fairly good picture(when it works)

no lifespan

This tv is junk.spent $500.00 to have convergence ciruit repaired,8 months later fried again,called tv repair,they tell me guns are probably going bad and heating up to fry the convergence ciruit.I will probably just throw this out the window.I will definitly never own another toshiba television,read other horror stories about these tv's on other websites

Similar Products Used:

toshiba SD-3960 DVD player

4 x 3 screen ideal for 95% of TV viewing
Outstanding 1080i format for HD viewing

Cannot expand a 4x3 image within 1080i format to fill screen
Contrast setting is set full on delivery

I wanted a family room TV so 43" is more than adequate for typical viewing distances of 8-10 feet. I considered Hitachi as they have always been a favorite TV brand for quality and reliability, but their comparable model did not have true 1080i (only had 1000 lines total) and if you watched a DVD in super widescreen, it showed gray bars above and below the 16x9 image, leaving black bars above and below the picture - horrible! Mitsubishi models are all 16x9 and most of our program material is 4x3.

The first thing I did upon delivery was turn down the contrast from the max setting of 100 to about 42. This is perfectly sufficient for our well lit room. The Avia Guide to home theater DVD did not require much change from this setting.

The TV has worked extremely well in the last 6 months, the primary source being Dish Network Satellite (model 6000). Convergence stays relatively stable, requiring only a minor tweak every other month.

Internal sound quality surpisingly good for those occasions when you don't want to power up the whole HT system. The Dish Network Model 6000 receiver has dual RCA outputs - 1 to the TV, the other to the HT Receiver.

HD mode is superb on Hi Def broadcasts - especially sports on CBS (college football and the US Open Tennis). However if the source is not Hi Def, but is upsampled anyway, you get a 4x3 image in the middle of the 16x9 slice - I have not found a way to expand this image to full screen.

The line doubler works well - even VHS tapes recorded in Extended Play are acceptable.

Overall, it was the best buy out there for a 4x3 TV of the size we were looking at.

Similar Products Used:

Hitachi
Mitsubishi