5 inputs (2 S-Video, 1 front A/V, 2 HD), 2 outputs, HD-Ready, Built-in Subwoofer.

The sound volume fluctuates a bit.

A very good TV. It has closed captioning, PIP, and precise adjustable picture. The sound on this baby is SUPERB! If you like good sound, but do not want two monuments (loudspeakers) in your living room, this is the TV for you. It has a virtual-surround mode and a built-in subwoofer. The dialogue is a little quiet, and the music is a little loud, but if you get some good audio cables, this will not happen as much.

The quality of the video and the audio are excellent

The default settings are set where the contrast is 100%, and easy adjust will be necessary.

I've spent many hours researching 36" televisions, and found out that CN36x81 is the best on the market for the money. Local stores are running out, with a higher price than on the Internet. Depending on your trustworthiness with the internet, I recommend Onecall.com, they have the best prices on the net. With no sales taxes in Orgeon, you can't go wrong.. Happy viewing, Thanks for Toshiba

Very good picture with progressive scan DVD

everything else

I've had this monstrosity for about one month.

What a freakin' pig!

Yes, the progressive scan DVD picture (via progressive component) looks very good. But that's it. (like everyone else it seems, I too picked up the 5109 player to go with the X81... I must admit, I do like the 5109)

Back to the X81:

Analog Cable looks like crap (washed out and sandy)
Digital cable looks like crap
VHS... I'm still searching for an expletive.
Channel changing takes way too long
Input selection (ANT1, Color Stream, etc) takes way too long
Cheaply built: the front access door is already broken
Inability to save multiple setups: really dumb
Sound sucks... sound enhancement options suck even worse
Remote: I don't completely hate it

Like others herein, I too spent time attempting to cal this pig with the VE video that came with the 5109. I saw many of the same artifacts that others have observed (bending vertical lines, etc). I didn't just fire it up (the X81) and say "hey that picture really sucks". I invested some serious time in spoon fed calibration... then I said "hey that picture really sucks".

Anyone want to buy a CN36X81 for cheap? Seriously.

Why didn't I buy the Sony Wega? What was I thinking?

Jeeeez, you'd think a >$1500 TV would be watchable!@?&!

Live and learn I guess. I'm gonna go listen to my 2-channel audio only system now.

If the scoring range allowed: Value: -5 Overall: -5

Can look superficially impressive with the best DVD sources

Everything else:
Incredibly awkward source switching arrangement.
A single picture adjustment memory
See more below

I hate this television set. Someone above called it a pig and they were exactly correct.

The picture is simply not acceptable. It is fatiguing, something I did not anticipate and no amount of adjustment corrects this. Sun or bright light on faces appear oddly incorrect---sort of blaring, especially on DirecTV.

This set actually produces less detail than our dying 1988
27" Sony Trinitron. This is apparent on facial shadows and features. It was clearly WAY out of calibration from the store. I was able to correct a massive bluish cast simply by adjusting by eye some parameters in the service menu. But I cannot correct for what I would call serious geometry problems. Hour glass distortion and upward bowing of horizontal lines near the bottom of the screen. I've been able to improve it some, but this level of distortion is simply unacceptable in a 2 grand idiot box.

Forget about such trivial issues as weight and the remote. It is simply impossible to adjust the picture on this for an enjoyable image. I find myself constantly fiddling and fatigued after about 10 minutes viewing. Maybe an ISF cal would fix it, but forget it. Toshiba costumer support blows and the service manual is shockingly limited.

Switching between sources requires endless re-adjustment. A colossal headache.

Last night I had this set and the old Sony going simultaneously. Watching "True Lies", I found myself constantly returning to the relatively diminutive Sony screen. It just looks more correct and inviting through composite inputs. (Tosh is on component inputs) If you're a golden ear and can't stand digititis on CD, for example, you'll understand the grating effect this Tosh has on one's nerves.

It is going back next week with a 200 buck re-stocking penalty. I may have another look at the Panny Taus or Sony
XBR series and get a REAL television set.

A complete and horrifying dud! Beware.

Finally---If you are discerning and hypercritical, buy from a dealer who is set up to cater to your needs. I talked to one dealer who does an ISF cal before it leaves the store. This is a must, IMO. If you're an Audiophile and new to video at this level, prepare to be as picky about images as you are about audio and find a dealer who appreciates this.
Pay extra if necessary. My dealer thinks I'm nuts and will not get anymore of my business. Many of these places typically sell to folks who tend to think any picture looks fantastic and will simply not be prepared for your level of discrimination. Shop carefully and take your time!

Similar Products Used:

None

HDTV capable,PICTURE,NO LINES,AND HOW IT SOUNDS FOR YOUR TYPICAL TV SPEAKER SYSTEM,COLORS ETC.

Wish it looked like the SONY XBR250,if you want to call any of these weaknesses.

Having been a sony/panasonic tv fan i must say Toshiba has the best 36"tube tv.Like others that have written in,i've got to say i too was going to buy the sony xbr250 until i looked at "THE LINES"!on the xbr.Just could not justify the money and see lines,all though i must admit it was a tough choice as the physical appearance of the sony[super,super flat screen]and stylish [futuristic]cabinet are a good sell.MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL is UNREAL.For the money you've got to give credit when credit is due,and the Tosh has it hands down.

Similar Products Used:

Mitsubishi 40"tube

Line douler eliminates scan lines. Loads of programmable features for tweeking the picture. Great Picture in both broadcast and DVD.

Clarity sometimes questionable on cable.

I was on my way to the local Tweeter to purchase the Sony 36XBR250. The store manager was curious to my choice of television and asked if I would mind looking at the Toshiba. I was getting either set for the same price, and the points on both products are the same so cost was not an issue to me. Wacthing a DVD on the Sony and the Toshiba side by side, the scan lines were extremely evident on the Sony, and non existant on the Toshiba.
Line scans was the reason I chose the Sony in the 1st place, of all of the other TV's I looked at the Sony was the best. I couldn't live with myslef if I took the Sony knowing those lines were there, so I decided to take the Toshiba.
Out of the box the set looks great. I reflects the ambient light more than the Sony did which means I have to darken my room more. The Movies from both VCR and DVD look crisp and clean. Broadcast through cable is fine on 85% of the channels I have. The set appears to have a fuzzy look to all cable channels though, and I do not want to increase the sharpness. This could also be because I have only had the set for 3 days, and my eyes are used to the older one.
Also do notice some motion artifacts, but only beacuse I am being extremely critical of this set right now. I would still prefer artifacts to scan lines any day.
Bottom line, I am still in the eveluation mode with this set. I have 30 days with which I can return this and get the Sony, but the more I watch this, the less I want the Sony.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 36XBR250 (was going to buy)

Great picture. Lots of hook-up connections. Easy menus.

All I know is what I see...and what I see I really like. As the new centerpiece of my home theater I am not disappointed. I can't get over how good the picture is...such an improvement over previous sets owned. Sound is good too. DVD never looked better. Digital cable channels are very clear. It was easy to hookup to all my auxiliaries (and I'm not very good at this) with plenty of hookups for DVD, LD, VCR, cable box, and receiver. I tried to haggle the price down a little at the Good Guys, but had little success as they said they couldn't hardly budge on this particular set. They were the only local merchant who sells this set. I had to research online to get some price quotes elsewhere and when I showed them the results, they finally came down in price.

PRECISE color!, great sound, loads of inputs, price

Heavy as hell!, slow tuning(but that's VERY easy to fix)

I've had this set for more than a year now. I've been nothing but happy with it. The Sony looks nice in the showroom, but the picture cannot come close in comparison to the 36X81. Some people here have complained that the settings were all off right out of the box. Well DUH! What did you expect? If you've got about 30 minutes and the "Audio Essensials" DVD, you can fix everything that needs to be done short of hiring someone to do the real adjustments(I'll get that done once I move). Anyway, I've got this hooked up to the SD-5109, and when I'm watching DVD's, it is as close to film quality as anything I've seen. EVERYONE I've had over to watch movies have been blown away(not to mention jealous). The tuning from one TV station to another, or from one imput to another is slow, but you can get around the television tuning problem by going through your VCR for your cable stations. Then your tuning will be just as fast as your VCR will tune. The PIP is cool and has almost too many options. The sound is great for a TV sound system, but I don't use it anymore since I got my Marantz SR-19. Now all of my sounds come through my surround system. The TV is a tank, coming in at about 240 lbs. but once you get it where you want it, what does it matter WHAT it weighs? I've read most of the reviews here, and it sucks that some people gotten lemons, but I would have to say that most of the problems they were experiencing were minor and quite easily fixed. As for me, I absolutely love this set.

Similar Products Used:

Mitzubishi, Sony

Beautiful picture, good line-doubling, abundant inputs and outputs, great sound system, and progressive scanning (no scan lines!).

No anamorphic compression, can't display true 1080i resolution, but it accepts 1080i inputs and displays as many lines as it can (about 800).

I bought a Toshiba CN36X81 a few weeks ago, and after toying with it
for a while, I have finally settled down and decided to keep it. Since
I know I was looking for a review of this set for a while, I decided to
write one for all of you prospective buyers. The review is organized
in a chronological order.

In-Store Experience:
I heard about this set before it became available from the nearby
Tweeter in Massachusets, so I was pretty much set on buying it before I
even saw it. However, I wanted to see it to make sure it was all it
had been hyped up to be. When I got to the store, I must say I was
disappointed at first. I was with some friends, and the Sony XBR250
looks like a much more impressive unit. I mean, the silver case and
the flat screen are very exciting, while the Toshiba looks like any
other TV. After inspecting them both for a while, it seemed that there
was a trade-off for each. For the Sony, the scan lines were pretty
visible, but the set was obviously very sharp. On the newscasts and
other TV broadcasts that we were watching, you could see noticible
flicker on the text presented onscreen. This is the case with all
standard TVs, as the interlaced format causes flicker of white-on-black
text almost by definition, especially at the horizontal borders.
Turning the contrast down to a reasonable level alleviated some of the
flicker and scan lines, but they were still visible from about 8 feet.
The Toshiba, on the other hand, was doing line-doubling and produced a
very stable image, with no visible scan lines, but it also presented a
bunch of motion artifacts. These became more obvious as we watched
longer. Turning the contrast and sharpness down fixed this somewhat,
but not entirely. While watching DVDs, the difference between the two
was almost unnoticible, except that the Sony does anamorphic
compression while the Tosh does not. Eventually, I decided to get the
Tosh because the scan lines and flicker on the Sony bothered me more
than the motion artifacts on the Tosh.

Out-of-Box Experience:
When I got the TV, the contrast, brightness, and sharpness were set
really high (as usual). I didn't get a chance to hear the TV in the
store, mostly because i use an amp at home and have a seperate center
channel speaker, but back at my house the sound was amazing. I mean,
it was clear, loud, and really very pleasing. The bass was turned up
too high, however, and although it was impressive how much bass the set
could generate, it was not practical. Anyway, I turned the contrast
down to about 30, the brightness down to about 40, and the sharpness
down to 0.

Serious TV Watching Experience:
The first thing i noticed after watching the TV for a little while at
home was that the motion artifacts I had noticed so clearly in the
store were almost non-existant on my set. I think this is because I
turned down the contrast, brightness, and sharpness to normal levels
(30, 40, and 0, respectively), but I can't be sure. Either way, it was
definately a good thing. I also realized that I must calibrate the set
starting from "Theater" mode, because otherwise the velocity scan
modulation messes with the image. The color temperature was a little
warm for me, so i set it to normal and finally settled on a contrast of
30, a brightness of 40, and a sharpness of 30 (my room has a lot of
ambient light). When I started from "Normal" mode, the settings were
lower -- I used 'cool' color temperature, contrast of 30, brightness of
35, and sharpness of 0. The picture looks beautiful, even on the
crappy Cox Cable signal, and it really is a joy not to have to see the
scan lines all the time. Watching DVDs is great. I lent out my copy
of VE, so i haven't had a chance to fully calibrate the set, but I
think the settings I have now are pretty good. The only problem I have
is that there is no anamorphic compression. Here is how I plan on
dealing with that: someday, I will buy a set-top HDTV box and a
progressive-scan DVD player. When that day comes, I will go into the
service menu and change the screen height to anamorphic-size. Then I
will leave it that way and never go back. I dont like messing with the
service menu every time i watch a widescreen dvd, so i usually either
watch pan&scan or letterbox right now. Both look really nice, so I'm
not too upset about it. The other thing I was really happy about is
the abiliity to use the set as a center speaker, since mine crapped out
earlier this week. The pre-amp output from my Yamaha reciever feeds
into the Tosh set, and the fixed-level outputs from the Tosh go into
the Yamaha. I have my front and rear speakers hooked up through the
speaker outs on the Yamaha, and the center pre-amp out going into the
TV. It sounds great. The Tosh is definately an adequate replacement
for a mid-price center speaker, and it will be fine for a total-speaker
replacement if i use the set in my bedroom without my HT setup.

Recommendations:
If you can wait a year, wait. The HDTV sets will be better and cheaper
next year. If you can't wait, it depends on your price range and
target screen size. For a 32" set I would go with the Panasonic XF
series (progressive-scan). For a 36" set I would go with the Toshiba
if you are looking sub-$2000, the Hitachi for around $2500, and
probably the Panasonic for between those two prices. I couldn't afford
more than 2K, so i went with the Tosh. I am happy with my choice over
the XBR250, especially since I know that set will never look any better
than it does now (assuming a good DVD source), while my Tosh set will
DEFINATLY look better with a progressive or 1080i source. The only
reason to get the Panasonic or Hitachi sets is the anamorphic
compression and the SVGA input. The Proscan/RCA HDTV-36" doesn't use a
line doubler, which is probably a good thing, but does have progressive
capabilities and an SVGA input, but no anamorphic compression. Some
people would rather watch NTSC with scan lines than motion artifacts.
Like I said, I rarely notice a motion artifact, but I would prefer them
over scan lines anyway.


So I hope this helps some people make a decision. You can reply if you
have any questions, or you can also reply if you have a different
opinion/review/etc.

I know I will get the following questions, so I'll address them here:
(1) If you feed in a 16:9 1080i source, the set will not display it
properly. (a) it doesn't have enough resolution, and (b) it can't
display 16:9 natively. However, it does accept this as a native source
and will try to display it the best it can. That means fitting 1080
lines into 880 lines on the screen, 1920 pixels into about 1200 pixels,
and stretching the image to fit the screen. If you feed in a 4:3 1080i
source, it will still not have the full resolution, but it will scan in
1080i mode and display the signal as best it can in 1080i glory. Like
i said, the way i plan to deal with this is changing the screen height
in the service menu. Then the 1080i will have even less resolution
(1080 lines into about 600 lines), but it will display in the right
proportion. Another solution will be to buy a set-top box that does
16:9 to 4:3 letterboxing, changing a 1080i signal into a 480p signal .
This is still at least twice as much resolution as you will get with
any non-hdtv set.
(2) the Y/Pr/Pb inputs on the back of the set accept 480i signals as
well as 480p and 1080i signals. I think it does line-doubling on all
480i inputs, regardless of which line (RCA, S-VIDEO, RF, Y/Pr/Pb) you
connect it to. I dont know whether they accept 720p signals; the
website is ambiguous.
(3) the remote sucks. it's basically unusable for anythign except the
TV because it doesn't even have a pause button for DVD/VCR
(4) you can only save one group of settings, and i dont know whether
the line levels of the component inputs are different from those on the
s-video lines. you can calibrate the set (ISF) to equilize the inputs,
but i havne't done that yet.

Happy shopping, and let me know what you think. I think this is the
set to buy if you have $2000 bucks ($1700 on the internet).

Similar Products Used:

Sony 36" XBR250 (briefly), 1995 XBR 53" Projection TV

This note is addressed towards Jacob's informative review of the CN36X81.

I have been looking at 36" TV's for the last month for an upstairs gameroom. First, I bought a Toshiba CN36Z71 which is the identical TV (FST Perfect) as the CN36X81 minus the HD compabability and internal line doubler. The first set had noticeble geometry problems. On ESPN2 when the scores scroll across the bottom of the screen, they curved slightly upward at the bottom right of the screen. The top left of the picture was about 1/4" lower than the top right (really evident when you pull a DSS menu screen up). A tech came to the house and put a grid line on the screen (similar to the VE DVD) and the geomeotry was terrible. I got a second set and it had the same problem. My 6 yr old Sony 32" XBR is dead accurate so I was disturbed by this problem.

I went back to the showroom to get another set and was looking at a CN36X81 and it had the same problem as the CN36Z71, albeit not as bad. This upward curvature in the lower right is really evident with a letterbox movie. I just couldn't spend $1800 on a tube and have geometry errors. I wound up buying the Sony 36XBR250 instead albeit without the line doubling. I'm curious if your set has the geometry flaws that I'm describing. Please advise.

Thanks.

Ed