The Toshiba 55 SV 685 D TV is a Full HD, 55-inch LCD TV. Released in summer 2009, Toshiba’s flagship model won’t fit everyone’s budget — or living room, for that matter! The 55-inch monster currently sells online for a whopping 3,200 GBP.

Florian Friedrich, tested on December 22, 2009

Diverse picture settings.
Barely any Local Dimming artefacts.
High contrast ratio.
Accurate 24p reproduction (even for 60i signals).

Not user-friendly enough with DVB-C channels.
Slight blur with 576i/p signals.
Distorted letterbox-zoom picture (too wide).
No letterbox zoom for up-scaled TV pictures.

Day-to-day TV viewing is a pleasure on this Toshiba — if you’re willing to put up with the average video-processing quality for standard signals and the awkward channel management for digital cable reception. On the plus side, you get a massive screen, loads of picture controls, high contrast, barely any artefacts, and excellent colours — this is a home-cinema hot tip.

Most important connections:

4x 1x

Multimedia

The subwoofer output is an unusual bonus; on the down side, the USB port and SD-card reader only play back photos.

You’ll search in vain for an internet connection on this 55-incher — given the price, it would seem fair to expect such functionality. But you can at least play back music, photos, and videos from a compatible server via the Ethernet connection. Sadly, the USB input and SD-card slot will only display photos.

Other Features and Operation

Our only criticism of the remote control is that some buttons are too small.

The built-in tuner accepts analogue cable, DVB-C (also in HD), and DVB-T. Numerous picture settings allow the user to adjust, for example, the colour balance, gamma, and light sensor. The clear, well-structured menu provides easy navigation, but the DVB-C channel list allows you neither to hide pay-TV channels nor to sort channels alphabetically.

Picture Quality of Standard Signals

To get natural-looking sharpness and the most convincing colours possible, users should set the TV to the “Film” mode. Digital TV pictures then deliver detail-rich images and barely any noise. With analogue TV signals, switching the noise filter off produces a very honest image. Unfortunately, though, the “Cinema” and “14:9” zoom formats are around eight percent too wide, making faces look unnatural. Inputting video via Scart-RGB or HDMI (576i/p) results in a certain degree of blurriness — the better option is to up-scale the signal before it reaches the TV.

The high-gloss panel lends the picture brilliance, but ambient light produces pronounced glare. With a maximum of 300 candelas per square meters, the 55-inch display produces plenty of brightness even for daylight viewing, but easily consumes up to 300 watts. Murkier films will make do with just 100 watts, thanks to the intelligent backlight system.

Picture Quality of High-Definition Signals

A CIE diagram reveals slight errors in the Toshiba’s colours.

HDTV playback reveals a small but irritating error on the Toshiba, whereby the TV fails to recognise the correct format, “Native”, and instead always uses the 16:9 picture format, meaning 1:1 pixel mapping is out of the question. You can get around the problem if you deactivate the automatic format selection, but this means you have to select the correct picture format manually every time you change source or channel.

In a practical test with various Blu-rays such as “Casino Royale” or “I, Robot”, the Japanese TV reveals its ability to produce highly cinematic images: In both bright and dark scenes, the picture looks extremely vivid. The slightly darker gamma value, 2.4, suits this contrast-rich giant well, and while the Toshiba might not produce the same depth as Panasonic or Pioneer plasmas, it does at least deliver a precisely balanced picture. The stepped shading you often see when you view LCD TVs from one side barely occurs here.

Despite the slightly extended colour space and a too-low colour temperature, the Toshiba’s colours still look convincing when compared to those of our reference TV, the Pioneer KRP-500 — what a pleasant surprise! Weaknesses appear, on the other hand, in black-and-white films such as “Casablanca”, where dark and medium greyscales take on a brown-pink tint. It just goes to show that even three thousand pounds can’t buy perfection.

Sound Quality

The bass and treble sound pleasant overall, but the speakers don’t point directly at the viewers and tend to discolour the sound, despite help from the integrated Audyssey equaliser. Dolby Volume is also on board to help iron out differences in volume.

Picture Mode: Movie

Picture Size: Native

Contrast: 98

Brightness: 1

Colour: -5

Colour Temperature: 2

Sharpness: -5

Static Gamma: -10

DNR: Off

Resolution+: Off

Black/White Level: 0

Active Vision M200: On

MPEG NR: Off

LED Backlight Control: On

Tint: 0

Film Stabilization: Standard

* These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations may necessitate slight adjustment.