Toshiba Regza 37AV615DB Many of you will no doubt throw up your hands in horror at the thought of buying a mere ‘HD Ready’ television, rather than a ‘Full HD’ model. However, the fact of the matter is that most owners of HD televisions still spend most of their time watching ordinary SD television programmes or DVDs, so it doesn’t make a huge …
Current games consoles run at native 720p (for most games anyway), so this could be a good choice for those with a PS3 or Xbox 360.
If you play in 1080i or 1080p it is just upscaling from 720p (which you can force either to do) but it really doesn't make a difference. There are the odd 1080p native games though such as a few odd PSN titles and the new Ghostbusters game...
I tried forcing Fifa 2009 at 1080 on a 32" HDTV and it made the game run choppy.
Reg Hardware news said a while back that Toshiba was working on technology to equalise sound volume between TV and adverts, so does this model have such a feature? (Would be handy for DVDs too: on my TV's speakers movie DVDs are about half as loud as TV at the same volume setting. breaks your ears if you forget to turn the volume down when you switch sources)
"Freeview channels displayed correctly, but the signal from our Sky+ box was initially displayed at its standard 576p resolution, which left it with big black borders on either side of the image. We were able to correct this easily enough by using the ‘4:3 Stretch’ option within the on-screen menu. "
Actually it sounds very much like it was correct in the first place.
I've just bought the 32" version of this set from that well known online book store for £299. At that price, it's negative points become less important, especially if you just want a "normal" telly (or in my case have to unexpectedly replace one). The picture is good enough and the built in freeview is quick and responsive.
I have had 2 of them with in a month both had same problem, sound would go off when watching a channel and you would get a high pitch noise would come from tv, then all tv etc would lock up, only way to fix it was to unplug it from mains.
apart from that its a good starter tv, has almost all you want.
I am now looking for a different make of tv, as the toshiba have all been sent back and a full refund given.
"Freeview channels displayed correctly, but the signal from our Sky+ box was initially displayed at its standard 576p resolution, which left it with big black borders on either side of the image."
For a start, if it's a standard Sky+ (not HD) box, it'll be 576i not 576p.
Secondly, 576 is the number of vertical, not horizontal pixels, so that wouldn't affect black bars on the sides of the image anyway.
Thirdly, the SD resolution doesn't tell you the aspect ratio in itself. An SD PAL signal is usually encoded as 720 x 576 but the signal contains an Active Format Descriptor (AFD) which tells the TV how to present the video on screen. So basically a 16:9 widescreen programme in SD PAL may have the same 720 pixel horizontal resolution as a 4:3 programme - it's just that the pixels are effectively wider in the widescreen version.
So marksi is right. If the TV puts black bars either side of the image, it's doing it so that you can enjoy your favourite TV characters without fat heads.
Marksi, thefutureboy, Steve Evans, no you are all wrong, you must stretch the picture to take up the whole screen otherwise you have wasted money on getting the widescreen TV. Just like before widescreen TVs were available people were correctly complaining that when a film was broadcast in letterbox it was a rip off as half the picture was missing.
It must be that way, as just about everyone I know who has a widescreen TV has it set to stretch 4:3, and say I'm talking rubbish if I try to get them to change it. We all must be wrong.
Using stretch mode on a 4:3 signal only indicates the reviewer has no clue when it comes to reality. Aspect ratio should be preserved so that the picture has stuff in it with the same shape as it had when it was recorded.
Also I find the idea of any display with a 768 pixel vertical resolution totally stupid. If you are not going to make the display 1080, at least make it 720, not 768. Having to scale all signals rather than just some signals is just plain idiotic. Also 1080 scales much nicer to 720 than it does to 768, and 720 doesn't scale at all nicely to 768. In the end there is no way to get a good picture quality from any signal on a 1366x768 display. Yet for some reason the vast majority of low end cheap HDTVs use exactly that.
No way does crap like that deserve a 75% when you can often find proper TVs for a similar price.
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