But picking a winner among HDTVs is much more difficult, and it's higher-volume products like the Toshiba 62HM196 62-inch 1080p DLP HDTV — not HD DVD players themselves — that pay the bills. This rear-projection set is actually the smallest in the company's mainstream 1080p lineup (competition from flat-panels has apparently retired last year's 56-incher). Despite its massive dimensions, the Toshiba 62HM196 looks about as unobtrusive as any big-screen HDTV can. Its styling, with a very thin gray frame around the screen and light gray speakers set in the lower fuselage, diverts attention from the cabinet and toward the picture. As for the big remote, it is generally well laid-out, with a convenient cluster of keys around the main cursor control. Although the buttons look as if they could be backlit, they're not.
SETUP Starting with Toshiba's own HD-XA1 HD DVD player, the 62HM196 played amiable host to almost all the gear I could throw at it. The one exception, fittingly enough, was the Samsung Blu-ray player, which would not allow me to select its 1080p output. That's because, unlike a few other 1080p rear-projection HDTVs this year, the 62HM196 can't handle a native 1080p-format HDTV signal. Before you discount it as obsolete, however, it's worth noting that no 1080p broadcast sources are available, and that with good deinterlacing the 1080i output from a Blu-ray or HD DVD player should wind up looking the same as the 1080p output anyway. That said, if you demand 1080p input for whatever reason, then you'll want to seek out another set.
While the 62HM196's input bay is otherwise perfectly well-equipped, computer buffs might bemoan its lack of a PC input — though they'll probably raise an intrigued eyebrow at the Ethernet port. Unlike that of the company's HD DVD players, however, the TV's Ethernet connection is designed not to get firmware updates but to retrieve photos and music from a PC on your home network, as well as enable you, Toshiba's manual says, to "schedule recordings and reminders by sending an e-mail to the TV from any PC."
The JPEG and MP3 sharing over a network performed well, allowing me to view photos and play music using the TV as a sort of second, very big computer monitor — a nice feature for enjoying digital photos with friends and family. Scheduling recordings, on the other hand, seemed like a cool idea only until I read the fine print: The TV can control a VCR, DVD recorder, or DVR only via the set's TV Guide On Screen electronic program guide, and you can record only through a composite-video connection — the lowest-quality video signal available. TV Guide On Screen is there primarily to support the set's CableCARD functionality by replacing the onscreen guide you'll lose when you give up your cable box, but if my experience is any indication, it's a poor substitute for your cable company's guide. That said, TVG's performance varies on different digital cable systems, so you may have more luck than I.
|
The Short Form
|
| Price $2,800 / tacp.toshiba.com / 800-631-3811 |
|
Snapshot
|
| Despite less than perfect color, this big Toshiba's deep, clean blacks and great detail make it a worthy 1080p competitor. |
|
Plus
|
|
•Reproduces deep, clean blacks and shadows •Uniform picture across the screen •Resolves every detail of 1080i/p sources |
|
Minus
|
|
•Overly blue out-of-box color temperature •Somewhat inaccurate color decoding •Cannot accept 1080p signals |
|
Key Features
|
|
•62-inch 1,920 x 1,080-resolution DLP display •2 HDMI, 2 component-video inputs •CableCard slot with TV Guide EPG •Ethernet connection allows limited network functions |
The rest of the menu system was designed well enough, with the exception of the custom picture memories. Although I liked that the "preference" picture mode could remember my settings individually, whenever I selected one of the other presets — Sports, Movie, or Standard — and adjusted contrast, brightness, or other parameters, my settings in "preference" would revert to the defaults. If you spend any time setting up the picture as you like it, be sure to write down the numbers.
There's an advanced picture menu with a few other options. The dynamic contrast mode is said to adjust the picture on the fly to maximize contrast, but in our testing I found contrast superb anyway and preferred to keep the settings stable, so I left it off. The noise reduction settings did clean up some moving motes in both standard-def and high-def content, although for the highest-quality material I preferred to leave it off. I also really liked the option to turn the lamp down; it visibly improved black levels and will also, in the long run, extend the lamp's life.
On the other hand, I had a lot of work to do getting this set's color temperature to track properly. Out of the box, the Warm color temperature mode came closest to the neutral-gray standard, though it was still unacceptably blue, tingeing the picture more than just about any other high-end HDTV I've seen recently. Consequently, skin tones looked pallid, and white fields looked a bit blue as well. Measurements revealed that the 62HM196 did indeed operate at a very high color temperature across the full range of brightness levels (see Test Bench). Fortunately, once I got the grayscale tracking back in line with service-menu adjustments, the set was excellent in this department. Still, serious viewers will definitely want professional calibration for this TV. At this point, there's no reason to expect such inaccurate color temperature out of the box, and I hope Toshiba can address that in future models.
PICTURE QUALITY To see how the 62HM196 would handle the highest-quality source I could throw at it, I watched The Italian Job on HD DVD. As soon as the white-on-black ratings screen came up, I noticed something good and something not so good: The black levels were nice and deep, but the Toshiba displayed the so-called "rainbow" effect, in which brief flashes or trails of color sometimes appear in high-contrast areas. Since rainbows are common to just about every DLP on the market, I won't dwell on them except to say that if you're sensitive to them (most people aren't), they're no more or less prevalent on this TV than on others I've seen.
I'll happily dwell on those inky blacks, however. The 62HM196 produced as deep a level of black across its screen as any rear-projection TV I've seen, from the letterbox bars to the shadows around the safe that Stella (Charlize Theron) cracks to the black of her leather jacket. In my darkened room that depth of black lent the picture impact and drama, even after I set maximum light output at a comfortable level of about half the default setting. I also appreciated the clarity of the shadows: Watching Stella sit in her dramatically lit apartment, I saw no noise in the dark area behind her chair, and I could see details in her hair and in the shadows near the bookshelves and lamp.
With the combination of a 1080p HDTV and an HD DVD source, I expected to see excellent overall detail, and I wasn't disappointed. As Stella fingers the diamond necklace that was her dad's final gift to her, I noticed facets in the sparkling jewels and the fine texture of the brown felt case it rested in; the close-up of her hand revealed the lines in her skin and her superb manicure. Test patterns confirmed that the 62HM196 could resolve every detail of a 1080i signal, a feat few other 1080p DLP HDTVs can match.
When the close-up returned to her face, however, I did detect a bit more red than I expected in her skin tone, so I reduced the color control accordingly. While this tamed the Toshiba's tendency to accentuate reds, it made the other colors in the film appear a tad less saturated than they should have. They still looked good, owing in part to the extra saturation that results from deep blacks, but they didn't achieve quite the richness that I know colors on HD DVD can exhibit.
As with many other rear-projection HDTVs, the 62HM196 had its share of stationary screen grain, a result of using a high-gain lenticular screen. It was most obvious in scenes with a lot of bright material and movement, such as when the camera pans over the snow-covered mountains and finds the crew celebrating the gold heist; the tiny dots of grain were visible against the snow. They weren't overly distracting, however, especially from seating distances greater then 9 feet or so. And on the upside, this scene demonstrated the Toshiba's fine uniformity: No discoloration was visible in the white areas, and "hotspotting" (in which the center of the screen appears brighter than the outer edges) was nearly indiscernible during normal viewing.
Next I checked out the CBS HD broadcast of the New York Jets versus the Indianapolis Colts, and once again, the detail was excellent during the crazy final play, from the tufts of grass to the mesh on the players' jerseys. The intensity of green did look slightly lower than I thought it should, however, and the Jets' home greens appeared a bit yellowish in the sunlight. But these minor color inaccuracies weren't a deal-breaker by any means.
BOTTOM LINE The main issue for the Toshiba 62HM196 62-inch 1080p DLP HDTV is its inaccurate pre-calibration color, which is moot if you have the set professionally tweaked for a couple hundred dollars. That said, this DLP is capable of producing a picture that's punchy with plenty of impact, taking full advantage of the resolution HD DVD and other high-quality sources have to offer.
Full Lab Results
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V