HDTVs

[Peter Sharpe]

It's a bit late for me now, but I am interested in people's opinions. I have just bought a Toshiba 32C3035D telly from Amazon for £430 (it is on sale for up to £600 elsewhere) and it is not a patch on the supposedly inferior Wharfedale set that my parents bought from Argos (one of the older silver ones) about six months ago. I had been thinking about a Panasonic, but was very unimpressed when I saw a couple of them set up in a shop. As the Tosh was well over £100 cheaper I thought it would be a good buy, as it had previously had very good reviews. Does anybody have any tips for setting up the Toshiba? The picture doesn't seem very crisp at all and sharpening it just makes it look edgy. The Wharfedale though has a superb picture, even though it is supposedly far technically inferior. It just shows that you can't always rely on technical specs.

[mr motorola]

It's a bit late for me now, but I am interested in people's opinions. I have just bought a Toshiba 32C3035D telly from Amazon for £430 (it is on sale for up to £600 elsewhere) and it is not a patch on the supposedly inferior Wharfedale set that my parents bought from Argos (one of the older silver ones) about six months ago. I had been thinking about a Panasonic, but was very unimpressed when I saw a couple of them set up in a shop. As the Tosh was well over £100 cheaper I thought it would be a good buy, as it had previously had very good reviews. Does anybody have any tips for setting up the Toshiba? The picture doesn't seem very crisp at all and sharpening it just makes it look edgy. The Wharfedale though has a superb picture, even though it is supposedly far technically inferior. It just shows that you can't always rely on technical specs.

It's basically down to viewer preference Peter. I personally wouldn't touch a Toshiba these days, although i have to say that they were one of the top 3 that i used to recommend to our customers.

I have found in my experience of seeing and working on literally 100's of new tvs every month that no 2 peoples preference are the same. All i can advise you is to have a twiddle around with the settings that appeal more to your own eye.

 

Giving you the best advice i can...............get your money back (if poss) and go get yourself a Samsung or if you can afford it a Sony.

 

Not the best advice ever given in a post but hope it helps.

[Peter Sharpe]

It's basically down to viewer preference Peter. I personally wouldn't touch a Toshiba these days, although i have to say that they were one of the top 3 that i used to recommend to our customers.

I have found in my experience of seeing and working on literally 100's of new tvs every month that no 2 peoples preference are the same. All i can advise you is to have a twiddle around with the settings that appeal more to your own eye.

 

Giving you the best advice i can...............get your money back (if poss) and go get yourself a Samsung or if you can afford it a Sony.

 

Not the best advice ever given in a post but hope it helps.

Thanks for the advice Mr M but I think it's too late to get my money back and in any case, there isn't actually anything wrong with it. It's just that I didn't appreciate how much better the Wharfedale TVs are in so many different ways. The Tochiba doesn't even have a short cut to the picture settings, so that when you do try to fiddle around with it, you have to go through several layers of the menu system.

I've discovered another thing: the much vaunted contrast ratio is a highly over-rated specification. The Wharfedale's is only either 600:1 or 800:1, whereas the Toshiba's is 4000:1 - far superior you might have been led to believe. Not true, as you have to turn down the Toshiba's contrast quite a lot to get a watchable picture and the colour also starts to look silly over about 35/100.

The lesson is not to take too much notice of the reviews in the magazines, although it doesn't help that very few retail outlets have the display models set up correctly so that you can decide that way.

[Steve Burke]

Thanks for the advice Mr M but I think it's too late to get my money back and in any case, there isn't actually anything wrong with it.

 

As you bought it on the internet, under the Distance Selling Regulations you have 7 working days in law to decide whether you want the goods. This is because you haven't had a chance to inspect the item.

 

Amazon go further than this and have a 30 day returns policy. What's more, they're extending it still further over the Xmas period:

 

"We've found that many of our customers like to order Christmas presents early. In view of this, and because we want you to be delighted every time you shop with us, we've specially extended our returns period for the Christmas season.

 

Items purchased from Amazon.co.uk and dispatched during the period from November 1st, 2007 to December 31st, 2007 inclusive may be returned at any time before midnight on January 31st, 2008. However, please note that our returns policy will revert to the standard 30-day period for items purchased after December 31st, 2007."

 

For further details go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/d...p;nodeId=502480

Edited December 15, 2007 by Steve Burke

[Peter Sharpe]

Thanks for pointing that out Steve but I have so little space available that I have now slung out all the packaging. I'm sure I can live with it, although the internal digital tuner isn't a patch on the cheap Grundig one that I got from the local Co-Op. I have tried to run the old digi box through the new telly, but I got fed up having to adjust the screen format all the time as it seems to confuse the automatic format switching. I also get much weaker signals from the Toshiba tuner, which is a bit disappointing and quite surprising.

[chesters1]

on our new freeview box we bought for camping we get nothing here but our old suitcase sized one gets about half the available channels ,its cutting back on the components to squeeze more profit thats the problem and old sky boxes are far better tuner wise than new ones the pace version especially

Edited December 18, 2007 by chesters1

[poledark]

Peter, I bought a Toshiba HDTV a while ago and the picture is superb...no fiddling needed...no digibox needed......and when BBC transmit in HD the image and colour are simply astounding.

 

I am a bit puzzled as to why you are using a digi box?

 

Den

[chesters1]

if your using freeview it isn't HD ,the gov sold off the bandwidth needed to transmit HD

the only way to get HD is via HD satellite (£299 for the box and a monthly fee via SKY) or HD DVD and theres two types of HD one isnt much better than 625 lines the other real HD at over 1900 ,it maybe also on cable but thats miles away from us to use.

the shops are full of "cheap" low spec "HD" tv's at the moment so beware

 

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/5340.cfm

 

as usual theres a cop out and we get 2 HD versions its like comparing a mini and a FI car and calling them both racing cars

Edited December 18, 2007 by chesters1

[poledark]

So I am kidding myself that when BBC transmits an HD quality football match then I am not reaaly getting it?

 

Looks pretty good to me Chasters

 

But, as I said, I am puzzled..............

 

Den

Edited December 18, 2007 by poledark

[chesters1]

i believe so den if you can see it on another telly not HD then your HD telly is interpolating it ,a true HD signal couldnt be used by an ordinary telly and i'm pretty sure the same applies to satellite ,sky transmits in both versions of HD which no doupt the tv adapts to which version it is.

HD cannot be transmitted in analogue so it leaves freeview which i'm 99% sure cannot be used as the bandwidth allowed for each channel is too small thats why freeview unlike any satellite has so few channels

perhaps the BEEB does transmit in HD by using "spare" channels it has to make up the bandwidth but i cant see how

Edited December 18, 2007 by chesters1