LCD TV Reviews

Assessing the Toshiba's technical performance with an AccuPel signal generator, geometry and "convergence" looked virtually perfect at 1080i via HDMI. A fine white crosshatch on a black background showed excellent alignment, no color fringing, and uniform focus from edge to edge, but also a soft pixel structure, which isn't surprising given my viewing impressions and some additional measurements you'll read about below.

Overscan was at 3% on all sides with 720p and 1080i via HDMI. At 480p and 480i via HDMI it went closer to 5% on the sides, which is a bit excessive.

The Toshiba's biggest shortcoming was very apparent in my resolution measurements. Using HDMI and viewing luma bursts the Toshiba showed barely any perceptible resolution at the 37.1MHz limit with 1080i. This was even worse with component video, with which I saw a completely washed out gray band at 37.1MHz with both 1080i and 720p. The chroma bursts were worse still, as they were washed out completely at the highest frequencies with both 720p and 1080i, but also very faded at the highest frequencies with 480i and 480p. This simply isn't a full resolution 1080p display, and the chroma bandwidth in particular is strikingly limited.

On grayscale tracking, the out of box performance with the Warm Color Temp setting was not only off by a good margin, but not particularly linear, ranging from over 10,000K at the bottom to just over 7,000K at the top. This set lacked enough range of adjustment to bring the bottom of the scale in, and using D65 as a target, I had to let the mid-to-high areas of the range go more blue than I wanted to avoid green tint at the very top, which I find much more objectionable. Although this set does not track a tight grayscale, the picture I saw post calibration was surprisingly improved in ways that were striking and seemingly beyond what you'd expect of a simple grayscale adjustment. Depth and clarity somehow seemed noticeably better. Nevertheless, I've come to expect a lot more out of digital displays in this performance area.