Official Toshiba HL67 series thread

[tomanystraydogs]

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User settings provided by various members of AVS Forum.

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42" Spec Sheet MSRP $1399.99

37" Spec Sheet MSRP $1199.99

32" Spec Sheet MSRP $999.99

26" Spec Sheet not available yet MSRP $799.99

20" Spec Sheet MSRP $499.99

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Owners Manual

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Some key features from the 42" specs:

ATSC/NTSC/QAM Digital Tuner

1366 x 768

Accepts 1080P input

HDMI Lip Sync Support

Native Mode and 4:3 HD Mode

Game Mode

See spec sheets for more

** CLICK HERE to read avsforum member reviews of the 42HL67.

[mikelets456]

Well I was able to get the directv remote to work by holding mute-select, then 91 then 1 and volume +, then I hit channel up until the numeric volume status bar was on the screen. I saved and that was it.

BTW, The piano black finish is growing on me. Nice TV...HD is really nice.

[tomanystraydogs]

Watched the 42" for 30 minutes today at CC.

They had it hooked up via component.

Could only get about 6' back from it.

Has the piano black finish but the edges are square and don't seem to reflect as much as the Sammys.

Took it out of Sports mode which seemed like their version of Vivid and set it to standard.

Set contrast adjustment to medium.

I have an LG lcd monitor with lots of backlight bleed. I saw none on the Toshiba.

They showed a bit of hockey, ice looked real good, no funny tint.

Did not notice any blur but they tend to show sports in slow-mo

Not much dark scenes were displayed (wish they would put Batman Begins on) but from what I did see it looked good, I did not see any artifacts.

Colors looked really good.

I was really looking for faults but did not see any.

I walked away really thinking about getting this set.

I know some of you out there have a better eye for this than I, give it a look and tell us what you think.

[mikelets456]

I just bought the 32HL67 for the bedroom for $770. I was really amazed at the amount of tweaking this set will allow. My friend's Samsung have very few options for tweeking. The Toshiba has quite a few. I am looking forward to running the Avia on it.

It really is a nice set and after tweaking I notice few artifacts, even in stretch mode via Directv SD.

I am new to the LCD world, but I am learning to like it very rapidly. I compare it to my Hitachi and so far some things the LCD is nicer. However, I still prefer the RP CRT for overall performance. Oh well, it's exciting watching and comparing the two technologies.

[tomanystraydogs]

Have you figured out what Native Mode and 4:3 HD Mode do exactly?

[tomanystraydogs]

Mike, what are you feeding your HL67 and have you tried OTA HD yet?

[faihung]

Does anybody know which sizes are made by Toshiba and which sizes are outsourced?

[adr1978]

Native mode is supposed to be the 1:1 pixel mode if I am not mistaken. 4:3 mode is supposed to display a 4:3 signal in its native resolution with no scaling.

[llama34]

Okay so NO one has a review on these yet? The price is right and I want to pull the trigger, but don't want to end up with a lemon.

How are Toshibas in general? Good quality?

[Elduchey]

Dude, this is a great TV. I had a chance to compare this unit to a Sharp and Samsung of the same size and it had them beat in every catagory in my book. This thing has tons of out put's (3HDMI's alone), more options to adjust your picture than both of the other units and it's fit and finish is first class (not one crack,pop, or dead pic).
SD pic is very ,very good with some tweaking, but I'll warn you, once you see the HD on this thing you'll never want to watch any SD ever again. I found myself watching stuff I didnt even care about last night just to take in the amazing pic.

Put it thru it's paces last night by watching some NBA games in HD to see if the pic would break up under heavy action and it just looked perfect the whole time. I advise you check it out yourself in-store if possable, but I wont hesitate to recommend this to anyone.

One of the thing's I realy like about the 67 series is they all have the same amount of input's.

[dung]

anyone know why none of toshiba's LCD contrast ratio is over 800:1, they're falling behind or what?

[Goalier95]

How come in Toshiba's spec sheet, the native or dynamic contrast ratio is nowhere to be found? The BestBuy site on the 32" model doesn't even state it as well.

[NVboy]

Originally Posted by dung

anyone know why none of toshiba's LCD contrast ratio is over 800:1, they're falling behind or what?

Either that, or they are being honest (unlike some other's claimed CR). If you watch the same feed on a Toshiba sitting next to another brand with 1400:1 CR, yet the Toshiba looks better, does CR then really matter? I'm all about CR, but only if it is visibly discernable.

[dung]

Originally Posted by NVboy

Either that, or they are being honest (unlike some other's claimed CR). If you watch the same feed on a Toshiba sitting next to another brand with 1400:1 CR, yet the Toshiba looks better, does CR then really matter? I'm all about CR, but only if it is visibly discernable.

800:1 CR dont produce very deep black. sicne my samsung got 900:1 and it it greyish in a dark scene. While I never saw the sharp qous in action, but they are claiming from anywhere from 8500:1 to 10000:1 CR. In theory it can produce black like plasma.

[NVboy]

Originally Posted by dung

In theory it can produce black like plasma.

"In theory." Exactly. We've been hearing that for a number of years now. Some people are more aware of CR, black levels, shadow detail, etc. than the rest. For every thread dealing with a specific tv in a positive way, there will be another thread dealing with the negatives. I think it all comes down to what the individual sees as visually acceptable.

Nice handle/nick, BTW.

[darkninja67]

Originally Posted by dung

but they are claiming from anywhere from 8500:1 to 10000:1 CR.

Those are dynamic contrast numbers not native or static contrast ratios.

[tomanystraydogs]

Originally Posted by Elduchey

Dude, this is a great TV...

Thx for the report Elduchey.

I take it you saw no blur when watching NBA games? That would certainly be great news. That is my #1 fear with LCD.

Can you put something dark in, like Batman Begins, and tell us how blacks look?

Purdy please

[tomanystraydogs]

Originally Posted by faihung

Does anybody know which sizes are made by Toshiba and which sizes are outsourced?

Good question.

The following is sort of related:

According to DisplaySearch, the following are the top seven LCD TV module makers and a list of their top five customers.

1. LPL - Phillips, LGE, Panasonic, Toshiba, Amtran.
2. Samsung - Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Sanyo
3. AUO - Samsung, Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, LGE
4. CMO - Funai, Xoceco, Westinghouse, Proview, TTE
5. Sharp - Sharp, Philips, JVC, Mitsubishi, Panasonic
6. CPT - Philips, Funai, Konka, Samsung, TPV
7. QDI - Sharp, Philips

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/1679/98/

[llama34]

Alright - despite the lack of many reviews on this puppy, I'm going to go pick one up tonight. CC is offering 18 months no interest and has a coupon on top of that. Only through Sat though.

I'll hook it up and report back after I've had a chance to play around a bit.

[tomanystraydogs]

WTG llama!

[llama34]

Hooked this guy up tonight. So far so good. PQ right out of the box isn't exceptional -- which is pretty standard for HDTVs. However after making some adjustments read in this thread and the other Regza thread, I must say it looks pretty darn good!!

Of course, I haven't hooked up the HDTV box (need to pick it up tomorrow). However I hooked up my 360 through the VGA input so it would upconvert a DVD and so far I'm impressed with the image. And the few 360 games I've played so far look amazing.

I do have one complaint so far, and that's that the TV limits your picture adjusting options through the VGA input. One of the reasons I bought this TV was that I could hook up the 360 through the VGA and upconvert DVDs, and it looks like I'm not going to be able to tweak the picture much that way. So, I'm probably left waiting for MS to release some kind of connection cord that allows upconversion through a regular connection like HDMI. However from what I understand that's not in the works. Don't know why Toshiba would limit the adjustment options.

I'll post another update after I get some HDTV programming in here.

[tomanystraydogs]

Thx llama, look forward 2 your next report

[llama34]

Another quick update for the night. (Keep in mind, I'm no hi-def expert here)

-Black levels look just fine to me. As a matter of fact, while playing gears I found myself actually increasing the brightness in dark screens. This set has no issues with darks as far as I can tell.

-Okay, I figured out that I was actually playing my 360 in 480P for most of the night. When I figured out my mistake and switched to 720P I was flat out amazed by the picture quality. I'm new to HD so take it with a grain of salt but the 720P on this screen to me is amazing. I can't wait to see what happens when I get my HD box tomorrow

-I still have some calibrating to do and I can't wait to see what others come up with here for their settings. On certain channels the colors look a bit too bright.

-Going to email Toshiba and ask about the VGA port picture adjusting issue. That baffles me

[mikelets456]

Originally Posted by tomanystraydogs

Mike, what are you feeding your HL67 and have you tried OTA HD yet?

OTA only via Directv box..I have not tried it via the TV to check out the tuner. Very nice HD OTA...

[mikelets456]

Originally Posted by tomanystraydogs

Have you figured out what Native Mode and 4:3 HD Mode do exactly?

It seems 4:3 HD allows a 16:9 to be viewed in 4:3...why? I don't know.

[mikelets456]

Commenting on black levels...like I said before, I am used to RP CRT's, however, the black levels are VERY accptable from what I have seen. Also, I ran some of the avia set up...I could not change to much except black levels, etc. This set really is nice.

Pros: HD is vibrant with much detail and few artifacts
-SD is good and handle artifacting very well for an LCD.
- Lots of tweaking allowed.
- lots of inputs
- black levels, colors,etc....seem very true.
- Motion blur less than I expected.
- Overall a REALLY nice HD picture and excellent DVD quality. Handles SD Directv compression artifacts fairly well without sacrificing PQ.

Cons: -Some motion blur...but better than expected.
-Not 1080P...but hey, it's only 32"

Let me know if you hae any futher question...I'll try to help.

[cjg725]

So far great reports on the set. I am going to be buying a 32" LCD mainly for 360 gaming and I have been reading threads all over this site for a couple of days. The 32HL67 is one I am heavily leaning towards.

Thanks for the updates so far.

[afidel]

I found a test for blacklevel:Batman Begins in HD DVD format. The scene where Bruce first goes into the batcave is a real stresser for blacklevel. On the 42HL167 I have to set Contrast to 100, dynamic contrast to max, dynamic backlight to on and tweak a few other things to get really good shadow detail. The good news is I didn't have to turn up brightness and that the tweaks didn't seem to wash out light area during the next scene which is a brightly lit outdoor scene. None of the affordable plasmas did any better than the Toshiba LCD so I would say that CR is possibly useless as a measure of anything in real world performance. There were some very expensive plasmas that had visually better blacklevels but they cost 3-5x more than the Toshiba.

[llama34]

afidel:

What are your normal picture settings? I just got the same TV and I'm curious what others have theirs set to.

[rwp8g]

Originally Posted by afidel

I found a test for blacklevel:Batman Begins in HD DVD format. The scene where Bruce first goes into the batcave is a real stresser for blacklevel. On the 42HL167 I have to set Contrast to 100, dynamic contrast to max, dynamic backlight to on and tweak a few other things to get really good shadow detail. The good news is I didn't have to turn up brightness and that the tweaks didn't seem to wash out light area during the next scene which is a brightly lit outdoor scene. None of the affordable plasmas did any better than the Toshiba LCD so I would say that CR is possibly useless as a measure of anything in real world performance. There were some very expensive plasmas that had visually better blacklevels but they cost 3-5x more than the Toshiba.

more often than not, it's another number a manufacturer can throw on a tv to make it more appealing to the customer.

thanks for all the info, i was actually looking at getting this tv from CC today. we'll see if the wife agrees...