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Although we applaud Toshiba‘s efforts to improve the quality of DVDs with its upscaling players, we couldn’t help but think the XD-E500, which we reviewed in September, was a little too expensive at £120 and didn’t do enough with the picture quality to justify giving your old player the heave-ho.
Toshiba has just gone and added a whole Poundland’s worth of value though, by doing a deal with movie-rental company Lovefilm: everyone who buys an E500 will get a year’s free DVD rentals, which is worth £100. So you could say the player is just £20, a much better price for a DVD player, especially if you were planning to join Lovefilm anyway.
Like most promotions, you’ll need to jump through some DVD-shaped hoops. Firstly you must register the player with Toshiba within seven days of purchase. During registration you’ll be given a form to redeem your 12 months free, and you have to do that within 14 days of your initial purchase.
Crave has had a Lovefilm subscription for some time now (yes, we pay for it), and we’re very happy with it. The company is even friendly on the phone, and when we needed to change our account it couldn’t have been more supportive. Plus, you can queue movies in an order that suits you, and even have multiple lists, so you and other people in your house get to see movies they’re interested in, not just the complete works of Bruce Willis.
We think Tosh has put together a good offer here, and we don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it could be even better. If we cast our eyes across the Atlantic, we notice that Americans get Netflix movies streaming over the Internet to a whole load of devices, such as Blu-ray players and the Xbox 360. We love DVDs, but we’re definitely of the opinion that there’s a cooler, less Post Office-dependent, way of doing things.
