Toshiba 40RV525U

Summary: You just can't beat this LCD for the price. Seeing it next to a Samsung, Sony & Panasonic at BB the excellent Black level immediately stood out. The overall picture looked just as good as the other TVs which cost at least $200 more (although the Panasonic plasma had a bit more detail than the the other 3),

Comparing to the LG & Insignia which were similarly priced it was no contest, the Toshiba/Sony/Samsung/Panasonic crushed those so for the same price the Toshiba was an excellent deal.

Getting it home was a different story but then again most of these LCDs require some calibration. The 3 presets are good starting points but you should not judge the quality of this set based on those - lighting, source, sitting position and personal taste of course all play a part and taking the time to tweak the settings and testing with different sources pays off big time.

While out of the box the colors are very saturated with overpowering reds, setting the temperature to cool, lowering the backlight and brightness to "normal" and not "retail store max" levels and reducing the color level to the 36 - 38 mark achieves a very natural and balanced image which is very pleasing to the eyes.

Setup is fairly simple though the remote and on-screen interface aren't very user friendly. Still, had no issues setting it up. Plenty of connections (3 HDMI, 2 component, etc.), cable & DVD work fine through HDMI (no issues), sound output to my receiver for surround via optical cable works. The only issue is that standard definition programming generally looks poor but it usually depends on the channel so I blame Time Warner cable and/or the Samsung STB I use. Still, HD programming looks great and for a 60hz LCD I have not experienced any motion blur or artifacts/pixelation with any sources, including sports programming (not a huge sports fan but damn, HD basketball looks great on ESPNHD! Go Knicks! Not!).