Saturday, October 10, 2009

Toshiba 40RV525R Nice for the price...

I needed a TV that would fit a 41w x 30h space in my living room, so this Toshiba was almost perfect in that respect.

The TV is nice looking, if a little glossy with the piano black finish. In normal to dim lighting, there's no appreciable reflections, so not a big deal. The sound is merely OK. Expected that, so I connected a digital optical cable from the TV to my Denon receiver; problem solved.

Setup was trivial. Out of the box to watching Monday Night Football in 15 minutes. The Dynamic Contrast under Advanced Settings should be OFF. It's annoying when enabled, which is the default. I changed the Color Temp from Medium to Warm in Standard Mode as well and got a fairly accurate result.

My connected devices area an HD satellite box, an HD TiVO DVR, a DVD player/recorder, and the Denon 3805. The TiVO is getting signal from a Terk HD antenna mounted on the roof. The sat box and TiVO are connected HDMI; the DVD box is component.

So far, I get an excellent HD picture with DirecTV and TiVO. 1080p and 1080i output settings, respectively. With SD programs, and with the DVD at 480p, there's clearly an issue. The picture is soft and a little noisy. The TiVO does a slightly better job; the picture is sharper and the noise is definitely less. This could be a difference in the video scaler chipsets used in the two HD units. HD programs are slightly dimmer with the TiVO as compared to the DirecTV unit.

Right now, I plan to burn the set in for 40-50 hours, then go for a precise calibration using Home Theatre Setup. If I can't get close with that, I think I can borrow a Spyder.

All in all, the set is pretty good. Since we watch more HD programming than SD programming, the SD picture quality isn't an issue. It might be for you. I'll also note that the TV profile for Harmony remotes is good for this model. My first setup of Devices and Activities worked fine for my Harmony 670. The included Toshiba remote is nothing to write home about. No backlight, mushy buttons...average at best.

The bottom line is that this set was $150-200 cheaper than a comparable Sony and looks great with HD programming.

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