Toshiba REGZA 32C3030D - 32" LCD HDTV

This 32" HDTV is part of Toshiba's C-Series, the latest additions to its REGZA line of HDTVs. The C-Series models have been designed with "value for money" as the central focus, and Toshiba hopes that these models will be popular amongst people who have, until now, held out before adopting LCD technology to satisfy their TV-viewing habits.

Since this 32" model is available online for as little as £470 (as of May 2007), it would be hard to deny that Toshiba hasn't delivered on the promise of a low price. The rest of this review will explain how often this low price affects the 32C's performance (in a nutshell: rarely).

Specification Rundown

The 32" model reviewed here – that's the Toshiba REGZA 32C3030D – has an LCD panel with a resolution of 1366x768. This is currently the standard resolution for LCD TVs, and is enough to show all of the available details in a standard definition TV signal, as well as from 720p HDTV sources. 1080i and 1080p HDTV content is downscaled to fit the screen.


Connectivity-wise, there are 2 HDMI inputs, one "VGA" PC input, 1 RGB SCART input, another SCART input that accepts S-Video signals, and the usual one set of Component inputs. The side of the TV also features Composite Video and Stereo Audio inputs, which override the Component video input if anything is connected to them (in other words, you'll need to unplug anything from the side if you want to use the Component input).

Appearance

The 32C made a good first impression by disguising its "budget" roots. The TV looks sophisticated and sleek with its matt black frame and pre-attached silver stand. Toshiba's designers have used common sense and have avoided placing any reflective materials near the screen – the only use of the trendy but impractical "gloss black" on this TV is on a strip near the bottom of the unit. Since this is an area that's unlikely to be touched and won't be the focus of your attention, I doubt it will be a problem for anyone.

The TV also swivels on the attached table-top stand, which is a useful addition. Keep in mind though that the stand has a curved shape when viewed from above, which adds to the slick appearance but may take up more space than TVs that feature square-shaped stands.

Remote Control

Toshiba's remote control matches the styling of the TV, with a black face and silver trim. The buttons are well placed and a directional pad and "OK" button can be found near the centre. The mute button is logically placed beside the volume control button, and the Teletext controls (which are perhaps less likely to be used) are bunched at the bottom. I was also glad to see that it features a Subtitle toggle button, because one other manufacturer requires you to enter a menu to enable and disable Subtitles when watching TV programmes. Buttons also exist for changing Aspect Ratio and switching between the usual eye-searing preset picture modes.
The remote control has a small switch at the top left which switches between devices, as this remote can also control a VCR and DVD player.

Picture Tweaks

Pressing the MENU button on the remote control brings up a menu system featuring five tabs that relate to Picture, Sound, Set-up, Timers, and other additional functions. The Picture menu allows for every important adjustment to be made, including Contrast, Brightness, Colour, Tint (rarely useful in Europe), Sharpness, and of course, the all-important Backlight adjustment.


There's also options for MPEG Noise Reduction – which is surprisingly non-damaging and shouldn't be dismissed outright, as it's far better than other in-TV implementations of its type – as well as traditional "DNR" for cleaning up video noise from analogue signals. There's also a gimmick feature called "Black Stretch" that attempts to give a superficially richer picture, which should be left off.

The 32C also features "3D Colour Management", which allows for more subtle adjustments to individual tones in the image. This function could perhaps let a TV calibration expert put the finishing touches on a calibration job, and is excellent to see on a supposedly lower-end screen.


The Picture menu also features an option called "Cinema Mode". This is Toshiba's name for allowing the user to enable and disable Film Mode Detection, which allows film playback to be free of jaggies (due to the fact that Film and Video content must be handled differently by LCD TVs). It seems that this function can simply be left enabled, because I saw no indication of it distorting Video material. More on how effective this feature is later.

Unfortunately, not all of the picture settings accessible are saved on a per-input basis. This means that you have one set of Picture settings that are applied to all of the TV's video inputs. I actually found that I missed the convenience of per-input settings far less than I thought I would, and found that one set of global picture settings worked well across the devices I tested.

In-depth Video Processing Analysis

Scaling Quality

To see how well the 32C up-scaled lower resolutions to its 1366x768 panel, I used the Sharpness pattern on the AVIA Guide to Home Theater disc (NTSC), feeding the TV a 480i signal (via RGB SCART). Slight ringing was visible around edges on the pattern, which is usually just a normal side-effect of affordable Scaling, rather than any deliberate attempt to Sharpen the picture. This is a fairly good result.


Next, I connected both a 1080i source (the Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player) and a 1080p source (a Sony Playstation 3) to see how well the TV down-scaled 1920x1080 resolution sources to its 1366x768 pixels. For the 1080i HD DVD output, I used the 1920x1080 test patterns from the Digital Video Essentials HD DVD. For the 1080p Blu-ray source, I used Sony's own test patterns that are hidden on some of their movie releases. The results here were also very good, with the TV down-scaling with little deterioration.

Deinterlacing:

PAL Film playback (2-2 Pulldown Detection)

Most surprising of all was the 32C's performance when fed an Interlaced PAL film. The most common example of a TV receiving this kind of signal would be when watching a UK-bought DVD of a film with a player connected through the SCART input. Many TVs and DVD players do not correctly render motion from Interlaced PAL films, resulting in jaggies. The 32C actually gets this part right, which is an exceptionally reassuring result from a budget LCD! This essentially makes a Progressive Scan DVD player redundant, which is sure to please owners of older SCART-equipped decks. In fact, since many Progressive Scan DVD players do a poor job of rendering motion from PAL DVDs, you may actually get better results from this connection method.

NTSC Film playback (3-2 Pulldown Detection)

Unsurprisingly, the same high quality results were true of Interlaced NTSC movies. I have never seen a display device that doesn't get this part right, so this excellent result is less surprising.

Video Deinterlacing (50i and 60i)

Next, I used the "Jaggies" test from the Silicon Optix HQV benchmark disc to determine the quality of the TV's Deinterlacing for the faster video frame rates. Unlike an Interlaced Film, which can be reassembled losslessly by the TV, displaying Video Camera footage on an LCD TV requires missing information to be filled in by the TV's video processor. This is why you often see jagged lines upon fast movement on LCD screens.

The Silicon Optix HQV test disc features a smoothly rotating white line that resembles a speedometer to test performance in this area. On other LCD TVs, the edges of the line take on a jagged scanline-like appearance at the most extreme angles. However, once again this TV surprised me very much by showing almost no jaggies whatsoever! This means that the TV's video processing is smoothing over the stair-stepped pattern (and doing it well), giving exceptional performance from a budget TV.

Fortunately, during the review, a real-world test presented itself: an ITV Sport football game. This is actually some of the best results I've seen of a sports game on an LCD TV. The diagonal lines on the pitch that normally shimmered looked far clearer and more stable, meaning that the game looked so much clearer as a result. There's no denying it, whatever line-smoothing technology Toshiba have in here, it puts some more expensive screens to shame. I would be very curious to know what video processing chipset Toshiba employ in the back of this screen. I'm aware that they've used ones from Genesis Microchip (the parent company of Faroudja) in the past, which would explain the almost total absence of jagged lines from Standard-Def pictures on this set, as these chipsets are renowned for their cost-effective Deinterlacing abilities.

In fact, the only fault I could see in this example was that the stands in the background became slightly square and juddery when the camera panned. The deinterlacing in this budget TV completely smokes that of my own HDTV set, which cost a considerably higher amount. This was one of the most impressive areas of this screen's performance.

Overscan

"Overscan" refers to the traditional zooming in to remove the edges of the picture. This practice exists due to historical reasons, but remains common today partly out of habit and partly due to the fact that the outer edges of TV pictures sometimes contain junk or other forms of noise.

The 32C appears to remove a little more picture from the edges on Standard Definition material than other HDTVs I've reviewed, but curiously, actually overscans less on the integrated Digital TV tuner. Allowing us to adjust the amount of Overscan would be a step in the right direction (very few TVs allow you to turn it off completely).

Composite video material

As usual, I tested this TV with a Composite Video source (Composite Video is the old-fashioned system sent by VCRs, LaserDisc players, and analogue TV broadcasts). Excellent removal of dot crawl and "rainbow patterns" from Composite pictures appears to be par for the course now with HDTVs (ironically at a time where Composite video is less and less likely to be used). This capability will be of consequence to few, but as I've listed it as a benefit for other HDTVs I've reviewed, it would be unfair not to do the same here.

PC Input

The PC input on the 32C allows you to send 1360x768 resolution video to the panel. As 1360x768 is only 6 horizontal pixels away from the 1366x768 resolution of the panel, the TV displays this video with three blank columns of pixels down each side, bypassing the TV's Scaling process for the best possible picture quality. Backlight, Contrast, Brightness, and Colour Temperature – in other words, the important options – can be adjusted for the PC input mode. I also used the TV to play Sega Dreamcast games using the VGA box peripheral at 640x480/60hz, which also looked excellent. While using 4:3 shaped pictures via VGA, the viewer has the option of pillarboxing the image (black bars down either side), or distorting it to fill the wide screen.

Digital TV / "Freeview"

The 32C's built-in DVB-T tuner means that it can pick up "Freeview" services. The Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) can be accessed by pressing "GUIDE" on the remote control, which brings up a slightly cluttered but still readable EPG. The EPG is a little on the slow side to navigate through, but important functions are easily accessible. Selecting a programme from the guide and pressing "OK" on the remote control will jump to the channel showing it, or if the programme is yet to begin, will bring up a screen allowing you to set up a timer recording.


The TV's video processing once again is instrumental in improving the quality of overcompressed Digital TV. The "MPEG NR" function does a surprisingly good job of softening (but not entirely removing) compression artefacts without sacrificing too much detail. The implementation of this function is by far less crude than on many other TVs I've seen and left much more detail remaining in the image than I was expecting, but as with any sort of detail-removing option, use it with caution.

LCD Panel Performance

I'm not entirely who sure who manufactures the panels used in the 32C, however speculation indicates that it is provided by LG-Philips. Regardless of who made this component of the TV, it gives good performance. Certainly, its best feature is its response time – there is almost no meaningful motion blur present at all, which is obviously excellent. The only real gripe I have with this TV is the fact that the viewing angle and black level are acceptable rather than excellent, as the blacks and overall contrast of the screen take on a slightly purple tinge when viewed off-angle. It means that my favourite LCD panels are still the Samsung/Sony S-PVA ones, which find their way into those two companies' higher-end TVs. However, I feel that the Toshiba's performance in this regard is excused by its price. Importantly, the TV's menus allow the Backlight to be lowered which means that should you run into the "misty blacks" issue common with LCD TVs, then you can tone down the overall light output of the panel and remedy the situation somewhat.

Another feature I noticed was some light banding, where gradiations between colours were obvious rather than smooth. Lowering the TV's Contrast control helped, but it wasn't possible to completley obliterate the problem. This was rarely a huge deal in general usage and was really only noticeable on my computer's desktop wallpaper.

The panel fitted to the TV I received for review featured no defective pixels at all, and was evenly lit across its surface, with no "hot spots" of brighter light. Obviously the quality will vary on a TV-to-TV basis, but I'm fairly confident that the same high standards will apply for the TVs that make their way into consumer's hands.

Several people have asked if the panel in the TV used for review emitted a buzzing noise. I could detect only a slight electrical hum pressing my ear right up to the TV (in other words, at an unrealistically close position), which was not affected by the TV's backlight setting, so I would have to conclude that I found no such problem.

Speakers

Once again, the built-in speakers on the 32C surprised me given the price point of the TV. I'm not saying that the sound is necessarily accurate or engaging, but my point is that it didn't sound "cheap". I've heard much less satisfying sound come from speakers fitted to TVs costing twice the price, and the "weightiness" factor to the sounds they're capable of producing can be supplemented by the TV's "SRS 3D", "FOCUS" and "TruBass" adjustments.

Conclusion

As it's available for around £500, the Toshiba 32C3030D is definitely a bargain. I must say that it's extremely refreshing to review an LCD TV and have your expectations actually exceeded. During the review process, I was pleased to find that any shortcomings (however little in quantity they may be) were directly related to the TV's bargain price point, rather than poor design or human error on the engineers' part. By this, I mean that Toshiba's engineers appear to have made the absolute most of the parts they've been given to put a TV together with: the 32C3030D performs as well as its components possibly allow it to. It's even more of a bargain when you consider the high standard of its built-in video processing, which means that the purchase of an Upscaling or Progressive Scan DVD player isn't even necessary.

The only thing to be aware of is the viewing angle of the LCD panel itself, as previously mentioned. Video gamers who spend a lot of time perched directly in front of the TV will probably this easily acceptable, but it may pose problems for more conventional living-room set-ups.

With all of this in mind, I'd have to give the 32C a positive recommendation for anyone wanting to spend a comparatively small amount of money on an LCD HDTV, provided they won't be bothered by the slight viewing angle issues. Once again, I'm going to award it the common score of 7/10, due to its attractive price point, average LCD panel, and surprisingly efficient video processing.