Toshiba 42C3030D Review

42in LCD TV

Picture
Sound
Features
Usability
Value

Big screen LCD viewing doesn't come much cheaper than this, but not surprisingly, performance in a number of areas falls below the best.

82%

1366 x 768 pixels

HD Ready

Reviewed: 14 April 2007

Design

The Toshiba Regza 42C3030D may be one of the cheapest 42in LCD TVs out there, but you certainly wouldn't guess from its looks. Get up close and you'll notice the less than solid feel, but stand back and admire a visual work of art that simply oozes style. A square matte black frame perfectly complemented by crescent shaped silver swivel base will lend a touch of class that panels costing twice as much will struggle to match.

Features

A resolution of 1,366 x 768 is the first indication that the 42C3030D is pitched at the affordable end of the large LCD panel market. 2 HDMI are joined by component video input, twin Scarts (one RGB), PC connection, S-Video, composite video and an RF aerial socket. There is a CI slot at the rear for adding subscription TV packages. Finally, the 42C3030D comes equipped with analogue and digital tuner.

Details

Screen size & shape: 32in 16:9

Tuner: Digital

Sound system: Stereo

Resolution: 1366 x 768

HD Ready: Yes

Contrast Ratio: 4000:1

Brightness: 500cd/m2

OTHER FEATURES: Active Vision LCD, DNR

SOCKETS: 2 HDMI, 2 SCART, Component Video, PC input.

Toshiba's 42C3030D includes Active Vision LCD the company's proprietary picture processing system which has been designed to address four core elements of a TV image: detail, colour, movement and contrast. This flavour of Active Vision however is not the higher end M100 version (which will be available on the upcoming 'Z' series later this year) with 100hz screen refresh.

Another area of technological interest is Toshiba's dynamic backlight control, which has been designed to adjust the back light intensity depending on the current display. Darker scenes will see a reduction in the intensity of the back light and, Toshiba claims, a corresponding improvement in black levels. There’s also MPEG noise reduction and digital noise reduction which can be manually adjusted.

Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) has been designed to 'clean' images and reduce picture 'noise' to enhance the picture quality of all sources, but in particular Standard Definition (SD) sources.

MPEG Noise Reduction is a technology Toshiba claims reduces MPEG artefacts and 'Black Stretch' is a feature designed to improve apparent image contrast.

Performance

The Toshiba 42C3030D performs exceptionally well for the price, the main criticism being the poor black level performance. Although 'Dynamic Backlight Control' Dynamic backlight control improved black luminance for darker scenes, it didn't completely remove concerns surrounding basic black level performance.

Colours on the Toshiba 42C3030D are surprisingly rich and vibrant (particularly after some tweaking of the manual options), although the accuracy of the basic colours was not up to those we have seen on more expensive panels. With the manual colour adjustment options, the Toshiba 42C3030D can be tweaked to produce an entirely realistic colour range which produced some realistic representations of skin tones and other subtle colour detailing.

As with the Toshiba 32C3030D we have a bit of an anomaly with the 42C3030D in that High Definition content is rather disappointing but Standard Definition (SD) is surprisingly good. Even with a HD DVD disc as the video source there was just no getting away from the poor black level performance. Any film that uses darker scenes for visual effect is going to be a huge and noticeable let down. Greyish areas in darker scenes are just far too apparent and intrusive.

Standard Definition (SD) pictures were a pleasant surprise, with the panel maintaining a more than acceptable level of sharpness and detail even with some fast moving sporting action. Motion blurring was clearly evident at times, but never reached the levels we were expecting from this screen. It was the lack of 'Digital Noise' however which really impressed, and this is down in no small part to Toshiba's picture processing technology.

On the audio front, the 2 x 10w speakers do not elevate the sound performance of the Toshiba 42C3030D from anything above satisfactory.

Conclusion

The Toshiba 42C3030D at around £800 represents exceptional value for money for such a large screen. It is never going to set pulses racing with its overall performance, but if you are in the market for a large LCD screen which is a surprisingly good Standard Definition performer, then Toshiba's 42C3030D is well worth a look.