Toshiba 57HDX82 57 in. HDTV CRT TV

Owning a plasma television is almost every home theater fanatic's dream. Price constraints limit what we are willing to buy though. So if you want the affordable pseudo theater experience at home, you're basically limited to RPTVs (Rear Projection Televisions). We purchased a 57" Toshiba. Any plasma monitor at that size (60") is currently going to run you close to $19 grand. Plasmas may be the way of the future, but for the time being, cost is still a big factor. Perhaps the continuing price drops will make them a practical contender in a couple of years (if you have the patience). Obviously, I didn't.

Other HDTV RPTV models we were comparing: Hitachi's 57SWX20B and Sony's KDP-57XBR2. Sony has other 57 inch RPTVs but they are priced way out of this range. All three televisions have various stretch modes, 3/2 pulldown, and internal line-doublers.

Standard televisions are 4:3 format. All these televisions are 16:9 widescreen format. As well, all the new plasmas are 16:9 (not that they were in my price range). If you value movie watching more than cable, this is the format for you. This format is definitely gaining traction and I can't understand why they still sell fullscreen formats for some movies. If you're still unsure what kind of television you want, you can compare televisions sizes of different formats at http://www.cavecreations.com/tv2.cgi.

One disadvantage of a 16:9 television is how you view regular cable broadcasts. Thankfully, the Toshiba has 4 viewing modes:
1) Natural mode where the broadcast is displayed as a regular 4:3 picture with grey bars on each side.
2) TheatreWide 1 where the center of the picture is close to it's original proportions and the picture stretches more as you get to the sides.
3) TheatreWide 2 where the picture is zoomed in to fill the screen with the top and bottom of the picture cropped. You can also pan this picture up and down.
4) Theatre Wide 3 is a combination of TheatreWide 1 and 2 also giving you the ability to pan up and down.
5) Full mode - a uniform stretch of a 4:3 picture. This mode is also used for viewing widescreen formats.

I found the Toshiba stretch modes superior to the Hitachi and the Sony.

As with many RPTVs, room lighting is a big factor. In the evening the picture is close to perfect and very much like being in a movie theatre. During bright days, there's reflection off the screen if you have a room with large windows. In those cases, good blinds may be in order.

On regular television sets, DVDs are viewed in 480i which means 240 scan lines are displayed on one pass and the other 240 scan lines are displayed on a second pass. This is sometimes very noticeable as you can see flickering along the top and bottom edges of many letterboxed movies.

The Toshiba upconverts to 540p which displays 540 lines simultaneously. I am very pleased with the quality of this as I do not have a progressive scan DVD player.

There's a one Touch Focus button to set convergence automatically but a 9-point manual convergence is also accessible by the user. Best results are yielded by the service menu's 56-point convergence which can help you eliminate "speed bump effects" you may have in the picture. Go to http://www.hometheaterspot.com Manufacturer's Spot Toshiba on how to do this.

Inputs
There are two component inputs, numerous sets of s-video and composite inputs, as well as a DVI interface. By lifting the front panel, you can also reveal another set of s-video and composite inputs for a quick-and-dirty camcorder or video console connection.

Sound System
This is never an important category for me with high end televisions because I'm assuming that someone who's willing to dish out this much coin for this kind of television has a surround sound system. But I'll give a brief description nevertheless.
As with many televisions in this price range, it has simulated surround. It works but it'll never be as effective as a real surround system. I could live without these types of features, especially if I'm paying extra for them.
There's also an input to use the television speaker as a center channel for a surround sound setup. I don't recommend doing this as it did not yield impressive results. There was just too much of a tonal difference between my front hometheater speakers and the television speakers not to mention a huge volume difference. I had to set my amplifier to draw back the center channel by 10 dbs and it was still louder than the rest of my speakers. You also can not have the speaker act as a center channel speaker and switch back to a regular television speaker automatically. You have to manually flip a switch on the back of the television everytime you want to do this.

Other Features
Picture in Picture:
The television's built in tuner allows you to view two 4:3 images side by side. I love this feature. I just wish I could have closed captioning on the second picture while watching the primary picture.
Settings:
Standard, Sports, and Movie modes are preset for tint, colour, brightness, sharpness, and contrast. There's also a 4th custom mode in which you can customize and save these settings. And the great thing is, you get one custom setting for each composite or s-video input, one custom setting for each cable input, and one custom setting for each component input. You can also turn off SVM (Scan Velocity Modulation).

Remote
The backlight for the remote makes all buttons visible in the dark. You can also program it to control your other devices.

Appearances
I really don't like the appearance of RPTVs in general. "Ugly" comes to mind. Thank God, the cabinets are getting shallower. This one's only 2 feet deep. As far as the cabinet goes, SONY and Panasonic seem to be having better luck with the aesthetic appearances than Toshiba or Hitachi. It's probably just subjective but that's what I get for not being able to wait for the price of Plasmas to drop - small sacrifice, I assure you.

Cabinet Dimensions (W x H x D): 52-3/16" x 55-3/4" x 23-5/8"
Cabinet Weight: 235 lbs.

Problems to date
A slight speaker hiss which was repaired by a technician free of charge. I'm pretty sure new models will no longer have this problem.
A slight convergence problem which gave me a slightly stretched picture in the center. This was fixed with a 56-point convergence.
Remote makes a small humming sound when the backlight is on and you push a button but I don't think this is a defect or a problem.
Other than that, the picture has been perfect. There's been no colour bleeding, noticeable distortion, or ghosting after over 100 hours of use.

Extended Warranty
I usually never get extended warranties on any electronic products I buy. However, the relatively small price paid ($300) to extend the 1 years manufacturers warranty to 6 years on site gives me peace of mind.

Toshiba
http://www.toshiba.com