My set finally arrived on Saturday, six weeks after I ordered it from Argos.
Tip #1: Unless you have very high ceilings, you will not be able to lift the box off the top of the TV inside. If you want to preserve the box, you will need to remove it outdoors, or tilt the TV onto it's face/back inside.
(Mine came into the living-room through patio doors from the garden - if yours has to be carried through narrow spaces then removing the protection of the box first could be a bad idea.)
Tip #2: After you've lifted the box off, the TV is left standing on foam inserts in a cardboard tray. It takes two people to lift it out, and although the set is not that heavy, it may not be a job for women.
(My wife is quite strong, but she said it was to heavy. I can't help feeling that it was the size of the set rather than the weight that intimidated her.)
My furniture is arranged so that I watch from only seven feet, which is probably a lot closer than Toshiba intended, and much closer than most people would sit to a set of this size. Frequently when I was configuring the settings I noticed that problems I was trying to get rid of, such as graininess and 50hz flicker in progressive mode, were not a problem or were greatly reduced if I simply watched from about double the distance instead.
Tip #3: When there are problems, picture quality can usually be greatly improved by simply watching from further away (although this might defeat the objective of buying a big screen in the first place.)
I started off watching ordinary TV, which I get from analog cable at the moment, though I hope to be upgraded to Sky digital soon. The picture quality was pretty terrible and for the first few hours I thought I was going to have to return the set. Once Saturday afternoon sport was over, I was able to experiment with the settings, and picture quality was greatly improved.
Tip #4: These rear-projection sets are very sensitive to the settings, having contrast and brightness to high or convergence even slightly out messes up the picture far more than you'd imagine. Spend a lot of time getting these right.
The built-in settings I had started off watching with were contrast 100 and brightness 50 - after experimentation I've settled on contrast 25 and brightness 40 at the moment, though this can sometimes be a little to dark. I'm awaiting the arrival of my DVE disk, I hope that will help me find the optimum settings. Although the convergence didn't seem far out, I'm fairly sure that the small improvements I made had a big impact in reducing cable TV graininess.
Turning down the contrast and brightness and doing the convergence improved the cable picture until it was acceptable. I also found that at my close viewing distance I could see scan lines in all modes except progressive, so I use progressive mode all the time. Before I turned down brightness and contrast, progressive mode was unusable because of 50hz flicker, flicker became a non-issue after turning them down.
Next I tested the set with a DVD, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." As far as I'm concerned, the picture quality was as good as I remember it being in the cinema - it was unbelievably good. It was at this stage that I knew I had done the right thing, realised my home cinema dream, by buying this set. CRT projection was last on my list of technologies when I set out to buy a new set. Having seen this one, I now no longer believe that plasma, LCD, LCD projection or DLP projection are capable of the same picture quality, even if you exclude dark scenes where they are known to be at a disadavantage. I believe that what this set can do with a DVD source cannot be matched by any other technology.
I did notice in one or two scenes that my external deinterlacer did a slightly better job than the internal one.
Tip #4: The internal progressive scan gives you most of the benefits of progressive scan. If you are tempted to buy a progressive scan DVD player, there's probably no point unless you buy a very expensive one with a chip you know will do a better job than the Toshiba's, even then you will not see any difference most of the time. (It's quite trivial for a DVD player to generate a progressive scan picture so the capability can be used for marketing purposes, doing it well, better than the Toshiba, is a much bigger challenge.)
I had intended to feed all my video signals through my external Iscan Pro deinterlacer, however two issues have forced me to take it out of the loop for the time being. The new Toshiba SD330 DVD player I had bought especially for its component inputs generates slight interference when connected via the Iscan. (It is fine when connected directly to the TV, and my old player via S-video doesn't have a problem going via the Iscan, so it looks like I've wasted my money buying the new player.) The other issue is that the VCR tuner I was going to use to send cable TV through the Iscan is producing a very poor picture compared to the TV, the TV tuner is simply better. Also the TVs noise reduction can't be used on the progessive scan input from the Iscan. The bottom line is that using the TVs built-in tuner gives me a much better picture than the VCR.
I bought some expensive cables so that my SVHS VCR could be connected to everything else to record. That was a mistake. On a screen this big, watching as close as I am, and having seen the quality of picture I can get from DVD, the quality even from a perfect SuperVHS recording is so poor there is simply no way I am ever going to watch videotape again.
Tip #5: Although the set can be viewable in bright light if you turn up contrast and brightness, if you turn them down to optimise picture quality you may need to darken the room. (This may not apply so much if you are watching from a more sensible distance than me.) (Incidentally, I think the ISF web site does say that TV is meant to be watched in dim surroundings, and that the correct response to bright light is to darken the room, not brighten the TV.)
Bottom Line: My extreme set-up where I sit very close to the screen makes it very difficult to get good picture quality, however I have achieved it with DVD, proving that the problem is getting a quality signal to the set, and not shortcomings of the set itself.
Tip #1: Unless you have very high ceilings, you will not be able to lift the box off the top of the TV inside. If you want to preserve the box, you will need to remove it outdoors, or tilt the TV onto it's face/back inside.
(Mine came into the living-room through patio doors from the garden - if yours has to be carried through narrow spaces then removing the protection of the box first could be a bad idea.)
Tip #2: After you've lifted the box off, the TV is left standing on foam inserts in a cardboard tray. It takes two people to lift it out, and although the set is not that heavy, it may not be a job for women.
(My wife is quite strong, but she said it was to heavy. I can't help feeling that it was the size of the set rather than the weight that intimidated her.)
My furniture is arranged so that I watch from only seven feet, which is probably a lot closer than Toshiba intended, and much closer than most people would sit to a set of this size. Frequently when I was configuring the settings I noticed that problems I was trying to get rid of, such as graininess and 50hz flicker in progressive mode, were not a problem or were greatly reduced if I simply watched from about double the distance instead.
Tip #3: When there are problems, picture quality can usually be greatly improved by simply watching from further away (although this might defeat the objective of buying a big screen in the first place.)
I started off watching ordinary TV, which I get from analog cable at the moment, though I hope to be upgraded to Sky digital soon. The picture quality was pretty terrible and for the first few hours I thought I was going to have to return the set. Once Saturday afternoon sport was over, I was able to experiment with the settings, and picture quality was greatly improved.
Tip #4: These rear-projection sets are very sensitive to the settings, having contrast and brightness to high or convergence even slightly out messes up the picture far more than you'd imagine. Spend a lot of time getting these right.
The built-in settings I had started off watching with were contrast 100 and brightness 50 - after experimentation I've settled on contrast 25 and brightness 40 at the moment, though this can sometimes be a little to dark. I'm awaiting the arrival of my DVE disk, I hope that will help me find the optimum settings. Although the convergence didn't seem far out, I'm fairly sure that the small improvements I made had a big impact in reducing cable TV graininess.
Turning down the contrast and brightness and doing the convergence improved the cable picture until it was acceptable. I also found that at my close viewing distance I could see scan lines in all modes except progressive, so I use progressive mode all the time. Before I turned down brightness and contrast, progressive mode was unusable because of 50hz flicker, flicker became a non-issue after turning them down.
Next I tested the set with a DVD, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." As far as I'm concerned, the picture quality was as good as I remember it being in the cinema - it was unbelievably good. It was at this stage that I knew I had done the right thing, realised my home cinema dream, by buying this set. CRT projection was last on my list of technologies when I set out to buy a new set. Having seen this one, I now no longer believe that plasma, LCD, LCD projection or DLP projection are capable of the same picture quality, even if you exclude dark scenes where they are known to be at a disadavantage. I believe that what this set can do with a DVD source cannot be matched by any other technology.
I did notice in one or two scenes that my external deinterlacer did a slightly better job than the internal one.
Tip #4: The internal progressive scan gives you most of the benefits of progressive scan. If you are tempted to buy a progressive scan DVD player, there's probably no point unless you buy a very expensive one with a chip you know will do a better job than the Toshiba's, even then you will not see any difference most of the time. (It's quite trivial for a DVD player to generate a progressive scan picture so the capability can be used for marketing purposes, doing it well, better than the Toshiba, is a much bigger challenge.)
I had intended to feed all my video signals through my external Iscan Pro deinterlacer, however two issues have forced me to take it out of the loop for the time being. The new Toshiba SD330 DVD player I had bought especially for its component inputs generates slight interference when connected via the Iscan. (It is fine when connected directly to the TV, and my old player via S-video doesn't have a problem going via the Iscan, so it looks like I've wasted my money buying the new player.) The other issue is that the VCR tuner I was going to use to send cable TV through the Iscan is producing a very poor picture compared to the TV, the TV tuner is simply better. Also the TVs noise reduction can't be used on the progessive scan input from the Iscan. The bottom line is that using the TVs built-in tuner gives me a much better picture than the VCR.
I bought some expensive cables so that my SVHS VCR could be connected to everything else to record. That was a mistake. On a screen this big, watching as close as I am, and having seen the quality of picture I can get from DVD, the quality even from a perfect SuperVHS recording is so poor there is simply no way I am ever going to watch videotape again.
Tip #5: Although the set can be viewable in bright light if you turn up contrast and brightness, if you turn them down to optimise picture quality you may need to darken the room. (This may not apply so much if you are watching from a more sensible distance than me.) (Incidentally, I think the ISF web site does say that TV is meant to be watched in dim surroundings, and that the correct response to bright light is to darken the room, not brighten the TV.)
Bottom Line: My extreme set-up where I sit very close to the screen makes it very difficult to get good picture quality, however I have achieved it with DVD, proving that the problem is getting a quality signal to the set, and not shortcomings of the set itself.