The Toshiba DLP (HM/HMX) Owners Thread

[Victor Nowik]

This thread is for issues of interest to owners of the Toshiba DLP series.
For discussion of Configurations, Settings, Tweaks and Issues of all sorts.

My configuration: Toshiba 52HM84
HTPC (1.6GHZ P4) with MSI G4Ti4600 w/DVI out
going to a DVI to HDMI cable (from pchcables.com aprox $26)
and a MyHD HDTV tuner/recorder card with DVI daughter board

The DVI tuner output of the MyHD is awesome!!! I am getting some dropouts
which I am not too woried about as I have only tweaked with it for an evening.

I am interested in using my monitor with an HTPC. My thanks to member
remotepc who was the first to report that the 52HM84 works with the DVI
output of nvidia cards (and probably types as well).

I am using the MyHD HDtuner/recorder/DVD player card in my computer.
I have the version with the DVI daughter board. My DVI video card output
goes into the MYHD and the MyHD DVI output goes to the Toshiba. I see
my desktop with a window containing HD content or when I switch to HD
mode I see the tuner or DVD output from the MyHD full screen. The picture
quality on HD OTA reception is simply STUNNING. The quality on DVD playback
left me with tears of JOY. I am a very very very happy 52hm84 owner!!!!

I can see my desktop on the DLP but there is significant over-scan and the
mapping of pixels to mirrors dose not seem to be the ideal 1-1. I have played
with powerstrip a little and have been able to move the image a bit so I can
at least see part of the task-bar. I am interested in hearing from anyone who
has made advances in fine tuning the DVI timing parameters as well as any
other HTPC configuration info.

[varkus]

2 requests for current owners (as I'm still awaiting my HMX):

1) Does anyone know how to get to the Service Menu on the Toshiba HM series? I assume the code is the same for the HMXs...

2) Please post your pictures, too! Let's see some of those setups in action.

[mfowler70]

I'm going to look at the 52" HX later in the week, once my local dealer gets his shipment. If everything looks good and it passes the rainbow exam I may be bringing one home since I have a connection there (owners are the best ones) and should get a great deal.

So I'm very interested in following this thread.....and may become an active participant soon.

[GSOgymrat]

I initially bought a Samsung HLP5063 at Best Buy and then found out about the powerbuy. I returned the 5063 and bought the Samsung HLP5663 through the powerbuy. It was defective out of the box. I asked them to replace it with a Toshiba 52HM84 and it just arrived yesterday. I really sweated whether to stick with the Samsung or switch to the Toshiba and so far I am please with my decision to go with the Toshiba. I've only had the Toshiba a day but here are some observations comparing the two TVs:

- The Toshiba looks nicer sitting in my family room. It looks less like a big box and more sleek.
- The Toshiba starts much faster then the Samsung.
- The Samsung has more connections. Fortunately I don't need more connections but in the future I may need to buy a switch.
- The Toshiba seems quieter than the Samsung. Fan noise is almost inaudible.
- Out of the box HD picture quality is better on the Toshiba. Colors seem more natural. Picture is very detailed, clear and seems to look more 3-D.
- Out of the box SD picture quality is better on the Samsung. I have not had time to tweek the Toshiba but it shows every flaw in a SD signal. The "softer" picture of the Samsung is much more forgiving.
- X-Box looks great. I only played it for 30 minutes but so far no lag.

I'm sure I'll have more observations in a few days.

[videobruce]

GSOgymrat; where was the brightness set at OTB and did you have to reduce it because of gray blacks?
What was wrong with the 2nd Sammy? How did the exchange go? Did they pay for return shipping and the Toshiba shipping? Did you have to contact the trucking company or did they?

[Mike Lanzarotta]

I purchased a 52HM84, it should arrive at my sports bar tomorrow (Wed). It will be our first HD TV, to go along with our 16 SDs. I am hoping that the SD sports are not too bad, but can't wait until the HD football games start. Which actually is this Sat. USC vs Virginia Tech on ESPNHD.
I'll tell more when we get it set up.

[GSOgymrat]

Videobruce--
I have not had a chance to calibrate it yet-- everyone is watching the Olympics. The second Sammy had this bizarre problem where everything that should be black was bright red (see picture below). I let it run a few days the picture continued to degrade and then it finally would not turn on. TVA said they were going to have the old one picked up when they delivered the Toshiba. Overnite said they did not have instructions to pick up the old set and even called back to heaquarters to be sure. The Samsung is in it's box in my garage. I didn't pay for shipping on the Toshiba and I have no intention of paying for the Samsung to be returned.

[antongusa]

Did they charge you for any shipping cost?

[TH3_FRB]

I'd be happy to buy the Sammy off you for $100 plus shipping

Originally posted by GSOgymrat
Videobruce--
I have not had a chance to calibrate it yet-- everyone is watching the Olympics. The second Sammy had this bizarre problem where everything that should be black was bright red (see picture below). I let it run a few days the picture continued to degrade and then it finally would not turn on. TVA said they were going to have the old one picked up when they delivered the Toshiba. Overnite said they did not have instructions to pick up the old set and even called back to heaquarters to be sure. The Samsung is in it's box in my garage. I didn't pay for shipping on the Toshiba and I have no intention of paying for the Samsung to be returned.

[Vizcaya]

I have had my 52HM84 for a week now. I am extremely happy with the quality of this Set. I have a HD Tivo connected to it, using component video(My HDMI Port on the HD TIVO is dead), and the quality is awesome. I wish there were more connections to the TV. I really wish the HD Tivo had more output connections.

I did set the bulb to low power mode, and have lowered the brightness during late night viewing.

I have a quick question though. How do you enable the output audo ports on the 52HM84?
I am running the HD Tivo video out through the component video, and audio out to the Set, and due to the HD Tivo only having 1 set of audio output jacks, I cannot seem to send the Audio to my DVD-Recorder(The DVD recorder video is connected to the HD Tivo S-Video output).

What I tried is using the Audio output jacks on the 52HM84, and connect it to the DVD recorder. But I get no Audio.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong?


Thanks,
Vizcaya

[Victor Nowik]

>>the HD Tivo only having 1 set of audio output jacks, I cannot seem to send the Audio to my
>>DVD-Recorder(The DVD recorder video is connected to the HD Tivo S-Video output).

for simple audio connections you can piggyback. Go to your local radio shack
(or whatever) and get somthing like this:

http://store.pchcables.com/2rcafeto1rca1.html

to make two audio outputs out of one (on the hd-tivo)

[elitelight]

Just got my 52hM84 yesterday afternoon, and only had time to watch some DVDs. Comcast will come in tomorrow to setup the HD box. So far, the DVD quality is great through component outputs. I just have a couple questions. The 6ft component cable I have is over 3 years old, and pretty thin. Would I be able to get better quality picture with a thicker component cable or a shorter one?

If I upgrade to a DVI dvd player, would that also result in better PQ?

thanks

[Victor Nowik]

>> Would I be able to get better quality picture with a thicker component cable or a shorter one?

Unless the old cable is of really poor quality it will not make a visable
difference. Any reasonable quality shielded cable should work well. I
dont agree with those who have almost religious zeal for super expensive
"monster cable". It's a shielded piece of wire with fairly low bandwidth
requirements.

>>If I upgrade to a DVI dvd player, would that also result in better PQ?

A highly critical viewer on a really good DVD transfer would say YES.
If the DVD player dosent have an HDMI output you will
have to get a DVI to HDMI adapter and run seperate audio cables.

I prefer to use an HTPC for all my signal needs....but not everyone
wants to add the extra complexity.

[teamills]

Victor Nowik said " I can see my desktop on the DLP but there is significant over-scan and the
mapping of pixels to mirrors dose not seem to be the ideal 1-1. I have played
with powerstrip a little and have been able to move the image a bit so I can
at least see part of the task-bar. I am interested in hearing from anyone who
has made advances in fine tuning the DVI timing parameters as well as any
other HTPC configuration info."

----------------

That much overscan?! I am ready to pull the trigger, but this much overscan is worse than my CRT. One of my major requirements and reasons for the upgrade is to eliminate the overscan issue and use this as a HTPC monitor. Any luck cleaning this up a bit? Btw, I have a ATI x800 Pro card, any luck on these cards? Thanks much.

[Mike Lanzarotta]

Somebody was looking for this measurement recently. The base on the 52HM84 is smaller than the upper part of the TV.

The base measures 42 1/8" by 14 7/8". The overall width of the TV with speakers is 58", and the overall depth is 15 1/8", which is a couple of inches less than the Samsungs.

[tedoll78]

Thank goodness it works!

Still, it seems a bit grainy/hyper-sharp. Does that make sense?
Then again, it's just a digital/non-HD Dish Network connection via coaxial cable. (I'm not sure of the model number of the satellite box). There's an s-video outlet on the back of it, but I couldn't get it to work properly. When I unplugged the coaxial cable from the TV, it didn't work. Am I doing something wrong?

Progressive scan Gamecube, connected via component, looks wonderful. I'll be playing all of my games again, just to enjoy the beauty. (hehe.. I almost got a bit dizzy while playing F-Zero.. lol..)

Has anyone calibrated theirs yet? Any good settings? Does AVIA make that big a difference? I'm guessing my way through the video settings menu, but to no great success. If I could get my Dish Network feed to look half as crisp as the "Volume" meter, I'd be so pleased..

[Victor Nowik]

Originally posted by teamills
Victor Nowik said " I can see my desktop on the DLP but there is significant over-scan and the
mapping of pixels to mirrors dose not seem to be the ideal 1-1. I have played
with powerstrip a little and have been able to move the image a bit so I can
at least see part of the task-bar. I am interested in hearing from anyone who
has made advances in fine tuning the DVI timing parameters as well as any
other HTPC configuration info."

----------------

That much overscan?! I am ready to pull the trigger, but this much overscan is worse than my CRT. One of my major requirements and reasons for the upgrade is to eliminate the overscan issue and use this as a HTPC monitor. Any luck cleaning this up a bit? Btw, I have a ATI x800 Pro card, any luck on these cards? Thanks much.

Use as a monitor is a priority for me too...but since I have had it for only
three days and my wife loves watching the Olympics... not much time for
tweaking yet...Be advised that along with my manual came an extra sheet
saying that the monitor is not intended for use as a PC monitor...This
was a little disapointing....but I am still confident that with some tweaking
it can be made to work (much like the case with the Samsung DLP's) By
reading other threads about other people finding the right combination of
timing information to make it happen for various other displays
I feel it's just a matter of time. stay tuned.

[Neo42]

Hello all..

I've had my 52HM84 since Saturday and I'm enjoying it.

Now, I want to take a big step and do what the owners manual says not to do (for what reason, can anyone tell me?): Hook up HTPC

Basically, my PC will have an HDTV Wonder and Radeon 9600XT. I have purchased a DVI/HDMI cable. I'm not going to blow up the Toshi by plugging the radeon into it am I?

I have heard some problems about compatibility between a PC output and a TV/monitor input having to do with scaling problems, sync problems, etc. I am anticipating that I will need to tweak the outgoing video signal if this is going to work at all.

So can anyone give me any advice?

Much appreciated!

[videobruce]

Basically, my PC will have an HDTV Wonder and Radeon 9600XT. I have purchased a DVI/HDMI cable. I'm not going to blow up the Toshi by plugging the radeon into it am I?

NO, but the Toshiba Police will hunt you down and force you to watch I Love Lucy reruns..........

Read the first post here.

[Victor Nowik]

Originally posted by Neo42
Hello all..

I've had my 52HM84 since Saturday and I'm enjoying it.

Now, I want to take a big step and do what the owners manual says not to do (for what reason, can anyone tell me?): Hook up HTPC

Basically, my PC will have an HDTV Wonder and Radeon 9600XT. I have purchased a DVI/HDMI cable. I'm not going to blow up the Toshi by plugging the radeon into it am I?

I have heard some problems about compatibility between a PC output and a TV/monitor input having to do with scaling problems, sync problems, etc. I am anticipating that I will need to tweak the outgoing video signal if this is going to work at all.

So can anyone give me any advice?

Much appreciated!

I hooked my htpc on the first day. On my (nvidia) card the DVI output
was not active if the analog VGA was connected but this depends on the
mode the drivers expect you to use the DVI port (clone or dual monitor).
I found that at boot the Toshiba will sink to the 640x480 initial resolution
but the overscan will be significant. My first step was to boot on a standard
analog vga monitor and set it for 1280x720, power down pull out the vga
and plug in the DVI and reboot. I expect you will at least see desktop. You
will have trouble seeing the task bar (because of overscan) and the problem
with powerstrip is that once it's installed it is activated from the system tray.
You will have to avtivate it w/o seeing the cursor. The latest version of
powerstrip has a lot of preset resolutions for DLP and LCOS monitors. I
would try these first. Powerstrip also allows you to tweak the actual
timing parameters interavtively. Some of these will cause you to loose
picture. learn the powerstrip hot-key that restores the default frequencies.
By playing with the front porch/back-porch setting I was able to get most
of the taskbar displayed. Powerstrip will remember this and the next time
you boot you will start from there.

This is all I have learned from a single short session. I encourage you to go
ahead and experiment. The more of us working the sooner the solution. I will
(and encourage you) to search these forms for information on how others
have achieved 1-1 pixel mapping. You will know you are there when you
see razor sharp non-grainy characters. The (non 1to1) effect looks exactly the
same as setting your laptop resolution to a resolution different from it's
native resolution. Please share your results.

[elitelight]

Hi

Is it me or does this happen to other people. I just can't find a way from my remote to control the contrast, sharpness, color, and brightness for different picture mode. The 52HM84 menu says go to picture mode, select on either sports, standard, preference, and press > key, then you'd be able to see the screen to adjust the individual settings, but when I did that, nothing happened on the screen. Did I do anything wrong? Can anyone provide a detailed instruction for me?

thanks!!

[videobruce]

Not being use to Toshiba sets it took me 10 minutes to figure out the remote. If I remember correctly you don't press the center button, you press ther button lower left of that semi-joystick control to get to the picture settings.

Hope that made sense

[ad10ad]

Originally posted by elitelight
Hi

Is it me or does this happen to other people. I just can't find a way from my remote to control the contrast, sharpness, color, and brightness for different picture mode. The 52HM84 menu says go to picture mode, select on either sports, standard, preference, and press > key, then you'd be able to see the screen to adjust the individual settings, but when I did that, nothing happened on the screen. Did I do anything wrong? Can anyone provide a detailed instruction for me?

thanks!!

The way I read the manual, you cannot adjust the sports or standard mode settings, only preference mode -- i.e., you can only have one custom setting, which is saved as the "preference" setting.

[GSOgymrat]

Changing the settings is not very intuitive. You have to remember to press the "enter" key, which is not the center key. Go to "Picture" on the menu and you can adjust color, contrast, etc. You then must scroll down and save the setting. Your changes will be saved under the "preference" setting. You can adjust the "preference" setting for each input.

[Neo42]

I have just learned that a newer set of Catalyst drivers for my 9600XT have built in HDTV timing settings for the HDTV output. Let's cross our fingers that will give me a good start on eliminating overscan.

For anyone who has their 52hm84 connected to PC via HDMI-to-DVI cable.. What type of monitor do you have XP setup to be displaying on? I'm wondering if there are any 3rd party drivers for "monitors" especially designed in consideration for DVI/HDMI TV display.

[phoenxhwk]

Yeah stupid center button had me scratching my head for a little while last night (I just got a 52HM84 yesterday). The de-interlacer doesn't seem to be all that good. I hooked up my dvd player through composite cables and saw artifacts everywhere. Component cables should be landing today, so we'll see what difference it makes.

[elitelight]

Thanks for the help. Using the enter key got everything going. Watched the ESPN football game and CSI on HD last night through component cable, it looked great. The football game looked stunning. I just ordered a DVI-HDMI cable, and will try that and see if it proves any quality. One thing I noticed was that there's a little red tune on people's faces, especially on the nose tips and cheek bones when I was watching CSI. I've tried to set diff. settings, but didn't seem to help. Has anyone else noticed this?

DVD quality is good, but I dont know how good it could have been since I haven't seen any other setup. I think the HD programs on TV looked better than DVD. Austin powers and Crimson Tide on Startz, and Cinemax looked better than my DVD outputs. Maybe I just need a better DVD player.

[phoenxhwk]

Originally posted by elitelight

DVD quality is good, but I dont know how good it could have been since I haven't seen any other setup. I think the HD programs on TV looked better than DVD. Austin powers and Crimson Tide on Startz, and Cinemax looked better than my DVD outputs. Maybe I just need a better DVD player.

HDTV is almost always going to look better than DVD. It's higher resolution - most HDTV programs are 720 or 1080, while DVD is only 480. It's time for HDDVD or something

As an aside, I'm very impressed with the SD picture quality. I was expecting it to look like garbage from some of the posts I've read. Fortunately it wasn't all that bad at all. Definitely watchable. Stretching the 4:3 picture to 16:9 also looked pretty good, though you could sometimes tell that it was stretched more at the edge (the lines on the football field were a dead giveaway).

[varkus]

Originally posted by elitelight
One thing I noticed was that there's a little red tune on people's faces, especially on the nose tips and cheek bones when I was watching CSI. I've tried to set diff. settings, but didn't seem to help. Has anyone else noticed this?

I've seen some reports (and my experience looking at the 52HM84 in a BB would seem to echo this), that the Toshibas have a bit of an overly-red setting on them out of the box.

This could be actual "red-push"...but it might also just be the color tuning. What color level do you have the set on - the options are "Cool", "Medium", and "Warm". If it's on warm (which emphasize red)...you might be able to correct it by just changing it to "Medium" (no color emphasis) or "Cool" (emphasizes blues).

Anyone have the actual contrast/sharpness/color/tint/etc. settings for their TV...perhaps after a quick run-through with Avia or DVE?

[phoenxhwk]

Originally posted by varkus
I've seen some reports (and my experience looking at the 52HM84 in a BB would seem to echo this), that the Toshibas have a bit of an overly-red setting on them out of the box.

This could be actual "red-push"...but it might also just be the color tuning. What color level do you have the set on - the options are "Cool", "Medium", and "Warm". If it's on warm (which emphasize red)...you might be able to correct it by just changing it to "Medium" (no color emphasis) or "Cool" (emphasizes blues).

Anyone have the actual contrast/sharpness/color/tint/etc. settings for their TV...perhaps after a quick run-through with Avia or DVE?

Yeah I second this request.

Has anyone found out how to access the hardcore menus?