbook.

On one hand it looks a bit frustrating and you need to have steady hands, plus it apparently is hell on the wrists. Then again it could be very useful for a number of applications. Either way, we’re talking about a laptop with motion control. Of course, we want one.

Toshiba is out today with word of a new small projector which weighs just under five pounds. It is called the Toshiba TDP-SP1U and prices at around $720.

The Toshiba TDP-SP1U, besides weighing 4.8 pounds, is noted for having 2,200 ANSI lumens, DLP BrilliantColor technology and an extended lamp life of up to 4,000 hours. Native resolution of the projector is SVGA (800 x 600).

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a real fitness craze happening thanks in part to Wii Fit. Toshiba wants to do their part as well. The Toshiba Sportio is a new addition for Japanese carrier KDDi. Ironically, the phone is a fatty, but helps you stay fit with motion sensors counting the calories burned during a workout.

It also takes advantage of GPS to lay out your jogging route. It will stream music to compatible Bluetooth headphones with the ‘BEAT RUN’ function, which adjusts the tempo to you as you feel the burn. The Sportio sports a 2.2 inch TFT 240 x 320 screen, 2 Megapixel camera, GPS and 1 Seg Tuner. You’ll have your choice of five colors: orange, white, black, red and green.

Toshiba yesterday added five new models of laptops to its business line. These new notebooks have a starting price around $700 and are all part of the Satellite Pro family.

The new laptops, depending upon the model, feature 13.3-inch, 14.1-inch, 15.4-inch and 17-inch displays as well as Intel Core 2 Duo processors or AMD dual core processors. Availability of all models should be now and you can get a model by model breakdown after the jump.

Toshiba’s Neoball-Z Real Pride bulbs do away with the corkscrew look, going back to the old bulb design. They are actually fluorescent lamps. But the most interesting news is that they claim to have a life span rated at 12,000 hours. That’s about 1.2 times better than the other products on the market, which is 12 times better than an incandescent bulb. The power consumption rates at 10 watts, which should be a big money saver.

You can get them in warm white, day white and daylight colors from July 1st onward. No word on price, which is really the main thing I would want to know. I’ve tried some of the corkscrew variety and didn’t seem to save any money at all, so I’d be willing to give these a shot.

Toshiba thinks it is time to drive the price of 17-inch desktop replacement laptops down as it today unveiled a new model starting at around $750. The series is called the Satellite L350.

The Toshiba Satellite L350 sports a 17.1-inch WXGA+ “TruBrite” LCD display and AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processors. Possible features, depending upon configuration, might also include ATI Radeon X1250 graphics memory and a DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash. Labelflash lets you burn images and labels directly to a special DVD-R disc.

Toshiba’s new 815T PB on Softbank, developed to coincide with a new show featuring robo-phones is freakishly weird, but we love it. This is what phones should aspire to be. We only hope that they don’t become self aware and drill into your skull, in order to take up permanant residence on your ear. We might all become servants to these things.

Transformer fans will no doubt wet their pants. This is the first mobile phone that you could actually use as a toy. Yes, this is real. Obviously the silver one is the good guy, the black one just looks mean. Not much more info at this time, but I hope other phone manufacturers are paying attention.

According to a company source at Toshiba, the company is in the “final stages” of giving up the battle in the next generation DVD format war against Sony’s Blu-ray. After years of fighting it out and causing confusion among consumers over which format to purchase it looks like Blu-ray is actually going to come out on top, and HD DVD will go the way of the Betamax.

The most significant move that seemed to cause this battle to take a turn in Sony’s favor happened when Warner Bros. Entertainment announced they would only release movies in the Blu-ray format. The companies plan was to end consumer confusion allowing them to make a decision and subsequent purchases of one format or the other, in this case Blu-ray.