Toshiba 50H82 50 in. TV

I've always wanted one of these televisions. It seems like all guys want big-screen TVs, and for a guy that's into electronics like I am, this is the Holy Grail of home entertainment. They are certainly not small however, and fitting on of these into my previous residence would have been virtually impossible. All of that changed when I moved, and I now have a spacious living room so I can pile in the electronics to my heart's content.

A good two months before my move-in date, I started shopping for my big-screen TV. From the onset, I decided that I wanted a widescreen TV. Virtually all HDTV programming uses the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, and all DVDs are also widescreen, so the choice was obvious to me. If you can't receive HDTV and don't watch many movies, a conventional 4:3TV might be a good choice for you.

Having settled on a widescreen TV, I started looking at models in the 47"-53" range. I didn't want to go any smaller than that, but I did not want to spend the extra money for a 57" or 65" TV. The models that I looked at closely in my comparison were the Panasonic PT-47WX42, the JVC AV-48WP30, the Toshiba 50H82 and the Hitachi 51UWX20B.

The Panasonic is the least expensive of the four, but I found the picture quality to be the poorest of the lot also. In all the demo units I saw, the picture was much too red and it was not easily corrected using the color controls. When viewing regular broadcast TV, the image appeared to display many jagged edges resulting from de-interlacing. HDTV image was on par with the other models though. I did like the pedestal-like cabinet design of the Panasonic compared to the box-shape of the other models.

The JVC model was certainly an odd one. In one store, the image would look amazing, while in the next, it would look horrible, even with a high-definition signal. The problem seems to be that the TV transforms any signal into high-definition format regardless of what it was originally, which sometimes results in obvious de-interlacing errors. I can only assume that these errors are made obvious by the lower-quality broadcast channels, which is why sometimes it looks great if it's tuned to a good quality broadcast. For the price of a widescreen projection TV, I certainly didn't want to take the chance of buying a TV that might look good some of the time on some channels, so I passed on the JVC.

The Hitachi was the most expensive TV of the four, but it also had the best HDTV image quality. The Hitachi televisions have the ability to show fine details that may not be apparent on the other TVs. This makes for an absolutely stunning high-definition picture, and to a lesser extent DVD picture also (DVD have much less resolution that a HDTV broadcast, so there's less room for improvement there). On this criterion alone, the Hitachi seems to be worth the few extra hundred dollars it costs. But what killed it for me is the way this TV handles regular NTSC broadcasts. These broadcasts are not widescreen, and the Hitachi widescreen TVs visibly distort the image to adapt it to the widescreen projection surface. The distortion is quite apparent at the edges of the screen and is extremely distracting. Watching a hockey game on this TV would be nausea-inducing. No Hitachi for me.

And finally, we come to the Toshiba. The Toshiba is a sort of ultimate compromise on most points. It does not quite have the resolution to show all the minute details that the Hitachi shows, but it certainly looks better than the Panasonic and JVC. The image quality of a high-definition broadcast is nonetheless stunning. Where the Toshiba shines is with regular NTSC broadcasts. Using its TheaterWide 1 mode, it can fill the entire widescreen display area with seemingly no distortion to the picture at all. It's not noticeable, and nobody has ever realized that the original program was not meant to be shown in widescreen format. With a truly good NTSC source, the quality can practically approach DVD quality. Even a test with a pre-recorded VHS tape gave surprisingly good results. Aside from a few exceptions, the Toshiba TVs can make virtually any broadcast signal look good. This was precisely what I was looking for, so I ordered a Toshiba 50H82, and it was in my living room two days after I moved in.

My home theatre setup is slightly different from a typical user's setup, in that I use a specially built computer as my DVD player and CD player, and I receive my HD broadcasts through cable using a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3100HD digital cable box. One of the first things I did was to go through the initial convergence of the TV and calibrate the display settings (contrast, brightness, color, etc.) using the Avia DVD by Ovation software. Any good home theatre enthusiast should have this CD. Such a calibration will give you a much better picture, as well as prolong the life of the TV (many TV are initially set at the maximum contrast level, which can greatly reduce the life of the picture tubes).

My 50H82 now shows a picture quality in my living room that exceeds all that I had seen in store demos. I find it hard to justify the price of some of the really high-end TV could only produce a marginally better image than my moderately-priced Toshiba. In that regard, I am totally satisfied with my TV.

The TV also features a nice backlit remote control (oddly enough, you have to press a specific button to turn on the light though; it does not do so automatically when you press any button). It also features the usual assortment of features you'd expect on this type of TV: parental controls, sleep timer, closed captioning, picture-in-picture and so on.

The 50H82 has five separate audio/video inputs, as well as one audio/video output and 2 antenna inputs. Three of these are for regular composite or S-Video NTSC signals, while the two other are component video inputs for progressive scan or high-definition devices. While this may seem like a lot, you might quickly find that you've run out of component inputs, as I did. With the high-definition digital cable box, the PC DVD Player, the Xbox and Gamecube in progressive mode, I'm already short by two inputs. Switchboxes for component video are also quite hard to come by, so be prepared to do some cable plugging and unplugging for a little while.

The 50H82 also lacks a DVI input connector. There is a lot of talk about DVI being required to receive certain programming in the future, but this is a yet unconfirmed. Here in Canada, there are no devices available that actually use DVI connections, so I'm not worried at all. In the US, some HDTV set-top boxes are starting to use DVI, so it might be a worthwhile decision to upgrade to the 50HDX82, which includes a DVI connector.

The only problem that I've come across is with the audio portion of this TV. Fortunately for me, I don't use the speakers of the TV, since I have a surround sound setup and my receiver process all the sound. The problem manifests itself in the form of a low-level hiss in the audio. In a quiet room with the volume at one-third or lower, there is background hiss, similar to what you hear when playing a worn audio cassette. Believe me, it can be quite annoying. I have confirmed with other owners of the same TV on internet discussions boards that all the Toshiba H series TVs have this problem. Fortunately, Toshiba has identified a fix for the problem, and a service call from a technician should fix it. I have not had mine fixed, because I do not use the audio on the TV, but other owners told me that it involves replacing a capacitor on the audio amplifier board. My experience in electronics engineering tells me that this is probably filtering out the noise, but this fix most likely affects the frequency response at high frequencies. A real fix would be to change the amplifier board with one that uses a less noisy amplifier in my opinion.

But that's enough nit-picking for now. Most people who buy a TV such as this one will use a separate system for the audio, and just like me, they won't ever hear the problem. It's still too bad that a problem like this is present on all the TVs, since apart from that, it's a stellar performer. It's the only thing keeping me from giving five stars.