Toshiba 52HMX94 52 in. HDTV DLP TV

For over a year I had researched rear projection DLP and LCD TV's. I kept finding issues with the TV's so I decided to continue to learn about them and wait for the technology to mature before making a purchase.

The TV will be used for watching DVD's, over the air HDTV, basic analog cable, video games, VCR movies, and inserting a memory card for digital picture viewing.

My main concerns about buying a new TV were the following. It had to look great, not suffer from screen "burn in", be able to play video games with no problems, and not have any issues with fast moving scenes in DVD's or audio / video sync problems. After researching for a very long time I stumbled across the Toshiba DLP's. I started looking into them on the web and found various sources of info, but I think my best source is the audio video science message board. Nothing is better then reading about everyday users problems. There I found out that this TV performed great and didn't have any of the problems that I listed above.

Next I went to a local electronics store that had the 52HM84 on display, they allowed me to bring my Xbox in to test games and DVD's. This was mainly to see the picture quality and everything looked great.

Finally I made my purchase and couldn't be happier with it.

Here I will try to cover most of what makes the TV great for me. The 52HMX94 has a "Game Mode" which you can turn on to combat the delay that occurs between a button press and the action on the screen when playing video games. This is needed for any game system that plays games in 480i. (In short any gamecube, PS2, or xbox game through S-video or composite jacks) If the game is through the component jacks (which only xbox and older gamecubes support) and is displayed in 480p or above you won't notice any delay, but if it's 480i there is a delay. An easy way to test this is to put any game in that has a power meter that you want to stop when you press a button. Football or golf is the best test. When I put Madden 2003 into my gamecube (through S-video) and tested it with Game Mode off there was a delay. With Game Mode on the delay was gone! It worked perfect for me.
This is what the manual says about Game Mode: You can use the Game Mode feature for shorter frame delays when playing a video game requiring split-second timing between the on-screen display and input from the controller (such as music creation and high-action games).

Some of the DLP units have a problem with the audio / video sync. None whatsoever on this TV and this was tested with a cheap Polariod player, my xbox, and my new Toshiba sd-v592 player.

Since this TV has a built in HD tuner I can pick up the over the air digital signals from my local stations. Watching football in High Definition is great, same with some TV shows like ER. The TV Guide feature on the unit populated with the over the air stations and my analog cable stations. Works great! Speaking of analog cable, I was very impressed at how it looks on the TV. I expected the cable stations to look very poor, when in fact they look pretty good. Much better then I expected.

DVD's look great, I am running the Toshiba player (sd-v592) through the HDMI port. The colors are bright and dark scenes look good. My only complaint would be that the whites are too bright but I had adjusted the tv to correct this. The Lord of the Rings movies look very nice on the set! WOW is a good word to describe it.

Games look great as well, I just finished Halo 2 on it and I have to say what a great way to play games. Football looks amazing as well. In fact every game I have tried on it looks great, no complaints at all. Game Mode just makes it better because we can hook up every system to it with no issues. Metroid Prime from the GameCube is a sight to see as well!

The TV has enough inputs for my needs, with 2 HDMI and 2 component inputs and 2 S-video inputs I can plug in everything I have with one HDMI port open for a future purchase. = D It also has the optical audio output so you can send that signal to a digital receiver to output 5.1 audio. Great stuff! The menus are easy to navigate and operate. The manual explains things well and is fairly large so spend some time with it, you will be happy you did.

The remote is a nice unit, you can turn the backlight on and off. The main buttons you will use are in good locations which are easy to find. It is a universal remote so chances are you can control your other components with it.

The TV has an anti glare screen which I feel is crucial, if you take a look at another brand (the Mits) without the glare screen you will understand why. The speakers are nice and put out good sound, I didn't care much about them since most of my audio will come through the receiver but they serve their purpose.

On the side of the TV it has a memory card location in which you can insert 5 different types of memory card to view digital pictures. 5 different types! I have tested 2 so far and it worked perfectly. We just inserted the card (no adapter needed) and the picture displayed, from there it's an easy navigation of what arrowing through the pictures or doing a slideshow.

This TV has enough modes, features, bells and whistles to keep anyone busy for a few days testing them all out. I highly recommend this TV to anyone, especially if you have kids that play video games or you are a big kid yourself (like me). The picture it displays is terrific and the extras sold me on it.

Pros: Fantastic Picture, Game Mode, 2 HDMI inputs, built in HD tuner, faster processing = no or little dithering / pixel distortion, the price I paid, TV Guide, digital audio out, handles analog TV/Cable and VCR tapes very well.

Cons: On to the cons, none of these are critical but cons none the less. The power, channel and volume buttons that are on the actual TV itself are sometimes hard to operate. You really have to position your finger in the right spot to get it to work. After a few times of getting used to it you will be good to go but at first it's a pain. This really isn't an issue for me because I use the remote all the time but for those that want to turn it on at the set might get annoyed by this.

When you use the remote with the light on it makes a buzzing sound, this may be defective so I'm going to call Toshiba about it today. So this may not be an issue and just a defective remote.

I would have liked the ability to be able to label my inputs with a user defined label. This is more of a nit-pick then anything else.

Whites through the HDMI inputs seem to be very bright, I just used a calibration DVD last night to try and set everything up right. I don't want to lower the brightness too much in fear that dark scenes will be too dark. This doesn't happen through the component inputs. I have a call into Toshiba about this since I'm also using their DVD player. This I can live with because the picture still looks great, I'm probably just being too picky.

Another thing with the HDMI input is that the DVD image is shifted to the left slightly, I had a service tech out and when he adjusted it to the right the TV displayed a bar on the left side. We switched it back and he is going to notify Toshiba about this, I'm not too worried about it they have been great to work with so far.

UPDATE: The image being shifted to the left through HDMI is not the fault of the TV, it's the fault of the DVD player. I'm working with Toshiba to resolve this, hopefully a firmware update will fix it.

UPDATE 3/9/05: Update 3/9/05: It seems that the problem is with the upconversion process, because it happens when I upconvert a non-copyright protected DVD via component out. The Toshiba rep I worked with was the supervisor in that area, his name is Andy. He tested this and verified that is was indeed the DVD player. I haven't heard back from them about a firmware update or other fix and I don't expect to. But I'm happy enough with the picture the player gives me via component cable and 480p, it will do just fine until HD-DVD players come out.