Toshiba Regza 42RV530U

Average User Rating

3.5 stars

21 reviews

Pricing not available

Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - ANGL Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - SD Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - RMT
Scroll Left Scroll Right
  • Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - ANGL
  • Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - SD
  • Toshiba Regza 42RV530U - RMT

CNET Editors' Review

The good: Inexpensive for a 1080p LCD; produces a relatively deep level of black; uniform picture across the screen; good video processing; superb connectivity with four HDMI ports and one PC input; sleek, compact styling.

The bad: Poor color decoding and primary color points make for inaccurate color reproduction; some minor false contouring artifacts.

The bottom line: Despite inaccurate color, the Toshiba 42RV530U 42-inch LCD represents a solid value given its otherwise commendable picture quality.

Review:

During the last year flat-panel HDTV prices seemed to hit a plateau, where the standard bricklike downward trend leveled off somewhat. Now, however, prices are on the decline again, opening up bigger screen sizes to lower price ranges. For example, Toshiba's lowest-priced 1080p 42-inch LCD, the 42RV530U, can be purchased on the Internet for a little more than $1,000. While it won't match quite the price-to-performance ratio of some of cheaper 42-inch plasmas, such as the Panasonic TH-42PX80U and the Vizio VP422, the 42RV530U still delivers one of the best values we've seen among high-resolution LCDs. ... Expand full review

During the last year flat-panel HDTV prices seemed to hit a plateau, where the standard bricklike downward trend leveled off somewhat. Now, however, prices are on the decline again, opening up bigger screen sizes to lower price ranges. For example, Toshiba's lowest-priced 1080p 42-inch LCD, the 42RV530U, can be purchased on the Internet for a little more than $1,000. While it won't match quite the price-to-performance ratio of some of cheaper 42-inch plasmas, such as the Panasonic TH-42PX80U and the Vizio VP422, the 42RV530U still delivers one of the best values we've seen among high-resolution LCDs.

Design
The 42RV530U looks like your basic flat-panel display, with a glossy black bezel about two inches wide on the top, left, and right sides, and somewhat larger on the bottom below the screen. A metallic gray finish is more prominent on the bottom edge of the bezel than the top and sides, providing a mild two-tone look. The speakers are located below the screen, which keeps the overall width of the set to a minimum. This compact panel measures 39.8 inches wide by 27.3 inches tall by 12.1 inches deep and weighs 48.4 pounds including the swivel stand. Without the stand, it measures 39.8 inches wide by 25.5 inches tall by 3.7 inches deep.

The remote control and internal menu system are both unchanged from last year's Regza line. The clicker is a bit cluttered with too many like-size keys, and I was disappointed to find that it is not backlit or even illuminated for use in dark environments.

Features
As do most LCD HDTVs available in 2008, the 42RV530U has a native resolution of 1080p. However, at this screen size it's very difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and lower resolutions.

Toshiba 42RV530U
The color temperature tweaks are relatively spare, but some adjustability is better than none.

The 42RV530U has a solid selection of picture setup features considering its price. Preset modes include Sports, Standard, Movie, PC, and Preference, but only the last mode is adjustable. Once you choose a mode and then make changes to any of the picture parameters, the mode automatically changes to Preference, which is fortunately independent per input. There are three selectable color temperatures: Warm, Medium, and Cool. Blue Drive and Green Drive are the only color temperature tweaks controls in the user menu, but they do help improve the grayscale beyond the presets. See Performance for more details.

Toshiba 42RV530U
The Color Master feature helped improve color decoding, but it still wasn't ideal.

Toshiba labels its Color Management System with the evocative title Color Master. If you turn it on and select Color Palette, you can make adjustments for all six colors, but as with most CMS systems, I found its usefulness quite limited. It really only works to make slight improvements in the color decoding, rather than correcting the inaccurate primary and secondary color points, which is what it should do.

Under the Theater Settings menu, a setting called Cinema Mode should be set to Film for proper 2:3 pull-down detection with film-based formats like standard-definition DVDs, and some cable and satellite programming. Also, a Theater Lock feature lets you lock your settings so that no one can change them.

As I expected from a 1080p HDTV, the 42RV530U offers an aspect ratio mode, dubbed Native, that's designed to show every pixel of 1080i and 1080p sources without scaling or overscan. You should use this mode unless you see interference along the extreme edges of the display. The set lacks a power saver function for use when the picture is turned on, although there is a toggle between Power Save and Fast turn-on that affects standby power consumption. The former uses less than 1 watt in standby, while the latter sucks down 17.8 watts when the TV is turned off, just to save a couple seconds of warmup time. Fortunately, Toshiba made Power Save the default. Check out the Juice Box for more information.

Toshiba 42RV530U
The back-panel input bay of the Toshiba includes three HDMI inputs and a PC input.

Hide Review

Compare to other s

Compare selected

select

Toshiba 42SL417U

Toshiba 42SL417U Starting at $749.00

  • Editor's rating: 3.0 out of 5

User Reviews

See all user reviews

Average User Rating

3.5 stars out of 21 user reviews

Rating Breakdown

  • 5 star: 14
  • 4 star: 4
  • 3 star: 0
  • 2 star: 0
  • 1 star: 3

My Rating

0 stars click stars to rate product

Most Helpful User Review

4.5 stars 6 of 8 users found this review helpful

"Excellent HDTV with Settings Recommendation" By TVExpert

Pros Very Great Picture

Cons The Settings Must be Treaked

Summary The key to this tv is adjusting the settings as follows:

Settings:

Contrast: 85
Backlignt: 50
Dynalight: On
Brightness: 60
Color: 45
Tint: -35
Sharpness: 90

Advanced Settings:

Dynamic Contrast: Middle
Static Gamma: 0
Color Temperature: Warm
B Drive: -5
G Drive: +10

ColorMaster:

Colormaster: On
Color Palette Adjustment: Green ... Expand full review

Most Recent User Reviews (Showing 2 of 21 reviews)

0.5 stars

By Dr. jns

4.0 stars

By Enreganzar

Where to Buy

Pricing not available

Sponsored Premier Brands on CNET

Where to Buy

Pricing not available

Which TV is right for me?

TV Finder

Televisions are expensive beasts, but they fall into a few distinct price categories. In our TV buying guide we've created a cheat sheet that will help better align the set of your dreams with the reality of your bank account.

In addition to narrowing your selection down by price, we have information to help you better understand screen sizes, HDTVs, features and connectivity, picture quality, accessories, and more!

Read our guide | Step-by-step TV finder