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Toshiba 62HM196

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Full user review

  • 15 out of 15 people found this review helpful

    4.5 stars

    "This TV is better (and cheaper) than its competition."

    by tlendy25 on September 13, 2006

    Pros: Excellent HD picture

    Cons: Has no 1080p inputs, so I couldnt give it a 10

    Summary: I am not an AV expert or someone who may know all the technical stuff on HDTV, but from my everyday perspective, this TV is awesome.
    I had problems with my ws65313 Mitsu CRT RPTV, and this was my extended warranty replacement. I have to say that this TV makes my older Mitsu look like garbage - side note- dont ever get a tv from American TV and Appliances. My Mitsu was broken from April until Sept before they finally authorized it to be replaced....
    With that out of the way...I found this TV on Amazon (through Office Depot) for $2273. That is close to what I paid for my Mitsu at American, so I had them match this price and I got this.
    I hooked it to my Insight cable HD receiver via HDMI. I immediately went to an HD channel. I think that it should be run for a few minutes out of the box to warm it up, because it took about 10 minutes to look any good. After that time though it was crystal clear. Whenever I turn it on now, even before it warms up it is still able to produce a great picture. So I think it was just maybe since it was fresh out of the box.
    It upconverts the 720p or 1080i signal to a 1080p picture and does a good job of it. I have also seen in forums that this TV is capable of displaying all 1920 x 1080 lines, unlike many other so called 1080 tv's. I did notice that it had a bit of a blue hue to it. I went in and changed the preset setting from cool to medium temperature and it fixed that. I have also ordered an AVIA callibration disc just to see if I can tweak it and make it look any better. To be honest, I will be amazed if it can look much better than it is out of the box. I also havent noticed any rainbow effects that plague many DLP tvs, so I am glad about that.
    I played GRAW on xbox 360 and I almost fell off the couch. It was absolutely crazy how good it looked. I didnt experience any DLP lag at all. I did switch to game mode just to be safe though. If you plan on playing a 360 on it, play it with the 1080i setting on and dont bother with the 720p. After comparing the two settings the 1080i looked a lot better. It will upconvert it to 1080p anyhow.
    The only real downfall is that it doesnt support a 1080p input. That isnt that important today, but in the future it could be. On the other hand you may say that it does such a good job of upconverting it doesnt matter. The TV does take a little time to switch from channel to channel or from one source to another, but it is not a big deal when you see the awesome quality of the picture. The only other problem is that the remote could use a few lighted buttons.
    I looked at the new Mitsu line and the new Sammys and I chose this one hands down. Do yourself a favor and buy this TV instead of a more expensive TV with an inferior quality picture. Dont let the lamp problem from the 2005 Toshiba line concern you. The problem has been fixed and these new lamps should work as intended. If I do run in to a problem I will let you all know with an update.

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