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Toshiba 37 X 3030 D
The Toshiba 37 X 3030 D TV is a 37" (94 cm) LCD flat-panel TV with a retail price of around 1,500 GBP and has been available since fall 2007.
Florian Friedrich, October 17, 2007
- The screen resolution has been designed for HDTV: The finest of details are rendered crisply on its 1920 x 1080 display.
- Its broad feature set and excellent handling are pure enjoyment.
- Environmentally friendly: Its low power consumption at reduced backlight levels is highly commendable.
- Colors are factory-tuned on the bluish side, which is unpleasant.
- A little more consistency would not have gone amiss - film playback in the 24p cinema standard format is permitted but has no optical advantage.
The Toshiba's strengths are in the clarity of HDTV detail reproduction, its superb features and ease of operation. The major weakness is its rather cool and pallid color spectrum. For an LCD television, depth perception and its contrast range are perfectly adequate.
When it comes to flat-panel TVs, Toshiba has to be regarded as one of the top players. Alone in Germany, the manufacturer's product portfolio (as at the beginning of 2008) comprises more than 70 LCD televisions in sizes ranging from 15" to 57".
Considering its size and feature set, this 37" model is quite reasonably priced. Although the manufacturer's recommended retail price is 1,500 GBP, the average price being commanded on the Internet is around 1,000 GBP.
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Screen Resolution and Viewing Distance:
The 37 X 3030 D is an LCD flat-panel television supporting the full 1920 x 1080 pixel HDTV resolution. When viewing analog channels or DVB-T material, the optimal viewing distance should be around three meters - with super HD material however, the viewing distance can be shortened to around one meter for effortless recognition of fine details.
Low Power Consumption:
A distinctive technical feature of the Toshiba is its low power consumption, which is due mainly to the progressive adjustability of its backlight. At its darkest setting, the TV consumes just 70W. At its mid setting, suitable for comfortable daytime viewing even on the brightest of summer days, the set consumes a moderate 124W. At full brightness (177 W), the 400 cd/m² intensity is so incredibly high that even when placed outside on the terrace, the picture should be easily distinguishable.
Connectivity:
A Common Interface (CI) unit has a card reader that accepts pay-TV cards for future DVB-T transmissions.
A particular characteristic of Toshiba televisions in this price category are the comprehensive audio and video interfacing possibilities. Stereo audio signals are normally connected to the RCA terminals, while both HDMI and VGA are available for video.
When viewing a signal through the VGA or HDMI inputs, the stereo audio input can be mapped to that channel. This allows you to listen to your PC's audio as soon as you switch to the VGA or HDMI input. This is something of a specialty in Toshiba TVs.
Besides the analog and digital outputs, the Toshiba possesses a sub-woofer interface to which a bass-box (active sub-woofer) can be connected for sensational sound - film explosions will knock your socks off.
Operation
The name Toshiba has always been associated with implicit, no fuss and clear-to-understand operation. The screen menu is not too complex, is responsive, and the combination of coordinated colors and font choice makes it is easy to read.
Even the remote controller is well thought out: Separate buttons are available for all the major functions and yet it remains uncluttered. However, the clearance between the buttons along the bottom row and the button captions could be just a touch larger.
The Toshiba has a number of comfortable features that are very practical for every day use, such as a directly accessible list of all the video inputs and programs, or a button that can switch between the last two viewed channels. This is a nifty feature to check, for example, whether a commercial break has passed.
TV and DVD Picture Quality
Detail Presentation and Analog TV Reception:
The flat-panel television scores highly when it comes to detail presentation and sharpness - even in zoom picture mode - while advanced video processing has all but eliminated flicker or jaggedness on picture edges.
Analog television reception, even from a good broadcaster with ideal propagation conditions will be, by comparison, somewhat noisy - activation of the noise filter will reduce the effect, but at the cost of motion clarity.
Smoother Motion Effects:
Generated images are inserted between individually sampled frames to create smoother motion effects compared to more standard television sets. This is particularly the case where images with a high degree of motion are rendered - such as marquee texts, fast camera panning or camera fly-through. Only Phillips can compete on this level with its video processing algorithms. However, in football scenes, for example, where the camera has to pan quickly, intricate details such as the individual blades of grass on the turf become blurred and merge to form a homogeneous splodge of green. LCD televisions with 100 Hz technology and particularly plasma sets truly show their supremacy under these conditions as they display a better structured and more organic picture. Problems are not anticipated even when operating cheap satellite receiver technology connected to the TV via an RGB Scart interface; the picture remains crisp and focused with only a slight reduction of detail.
HDMI for DVD Playback:
The HDMI - the best video interface - should be used for DVD playback: Even at the cheaper end of the scale, modern DVD players are equipped with this interface, which, in many cases, can even have the output resolution regulated.
The standard TV picture is then scaled up to HDTV resolution - at 1080 lines, this pseudo HTDV picture is then output beautifully on the display. As a bonus: By contrast to all the other input sources, the overscan can be completely disabled for HDMI signals, hence, even the fine film grain of the British super hit "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe is rendered with maximum sharpness and clarity.
HDTV Picture Quality
Color Settings and Management:
The greatest of this TV's weaknesses is quite irrespective of the video source, whether standard analog TV, DVD or HDTV film: In all three preset configurations the amount of blue is out of proportion and dominates. Due to the lack of adjustment possibilities for the color balance settings, there is really no chance to influence this effect.
The most neutral picture we found can only be attained by using the "Normal" color temperature preset. In particular, pictures with a markedly warm ambience are rendered, through color matching, too pale and lifeless.
Black and white film scenes, such as those at the beginning of "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Casino Royale" are overlaid with a light blue cast, appear unpleasant, and slight color shades appear within what should be neutral gray areas.
The numerous regulators available for "3D Color Management" affect only the color and saturation values of the gaudy colors (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow - the RGB + CMY color models) and have no effect on the gray (shades of black) hues.
Blu-ray or HD DVD Sources:
The Toshiba renders intricate details of HDTV images from Blu-ray or HD DVD sources without a problem, and proves itself impeccably as it delivers pixel perfect results when given challenging test imagery to display. The Blu-ray Bond film "Casino Royale" is accordingly crisp and clearly portrayed, as indeed are the pixel-sized stars in the film "Apollo 13".
"24p Compatibility":
Playback of 24p formatted material, which the latest HD players support, is possible, but not altogether useful as motion playback shows no improvement. Toshiba's advertising campaign mentions "24p compatibility", which is a little baffling as it suggests that motion reproduction of 24p signals will be as at the movies. But of course this is not the case due to Toshiba's own internal video processing.
"Active Backlight Control":
The changeover between scenes with rather gloomy ambience to those comprising a more brilliant mood is executed reasonably well on the Toshiba, given the state of current LCD technology. Through dynamic backlight control (or "Active Backlight Control") the Toshiba can achieve an incredible 3,000:1 contrast range when comparing dark with light images. However, within the same picture, where the backlight controller can have no effect, then the contrast range reduces to a max. 800:1 - still not a bad achievement, but the jet-black of space in "Apollo 13" has a light violet cast from the residual light.
The very best LCD flat-panel TVs in this category have perhaps twice the contrast range - top plasma screens such as the Pioneer PDP LX-508D well exceed the 3,000:1 mark, and clearly illustrate how advanced this technology is when it comes to contrast.
Sound Quality
The under slung stereo loudspeakers give good speech reproduction and spacious sounding film soundtracks. Although powerful, the bass tones of music are somewhat soggy and muffled. An external loudspeaker is easy to accommodate through the numerous audio interfaces the Toshiba has to offer.
Settings for the best home-theatre performance*
Mode: User
Backlight: 50
Contrast: 99
Brightness: 68
Color: 40
Tint: 0
Sharpness: -30
DNR: Off
Picture Format: Exact Scan
MPEG NR: Off
Black Stretch: Off
Color Temperature: Normal
* applied to realistic playback from HD DVD/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations may necessitate slight adjustment.
Quick Points Summary
At ease: The TV is supplied with a rotating pedestal as standard.
Superb: Only a few televisions in this price category offer such a range of interfaces as the Toshiba - even a subwoofer output is present.
Tidy: The fashionable no-nonsense remote controller has everything to hand and is quick to master.