Pros: Superb black levels; Vibrant colours; 100Hz; Full HD panel; Abundance of ports
Cons: Users need to tweak colour settings to get the most out of this screen
Product rating:
"46-inch Tosh HDTV Well-Worth The Look"
By Mendelson Tiu | Published:29/10/2008
The new 46-inch LCD TV from Toshiba delivers excellent picture quality, good black levels, and has quite a number of ports for added connectivity. It is well-worth looking at if you want a monstrous screen to satisfy your movie or gaming needs.
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The Toshiba Regza 46XV500A comes packed with features which includes a Full HD panel, 100Hz, DynaLight for deep blacks, CineSpeed for high speed response, an Ambient Light Sensor that automatically adjusts the contrast, and a Meta Brain Pro that ‘enhances' your viewing experience.
The 46XV500A sports a piano black bezel with a metallic silver-grey lining found at the edge of the screen. There are no control buttons up front; instead Toshiba has placed the Power, Channel up and down, Menu, and Input select buttons on the right side of the screen behind the bezel. In addition, a headphone jack, a composite port with RCA audio jacks, an S-Video port, and an HDMI port are located below the control buttons for easy device connection.
The rear of the unit hosts two HDMI ports, a component port with RCA audio jacks, a D-sub port, two sets of composite with RCA audio jacks (In and Out), as well as output for digital audio (optical and coaxial).
Outstanding Pros: Ports;view angle;shows detail in shadows and dark areas of picture;adjusts for room light or lack of;fast ,sharp action.
Cons: bulky,deeper than most.
I only have the 37" 37XV500A.Purchased in early September 08 after looking at everything.Was absolutely blown away by this LCD.Only other thing that came close was a Sharp Aquos.
First things first.I can't comment on the tuner because I'm remote. Only decent service is by sattelite.So why do I have a full HD TV? ? ? Answer! I have no hope of ever receiving a HD signal. So I upscale the SD service from sattelite.This is from a STRONG SRT 4653X receiver with component outputs which gives me 1080i Max. I know of no receiver with HDMI.To get 1080p I am installing a Yamaha RX-V 863 AV receiver, it has HDMI outputs and 9 channel sound as well as 2 sub outputs.
For this review I will be only commenting on TV reception with the Strong receiver at 1080i and sound from TV only or from a 140w 5.1 surround system (always on this). On Movies it will be through a Toshiba XE1 either upscaled DVD or HD-DVD through HDMI Cat 2 at 1080p.(Also have a Sharp VC-H710 VCR but only composite outputs so upscaling is limited without Yamaha). All equipment is powered through a battery backed UPS and cannot stress this enough.All current TV and video equipment are more like computers than ever before and need to be protected as such (not just surge protection).Getting full stable power makes a real difference.
The Toshiba XV500A is astounding . Every day for three months I have switched on and it knocks me over!Only thing I changed in settings was to Dynamic . Sound from the TV speakers is OK,but once you use surround there s no going back.Picture is excellent, either studio,outdoor,sport or rock concert.Shows detail in shadows or unlit areas at concerts etc.Action and sport are incredible.Crisp action.I have never seen a better Test Cricket broadcast picture even in the best electonics showroom. . .Alright its only 37", but it fills the whole 37",no side bars.What does that make the 46"!
Movies. . .Upscaled DVD is brilliant ,but thats more to do with the player(Bluray still can't do this properly).You can't upscale sound though and DVD sound was never great(better than MP3 though).The Toshiba XV500A handled the upscaled video flawlessly.Everything from Mr & Mrs Smith;Oceans 12;Run Lola Run;Amelie;Porco Rosso to A/C D/C Family Jewels and Bob Dylan MTV Unplugged.
But if you want real sound and picture its got to be a high definition disk.The Hunt For Red October;V For Vendetta;Dukes of Hazzard;Underworld;Underworld Evolution and Alice Cooper Live at Montreux are a cross-section of what has been experienced.The Toshiba XV500A video output was the equal of the thumping sound and special effects.
If there is any improvement on this it could only be fractions of a percent.I will need to go no further than a Toshiba 37XV500A, but maybe a 42 or 46XV500A. They can be wall mounted , but are a bit deep and bulky to do it justice. HDMI certainly solves the cable problem that makes wall mounting a drawback.
Other things worth pointing to are 5 year warranty,its wide viewing angle and computer porting through 15 pin plug or HDMI.
I'm happy I waited for the XV500A ,everything else I have seen now seems so disappointing.
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