Official Toshiba XV545U Thread - Page 12

I have that combo and the box is right beside the TV. I use a Harmony universal remote and don't have that problem. Maybe you can try a new remote.

This TV must be pretty new relative to the LNxxA630/650s - 5 reviews on Amazon (42", all 5 stars by the way, and 3 for the 46") vs. 297 for the LN40A650.

These things have dropped in price pretty nicely.

The 650's came out around march 08. The 630 around august 08. The 545 october 08. The 545's are not as widely available as the samsung 630/650.

Makes sense - thanks, WoodyJoe.

Not that I was going to wait but those new LED's Samsung has coming out next year per CES seem pretty slick looking...but probably expensive too.

Have you tried setting up the TV's remote to run the cable box? I don't have Comcast but the TV remote runs my cable fine and vice versa.

It would be nice if I could get the TV's remote to work my Toshiba HD DVD player though.

Yep, I've tried programming the Toshiba remote to run the cable box, but it doesn't help. The fault seems to lie with the cable box; the IR signals it accepts seem to occupy the same slice of spectrum that the TV's backlight puts out when it first turns out. I finally got it to respond to the remote by turning the cable box almost sideways in the entertainment center, so that the IR sensor was deep in shadow. After the backlights had a chance to warm up, I was able to turn it forward again, and the remote worked fine.

I've got a cable tech coming out Friday, so hopefully he can help me figure out where to move or position the thing to avoid the IR intereference. In the meantime, if any of you folks have advice, I'd be most grateful.

Other than that, I've gotta say, I'm really happy with the TV thus far. DVDs look fantastic, colors are vibrant, blacks and whites are sharp, detail's crisp. Yes, there's green push, mostly in areas of shadow on people's faces, and yes, my clumsy efforts at calibration can't entirely get rid of it (though I can slightly improve it). But for me, at least, it's a minor issue with an otherwise fine set. I also like the film stabilization, which is much subtler and more natural than the eerie smoothness of some of the Samsungs I saw. The SRT did increase the sharpness on the DVDs I watched, but not unpleasantly so to my eyes.

I was at my local retailer recently and noticed their display model (46XV545U) had a manufactured date of November 2008. The store was using a local cable box for the displays, run through composite cables. The display set appeared to have a more defined picture than my unit (although it is hard to be sure because I can't compare side by side), better colours, whites, blacks and less green push.

My set was manufactured in September 2008. I was wondering if anyone has noticed a difference in the two runs as well? Could it be possible that Toshiba altered some of the calibrations of the sets for the November run, based on end user feedback/comments?

Comments are inserted in color where appropriate - parts of original post are deleted where I have nothing to add...

I feel compelled to correct some mis-info here as it may be moving those of you who try it farther from a good picture.

I'm not doing this to be vindictive - but being a calibrator and reviewer... I hate to see things posted that won't help you get a better picture and none of this info will.

I have deleted the OP's name on purpose as it's my intent to embarass or harass or belittle anybody - frankly the amount of thought and time that went into these "findings" is impressive, but ultimately won't help anybody get their XV545 to look any better.


The oversaturated Green on these TVs cannot be stopped COMPLETELY in any way except by using something like a $4500 Lumagen Radiance XD video processor -- or perhaps their $2500 model, but I haven't tried that one yet, so I'm not sure. You can use the CMS (Toshiba calls them Colormaster) controls to improve Green so it is less oversaturated... BUT, the sliders in the CMS controls have a range of +/-30... that's almost enough to "fix" green but if you use all of that range, you end up with terrible contouring and block artifacts in every image... the picture just looks terrible. In fact, you can't use more than +/-10 for any adjustment of any of the 18 CMS sliders. Stay at +/-10 or less and you can improve the color quite a bit. But only if you have instrumentation and software --- or if you hire a professional calibrator. Guessing at these adjustments, especially when you don't really know what each slider is doing to the color is just a huge guessing game you can't win.

To "fix" green, you have to move it towards Red and Blue (which is NOT the same thing as adjusting red and blue via CMS controls). This is done with 2 sliders in the Green area of the CMS controls... but you won't know if you are moving the Green point properly without a meter and software. Trust me... you do NOT want to move any sliders for the Red point or Blue point to fix a problem with Green when it comes to video calibration. In the Green point adjustments, there is a Green slider - this controls how bright Green is... you cannot know if you have this set correctly without a meter and software - and reference coordinates for Green. The Red slider in the Green point CMS adjustments will move the green point closer to Red. The Blue slider in the Green point adjustments will move the Green point closer to Blue. If Green is oversaturated, you want to move it closer to Red and Blue but the amount you move it closer may be equal or unequal... again, without a meter and software, you are guessing. And guesses with this stuff just aren't usually helpful.

What do you recommend we do if we don't have a meter and software - just set everything to factory default?

THX Optimizer disk with Glasses?

While I'm sure no one wants to guess - I think (speaking for myself only of course) I would enjoy something that's "good enough" i.e. enough reduction of the green to where it's not a glaringly obvious and no longer an annoyance. Unless of course taking a guess would be detrimental to the TV in the long run, which I'm guessing it wouldn't.

I suppose I'll only know how much of an issue this is once my TV arrives...

It depends on how hard you are going to hunt for it. I've had mine for a month or so and don't notice it at all, but as I said before I'm not looking for it either. If I see it, I see it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...?tag=mncol;lst

Is this guy a professional reviewer? It almost seems like he is biased.

The bad:
Inaccurate primary color of green and cyan; subpar uniformity; proprietary upconversion circuit introduces edge enhancement; lackluster design


Subpar uniformity? Virtually every lcd tv on the market including the ones on his list suffer from this including a lot of the samsung and sony tvs. Its their panel in the toshiba. There are hundreds of posts about flashlighting and clouding issues on the sony and samsung threads.

The proprietary upconversion circuit he is referring to is the srt feature. He obviously didnt know how to use it. It can introduce noticeable edge enhancement when your setting is too high but in moderation it does improve 480/720 dvd picture.

Lackluster design? Why because it doesnt have toc ( which a lot of people hate), or scarlet around bezel ? It has a very nice black relatively thin bezel. Whats wrong with that? The controls are easily accessible on the side and you can actually see them to use them unlike the samsung 630 I had.

Here is something else he wrote:

"As do most LCD HDTVs available in 2008, the 46XV545U has a native resolution of 1080p. However, at this screen size it's very difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and lower resolutions. "

That is a ridiculous statement- is he blind?

Well, I just placed an order for a 42xv545u. If you've read the "Official 2006 Toshiba REGZA" thread, you'll recognize me as being one of the sufferers of the banding issue. I had two 42lx196's and 1 42lz196 sets, all having the banding issue. Toshiba has decided that they would give me a full refund. So, I started looking and came back to Toshiba with this model. I just hope I didn't make a mistake. I had also considered a Sammy 46a650, but I really wanted to keep the price low. I was able to get this for under 1150.00 at OneCall.com. It should be here within a week. Wish me luck.

I've had this TV for about two and a half weeks, and here's what I have to say about it. But I should say that this is my first time ever seeing HD material at home, and I've only just gotten into researching TV's and such.

Standard definition and DVD:

We don't have HD channels yet, so the majority of our viewing is in standard definition. The SRT thing makes some channels look very good, on others... it doesn't seem to change anything. I leave the SRT settings to auto, unless I don't notice an improvement. In that case, I fiddled around with the settings, and things look the same, or get slightly worse. Either way, leaving SRT on auto seems to do the job just fine.

For DVD's, I play them through my PS3 which is connected through HDMI. I've watched a lot of Lost (Christmas gift ) and it looks great. In some scenes, I can see some grainyness, but otherwise it looks very close to HD. Although I'm not sure if it's the PS3 or the TV that does the upconverting, since I've never heard of upconversion until now.

Blu-Ray

Again, I'm playing Blu-ray movies through my PS3, and it looks excellent. So far I've watched The Dark Knight, Eagle Eye, and Wall-E, and they all looked phenomenal, especially TDK and Wall-E. The black areas in Wall-E (The space scenes, for example) looked great.

Gaming

I've only played games on my PS3, and haven't been able to hook my Wii yet, as our stand is full; and I don't have component cables for it. Overall though, I'm very pleased with my gaming experience. The biggest improvement is text, being able to sit 9 feet away and read the text is just awesome. The only issue I've noticed is some screen tearing, but that's ONLY with Assassin's Creed. Other games (Metal Gear Solid 4, Soul Calibur 4, Oblivion, Disgaea 3, and Grand Theft Auto 4) have no tearing issues. For game mode, I notice an improvement with the tearing issue in Assassin's Creed, but it's still there. For other games, game mode doesn't seem to change anything.



The only major thing that I have an issue with, is the green. I'm not sure if it's supposed to look like that, but anything dark looks slightly green, mainly around the edges. I especially notice this in dark areas in a semi-lit up room, and shaded faces. It's especially noticeable on dark skinned people when there's shade, they just have a green look in some areas, especially on the edges of the shade. I don't notice the green in video games, just in movies and TV channels.

Unfortunately, the TV has a bunch of dead pixels on the left side, I'd say about 12 are dead. They're always black, and some of them are always a green/teal color. I'm not sure if I didn't notice it, or it happened today/a few days ago.

I've also been doing a lot more research on flat panel TV's, and we may exchange our LCD for a plasma. Plasma is looking very good after doing a lot of research, it's just that a lot of the marketing, salespeople, etc. convinced us that plasmas are horrible compared to LCD :S.

Glad to see you're giving Toshiba one more chance.

There's not really much you can do without a meter or professional calibration -- I mean you could tell if the Colormaster settings were WAY off one way or another, but getting them reasonably close by eye just isn't going to happen. It would probably be pretty safe to move the Green-Hue to -7, and Green-Saturation to -5. and Green-Brightness to +7

If that's not better (it SHOULD always be better, but you never know for sure), you can always put the sliders back to the center point defaults and turn ColorMaster off.

I was thinking of a different display's menu when I made the previous post... the sliders for Green arn't labeled Green, Red, and Blue (that's Samsung's convention). Toshiba names the sliders Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. These settings move the Green point "down" which is towards blue and red at the same time. Each color has a target for brightness also and in spite of the Green point being oversaturated, it really isn't quite as bright as it should be, hence the bump on the brightness control.

These settings may not be optimum for any particular panel, but they should be better than the defaults for every panel.

The value (or lack of value) in a 1080p panel is strictly a function of viewing angle.

That means the smaller the panel, the closer you need to sit to be able to see all the available detail.

For those with "typical" 20/20 vision, there's a pretty narrow distance range where you can sit and see all the available detail. If you are too close, you see individual pixels. If you sit farther than this optimum distance range, you DO lose the ability to see all the detail in the image. At some point, a 720 panel and 1080 panel are indistinguishable from each other (assuming both have the same diagonal measurement).

THX recommends a 36 degree viewing angle for 1080p screens. For 46" panel, that means sitting 5.1 feet from the panel. If the reviewer was sitting farther than that, then he would not see all the detail available from the panel - if ANY owner sits farther than that from a 46" panel they will be missing some of the detail.

Often a reviewer gets in a rut and sets-up for 1 specific viewing distance regardless of panel size. If that distance is 8 or 9 feet, and the panel is 46", there won't be any significant difference in detail between a 720 and 1080 panel - it's just too far.

When you go to the optometrist or to the DMV and read an eye-chart, they always position you at a very specific distance from the chart because the chart is not accurate at any other distance. If the chart is designed for the 20/20 line to be readable at 10 feet and you stand 15 feet from the chart and have 20/20 vision, you won't be able to read the 20/20 line, the text will be too small for your eyes to resolve... same thing with panels. For a 52" panel the THX recommended distance for a 36 degree viewing angle is just 5.8 feet!!!! How many 52" owners are sitting 5.8 feet from their panel???? How many 46" owners are sitting 5.1 feet from their panels?????

If you have surround sound, your speakers have a minumum distance you should be sitting from them... a tiny mini-speaker might be fine from 2 feet to 8 or 9 feet. A small bookshelf speaker may need 3 feet to start sounding "right". A medium size speaker on a stand might need 4 or 5 feet of space before the sound is fully developed. And a 4' tall floor-standing speaker may need 7 feet or so of space. If you have larger speakers, you really need a larger panel so your ideal viewing distance and ideal distance from the speakers are in the same distance range.

If your room is 15 feet wide and you insist on putting the TV on one wall and sitting against the opposite wall, you need a diagonal screen size of about 130" to get that 36 degree viewing angle that will reveal all the detail in the picture. If you hang a 46" or 52" panel and sit that far away, it may as well be 720p or even standard def because you won't see the detail in a 1080p panel anyway. That said... 720 (or 768) panels are disappearing anyway so in the future there won't be any potential savings by going for the lower res panel if the seating distance isn't going to give you the full benefit of 1080p.

I just got back from FutureShop and Visions and here's what they both told me.

FutureShop Rep:
The Samsung A630, A650, and A750 all use an 8-bit panel, while the Toshiba XV545 uses a 10-bit panel. I was specifically talking about the 52-inch models, not the 42 or 46 inch models.

Visions Rep:
The Toshiba XV545 series uses a Sharp panel, not a Samsung panel.

It seems like both reps are saying that Toshiba does not use Samsung panels in the XV545 series at all. The Visions rep seems to suggest they use a Sharp panel. Can anyone confirm this?

WG

I'm not yet a 545 owner, but it's on the top of my list. I'll make my decision when I have a chance to look at a real one. Has anyone compare the 545 to XBR6? Regardless of the price difference, the two share similar features. Also, does a 545 owner still need a high end upconvert dvd player, like an Oppo?

Most people believe the 650 and 750 uses a 10 bit panel. It doesnt seem like anybody is really sure about the 630. There was a thread on it but I havent kept up with it.

The 46 - 52" xv545 are using a samsung panel right now.
it is a 10 bit panel. Starting in the near future sharp will be supplying toshiba about 40% - 50% of its 32" and above panels. That could mean that the 46 -52" 545 may use the sharp panel in the future. Im not sure what kind of manufacturing problems they
would encounter by switching now.

The remote codes for the Phillips DVDR3576H in the Toshiba 52XV545U owner's manual do not seem to work. I also tried the steps in the manual for
"Searching and sampling the code of a device (8500)" without success.
My remote is the CT-90276 and the device codes for Phillips DVDs are:
20503, 20539, 20646, 20675, 20854, 21260, 21267 and 21354. Does anyone have this combination of TV and DVR and been able to make it work ?
Thanks.

A quick question. On the 46" 545 units, what is the maximum resolution if one connects using the analog VGA PC input? Hooking up to a laptop. Is it full 1920 X 1080 or a lower resolution?

Thanks,
UL

http://www.toshiba.ca/web/pdf/424652XV545U_EN.pdf go to page 73.

It appears the max attainable resolution is 1280 x 1024. Unless I'm reading it wrong.

Hopefully Toshiba doesn't run into the banding issues Sharp has.

WG

Sigh....not having 1920 by 1080 via PC VGA just knocks it out for me. Have to have that and was seriously considering this unit.

Thanks for the answer.
UL

I believe that is just a port limitation. I haven't tried it, but you could could hook your computer up through hdmi and it would be 1920x1080. A DVI to HDMI adpater would probably work best, although I would guess that an VGA to HDMI adapter would work as well.

I was under the impression sharp had the banding problems straightened out. The new panels will be 10th generation which supposedly is big improvement over older technology.

woodyjoe - this question is to you or anyone else who is knowledgeable about lcd panels.

The 2009 Toshiba ZV650 comes in a 47" size. Is this indicative that it is not a Samsung panel, and more importantly - that it is not a reflective one (which most Samsung panels are)?

After all the banding problems I had with the 196 series, and just ordering the 42xv545, I sure hope they have the banding issues fixed. I haven't seen a single post regarding banding in Toshiba since the 2006 Regza 196 series. The only issues appear to be a green push. Well, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.