Toshiba AV502U | 32 inch 32AV502U, 37 inch 37AV502U, 26 inch 26 AV502U and 19 inch 19AV502U 720p LCD HDTV Review

The Toshiba AV502U series of 720p (1366 x 768 pixels) native resolution LCD HDTV includes the 37 inch 37AV502U, 32 inch 32AV502U, 26 inch 26 AV502U and 19 inch 19AV502U. All models have built-in over-the-air HDTV (ATSC) and Digital Cable (QAM) tuners. Other headline features include Cinespeed, DynaLight dynamic back-light control and CableClear DNR.

Toshiba AV502U 720p LCD HDTV

Toshiba’s REGZA Cinespeed LCD panel has a refresh rate of 60 Hz and a response time of 8ms. Other brands with faster refresh rates of up 100Hz are common and even 200Hz is now available. Faster LCD response times down to 4ms are also available. Faster refresh rates and response times deliver smoother, sharper images for fast on screen action such as with sports or gaming. Toshiba specify a viewing angle of 176 degrees which is within a couple of degrees of the best figures available. In any case, most viewers find the reduced contrast and color shift unacceptable well before the viewing angles quoted by manufacturers.

To improve the black levels of their LCD display Toshiba’s DynaLight Back-Light Control monitors the brightness of each video frame and adjusts the backlight intensity to an optimum value.

CableClear DNR is designed to remove the video noise from poor NTSC antenna signals. The system is automatic, detecting the quality of the incoming video signal and applying the necessary video noise reduction.

A number of picture size options are available including:

Natural (displayed close to its originally formatted proportion)
Theater Wide 1 (4:3 picture has left and right edges are stretched to fill screen)
Theater Wide 2 (picture is uniformly enlarged with possibility of the top and bottom edges being hidden)
Theater Wide 3: (for letterbox programs with subtitles)
Full (picture fills screen with 4:3 aspect ratio stretched wider to fill the screen)
4:3 HD: a 4:3 aspect ratio of a 720p, 1080i or 1080p signal where sidebars fill the empty vertical spaces while not distorting the picture from its original size
Native: restores the size of the picture by the 3-5 percent lost during normal over-scanning on traditional sets
Dot-by-Dot: provides non-scaling display for VGA, SVGA, XGA, WXGA and SXGA sources

Four picture modes are available including sports, standard, PC and movie as well as a user configured mode allowing adjustment and storing of settings for contrast, brightness, color, tint, and sharpness. The movie mode gives a lower contrast for a darker room rather than providing smoother motion in situations such as slow pans which may cause judder. Smoother motion can be obtained by using the Cinema Mode set to film rather than video.

Color Temperature can be selected from three options; Cool (bluish), Standard (neutral), and Warm (reddish). Additionally it’s possible to adjust blue and green levels for preset temperature (B Drive or G Drive in menu).

Adjustment of picture black levels, up to +/- 5 from center, are available with the Static Gamma Adjustment. Moving in the negative direction the detail of black colors is decreased while moving in the positive direction increases detail.

The Toshiba AV502U model’s Game Mode shortens frame delays when playing a video game requiring precise timing between on-screen action display and controller input. For best gaming performance it’s best to match the game console output resolution to the native resolution of the HDTV, which is 720p in this case. Toshiba’s manual notes that this feature is more effective for 480i and 1080i input signals. Some parents may appreciate the GameTimer which allows a time limit to be set for playing a video game from 30 to 120 minutes after which the video game input is locked out.