Toshiba REGZA 52HL167 LCD 1080p Television Review

A couple of years ago Toshiba's line was dominated by rear projection DLP designs. Today, flat panel LCDs are pushing those sets aside.

The 1920x1080p 52HL167 ($3,499) is the top model in Toshiba's REGZA series of flat panels, which sits just below the top of the line Cinema Series. The equivalent Cinema Series model features a refresh rate of 120Hz, which is said to minimize motion blur, and a $500 higher price tag.

Outside The set's sound comes out of a narrow slot at the bottom of its high gloss frame in a configuration Toshiba calls SoundStrip2. Inputs include three HDMI connections (version not specified) and two HD component connections. There's also an RF antenna input for the set's onboard ATSC/NTSC tuner and a service port for firmware updates.

Inside
On the tech side, the big pull is, of course, 1080p. The Toshiba will accept both 1080p/60 and 1080p/24. Unfortunately, when the set receives a 1080p/24 input it adds 3/2 pulldown and then displays it at 1080p/60.

Toshiba's PixelPure 3G video processing uses 14-bit processing. Processing at a higher bit depth has benefits apart from making good ad copy, but the result is not equivalent to what we would see from higher bit depth from the original source. Deep Color can do this, but we see no sign if it being implemented in the consumer world. And just because a display has 14-bit internal processing does not mean that it could accept a 14-bit source—if one existed.

Toshiba's CineSpeed panel claims a response speed of 8ms and a viewing angle of 176 degrees. Until recently, both response speed and off-axis viewing are two areas of flat panel performance in which plasmas have held a distinct advantage over LCDs. As mentioned earlier, however, LCD manufacturers have recently begun to make significant improvements in both areas.

Toshiba's DynaLight Back Light control is said to provide dynamic adjustment of the backlight to produce superior contrast with deeper black levels. There's also a Back Light control to minimize the overall image brightness while improving the black level as well.

In the Advanced Picture Settings menu, Dynamic Contrast worked surprisingly well. Used at its Low setting it deepened blacks and minimized the slightly washed-out appearance that was common in LCD sets until recently.

My review sample measured and looked best in the Warm setting. For more information about this, see "Tests and Calibration" at the end of the report.

There are four fixed, preset picture modes of video settings, plus an adjustable mode called Preference. Preference mode can and should be set separately for each input. But be sure to write down those settings because it's still frightfully easy to have your Preference settings wiped out without warning whenever someone makes a single change to one of the preset picture modes. We've complained about the volatility of Toshiba's Preference mode for over 10 years now.

Overscan is engaged in every aspect ratio except Native. As with many sets, overscan here reduces image resolution to a degree that's obvious with HD material especially. To preserve the full resolution of this set, for HD sources turn Auto mode Off and select the Native the aspect ratio menu.

The set is also compatible with Toshiba's THINC and CE-LINK. The THINC menu provides access to CE-LINK Player control, the Channel Browser, and the Favorites Browser. CE-LINK provides flexible control features when the set is used with other CE-LINK Toshiba components connected via HDMI. It was not tested for this review.

The Toshiba does not offer direct input selection, either from the controls on the set or the remote. You select from a list of nine options after calling up the Input Selection menu.

You do have the option to re-label the source inputs, but only from a preset list of options. "DVD" is one of them. "HD DVD" is another. Is it a surprise that there isn't a choice labeled "Blu-ray?" Apart from not being backlit, I like the Toshiba remote. The buttons are mostly large and well spaced for stubby American fingers. But I did find that the remote—or at least my sample—was balky in some of its operations. Sometimes it simply refused to work. Persistence usually resulted in success, but with more than a little frustration along the way.

Performance
Classic LCD issues like motion lag, poor black level, limited contrast, and color uniformity are becoming far less significant. There's room for further improvement, but readers who have avoided these displays in the past now have good reasons to have another look.

The Toshiba impressed me out of the box. The image was bright (but not too bright) and very detailed, particularly in the Native aspect ratio. And the blacks, while less impressive than the best plasmas, were more than acceptable. Its full-screen color uniformity was good.

Neither of the two noise reduction adjustments was very effective, even set to High. I rarely felt the need for them anyway, but set the CableClear on Auto and left the MPEG Noise Reduction off.

While I was happy with the Toshiba before calibration, I enjoyed it even more afterwards. Apart from color, the performance was equivalent before and after calibration once the user controls were properly set.

Standard definition digital broadcasts were solid, though you'd never confuse them with HD. But if you move over to analog cable channels like CNN, ESPN, Sci-Fi, the History Channel, etc., you'll see a lot more noise. It was tolerable, but a definite step down from even standard definition digital cable. This was not helped perceptibly by the set's noise reduction controls.

I did see some false contouring. Watching In Enemy Hands (a submarine movie that makes U-571 look like a classic) on HBO HD, the underwater shots had that posterized, "paint-by-numbers" look. But neither false contouring nor noise was common.

In fact, the Toshiba really showed what it could do with the new high-definition formats. The Chronicles of Riddick on HD DVD features are plenty of very dark scenes. While the Toshiba's blacks weren't the best I've seen, they were excellent for an LCD. Only rarely did either the black level or lack of shadow details distract me from the movie.

The Mummy is a similarly pristine HD DVD. The opening scenes in ancient Egypt—both bright and dark—were strikingly crisp and detailed. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, on Blu-ray, showed no shortage of detail. The color was outstanding, and the blacks were very good even in difficult, darker scenes.

Problem areas? The viewing angle was fairly critical with this set. Twenty degrees off-axis is about the maximum you should sit unless you want to watch a consistently washed-out image. That's still big enough to encompass all the seats on a large sofa, and then some, from a comfortable viewing distance.

There was occasional motion lag, though it was rarely troubling. Still, if you're into sports and video games you might want to look into some of the new LCD developments, offered by Toshiba and others in some models, designed to minimize this problem [or look at plasma- Ed.].

The Toshiba's video processing was fair at best, though it rarely produced visible artifacts on real program material. It passed the difficult Coliseum "flyover" at the end of chapter 12 of Gladiator on DVD. And with a 1080i input it handled the details in the Vatican wall in Chapter 7 of the MI3 Blu-ray release perfectly, but stumbled on the steps at the start of chapter 8 of the same disc. A perceptible shimmer intruded on the latter, which cleared up when I switched the player to 1080p.

Finally, the audio from Toshiba's SoundStrip2 system surprised me. It was reasonably well balanced and not actively irritating. Most of you will be using your own external sound systems most of the time, but I can guarantee you will find a need for at least occasional use of the set's internal amps and speakers.

Conclusions
In the past year I've changed my previously lukewarm position on LCD flat panel displays, and Toshiba's REGZA 52HL167 has contributed to that change. Yes, like all modern displays you can actually afford to buy, it has flaws. But in the areas where it matters on real program material—clarity, detail, lack of distracting artifacts, and, yes, even black levels- it's a very impressive performer.

Highlights
Outstanding color
Crisp, natural detail
Good blacks

Review System

Sources
Pioneer Elite DV-79AVi DVD player
Toshiba HD-A20 HD DVD player
Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray player
Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player
Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD cable converter/DVR
RePlay standard definition tuner/DVR
Cables
Monster and UltraLink HDMI
Tributaries and Monster component

Specifications

Television System: NTSC standard, ATSC standard (8VSB), Digital cable (64 QAM, 256 QAM; in the clear, unencrypted)
Power consumption: 219W (average); 0.4W in standby mode
Audio power: 10W + 10W
Speaker type: Two 4" round
Video/Audio terminals:
S-Video/composite video with L/R analog in
Composite video with L/R analog in (side)
three HDMI (video and two-channel audio), Audio Lip Sync supported
two ColorStream (component video)
PC (15-pin D-sub Analog RGB)
Fixed analog L/R audio out
Digital audio out
Other: IR out, service port
Dimensions (WHD, with stand): 50.5" x 33.375" x 15.375"
Weight: 101.6 lbs. (with stand)
Price: $3,499

Manufacturer
Toshiba
www.tacp.toshiba.com
(973) 682-8000

Tests and Calibration

With the Aspect ratio set to Native, the Toshiba's luminance response, in both HDMI and component at 1080i, extended cleanly up to the maximum 37.5MHz multiburst frequency from my AccuPel test generator, though it was clearly rolling off by that frequency in component. Oddly, however, the maximum frequencies of the 1080i chroma burst were more visible over component than HDMI.

At 720p the set responded to the max burst frequency in both HDMI and component, but was rolled off somewhat from either input. As with 1080i, the chroma burst was less visible in HDMI than component at the maximum frequency.

As noted in the main text of the review, the 1080i resolution, in particular, was measurably reduced in any aspect ratio except Native.

Both the color and luminance held up well at 480i and 480p with both HDMI and component inputs (and the aspect ratio set to Natural—the Native option is not available at these resolutions).

In its Warm color temperature setting, the pre-calibration gray scale (measured with our Photo Research PR-650 spectroradiometer), was, as noted in the review, very close to the ideal 6500K.(Fig.1). Calibration brought this further into line (Fig.2).

Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.3 shows how the set performed out-of-box, pre-calibration, with respect to this D6500 standard. If the red, green, and blue all overlap precisely on the 100% line across the horizontal center of this chart, the result is D6500 across the entire brightness range. The results in Fig.3 are actually not bad (falling within the lines at 90% and 110% is reasonable) but we can usually do a lot better. No set is likely to be perfect in this regard, but the post calibration results on the Toshiba (Fig.4) are excellent and come very close to the ideal.

Fig.3

Fig.4

The primary red and blue color points on the Toshiba were reasonably close to the correct values, but the CIE chart in Fig.5 shows the excessive saturation of green. (The white triangle outlines the color space of the set, as delivered.) While it may look like the extra colors would be a plus, this is not true. All colors in a video display are created from the three primaries, red, green, and blue. These are the only colors included in all consumer video source materials. When a set produces intermediate colors requiring a mix of the primaries (in other words, all colors other than the primaries themselves), it uses red, green, and blue, as defined by the set's color points, right or wrong, to create them.

Fig.5

If the set's primaries differ from the standard, all the colors produced from a combination of them will be wrong. The results will usually be watchable and sometimes even pleasant. Most of us have been living with sets having poorly defined primaries for years; in fact, many (if not most) manufacturers take liberty with these primaries based on some combination of technical, aesthetic, or commercial grounds. But they are still not accurate.

As noted in the review, however, with the right tools the set's ColorMaster feature can be used to improve this situation. Fig.6 shows the final result. The visible change was much more subtle than you might expect from comparing Figs. 5 and 6, but with the right program material you can see it.

Fig.6

I measured a peak contrast ratio of 1,525:1 using the output from a peak white window pattern (47.5 foot-Lamberts) and a full black field (0.031fL). The result was nearly identical when I used a full field white pattern (unlike plasmas, an LCD's output does not decrease as the average picture level increases). Thus, this measurement is directly comparable to the Full-On/Full-Off contrast ratio measurements provide in HT's print issues. For this set we did not perform an ANSI contrast measurement.

With the aspect ratio set to Native, there was zero overscan over either HDMI or component at 1080i or 720p.

In other aspect ratio settings the overscan averaged 2.5% at 1080i and 720p, but increased to an average of just under 4% (slightly excessive) at 480i and 480p.