Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 43H71 43 HDTV-Ready Projection TV

I chose the Toshiba 43H71 projection TV after researching and viewing competing brands at local stores and on the Internet. The Toshiba offered the best combination of features, picture quality, size, and price. Although I was apprehensive about having a TV of this size shipped from a distance, it arrived in perfect condition. The delivery person removed the packing material and placed it in my family room with no problems.

The TV has a very sharp picture with almost invisible scan lines. The picture brightness will decrease somewhat as you increase your viewing angle away from center, but the picture quality does not suffer. Since I could not locate a TV stand for this unit, I purchased a Sony model for a 43" TV which is a very good fit. Hitachi also makes stands which should fit as well. This raises the TV approximately 14 inches, which helps with the viewing angle, as well as storage for a VCR and DVD.

Some pixalation was noticed when viewing digital satellite signals and Playstation 2 games. This may be a function of the larger, higher quality picture making any signal flaws more visible than my old 32" set. One slight problem has been observed for which I am seeking warranty service. The set will momentarily turn off and then back on again, with no input from the user. This only happens less than once per day, and hopefully is not an indication of future problems.

Overall, I would highly recommend this TV. As a first-time projection TV owner, I am very pleased with the picture quality and features of this model.

After researching several 36" to 43" HDTV-capable projection and direct-view TVs, I picked Toshiba's 43H71 for the following reasons:

1. 43H71 was the shallowest among all HDTV display units I looked at. (except for the plasma ones which cost way too much) It is only about 20" deep.
2. 43H71 seemed to have a brighter, higher contrast picture compared to several other rear projection units (I was able to do side-by-side comparisons vs Sony, Mitsubishi and Samsung RPTVs in a showroom)
3. In addition to 1 front and 2 rear RCA/S-Video inputs, 43H71 also has two sets of component video inputs. This is especially useful if you want to connect an HDTV source (e.g. sattelite receiver) and a DVD player through component video at the same time.
4. 43H71 was priced lower compared to other large direct view and RPTVs with similar features.

My 43H71 arrived ahead of schedule (right before the winter olympics) and the delivery people were very courteous and set the unit up exactly where I wanted in the room. This unit is not nearly as heavy as some of the larger flat-screen direct-view TVs, but still needs a couple of people to move it around.

The picture quality is pretty good. It actually has better horizontal resolution than higher priced direct-view units with smaller screens. I prefer sets with 4:3 aspect ratio over 16:9 since most of the current programming is in 4:3 format. 43H71 has a vertical compression feature where it can compress all the scan lines in a 16:9 area on the screen so that you can watch widescreen DVDs or HDTV with maximum resolution. Watching an HDTV movie on this set is almost better than going to the theater.

A pleasant surprise was the quality of the line doubler in this TV. It really does a great job with progressive scan conversion when the video source is DVD or good quality NTSC broadcast. Unfortunately, if you have a video source with poor picture quality and compression artifacts (e.g. sattellite and/or digital cable) this TV is not going to create miracles. Overall, I end up using the line doubler in the 43H71 instead of the line doubler in my sattelite HDTV receiver since it seems to do a much better job.

Sound quality from the built in amplifiers and speakers is very good.

After using this TV for about 3 months, here are some of the minor issues I came up with:

1. The remote control is nice but a little bit too large for my preference.
2. It seems to require slightly different convergence settings for the 4:3 and 16:9 (with compression) modes.
3. The built-in off-the air tuners (it has 2 of them) are not necessarily the most sensitive.

I am very pleased with the Toshiba 43H71 large screen television. It provides an excellent picture, and it also provides excellent support features for VCR, DVD, and other Audio/Video inputs. However, I am having a hard time finding a stand since it is a new model. A little patients and they will soon be available.

I was also very pleased with amazon.com's service and selection of carrier. The television arrived on schedule, and the carrier, eagle, provided on-time and courteous service.

This is my first time owing a big screen tv the quality is real good i play video games on it (i do not reccomend to do it.it can cause static burn on screen)watching dvd movies on there is real great the sound is great too.Over all i think its great.

Loved this TV until it started malfunctioning and finally quit working just after the warranty expired. We purchased the the extended warranty from Best Buy and they came out once but couldn't recreate the problem. When it finally quit, it was just two weeks after the extended Best Buy warranty expired. The set is now defunct, spent $199 so far for a local technician to tell us it may be able to be repaired for a minimum of $500. Toshiba and Best Buy refused to do anything to help even though we had reported the problem during the warranty period.