Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 34HD82 34" Pure Flat Screen HDTV-Ready TV

I looked at a couple of wide screen tube units before settling on the Toshiba. I was leaning toward the new Sony XBR 34 Widescreen, but at 40" or so wide it was too big for my cabinet. The Toshiba speakers sit under the tube, and the sound is great. The picture quality of the Toshiba is unrivaled. It is convenient to set up, and the menu system is excellent. I also bought the Toshiba 5700 DVD player and the combination of these two products (I think they were made for each other) provides the very best in home theatre. It's a lot to pay for a tube TV, but worth the $ if you can afford it.

Looked at the cheaper HD TV's from Samsung but this TV is superior. Looked at Sony, but why pay that much and get less? First of all, this TV is HEAVY! Get help from a strong neighbor or better, have it delivered and installed. I have had this thing for 3 months and love it more every day. Everyone that comes over raves about the "3-D" looking picture when I play a DVD. You need a component video out progressive scan DVD player. The cable reception is great on some channels, others stink. The line doubler in this tv doubles the number of static "dots" on stations with poor reception. I had the cable company out twice before they got the signal clear enough to handle his thoroughbred. (Tell them you're going to a dish if they can't clean up the signal.) The sound on this tv is loaded with bass. The Cyclone bass(subwoofer under the unit) has to be turned down if you want to turn up the volume. I have it connected to an excellent sound system and it's a perfect match. The ultimate feature on this set is the 2-tuner picture in picture with favorite channel preview. You can watch one program on half of the screen and nine thumbnail programs on the other half. You set the favorites that you want to see on the right half of the screen. You get to choose 18 favorites. You can also watch standard split-screen PIP. Another cool feature is closed captioning when you mute the tv, great when rocking the baby.

If you currently have a conventional TV set with the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio but watch a lot of DVDs, you're probably tired of black spaces above and below the picture wasting much of your TV's screen size whenever you watch widescreen movies -- which are becoming the norm on DVD. The cure for this problem is to get a widescreen TV with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This Toshiba is an excellent 16:9 TV with a very sharp picture. Furthermore, this set is HDTV ready so that when you get HDTV cable or satellite service, this TV will be ready to display the dramatically improved picture quality characteristic of the new High Definition Television broadcasts to which all networks are rapidly converting. This Toshiba's 34" screen, although quite large, may not be as huge as some of the new thinscreen plasma TVs, but it's picture quality is equal or superior to plasma TVs and its price is much lower. All things considered if you want a widescreen TV that's ready for HDTV and you don't want to break you budget to get one, this excellent Toshiba set may well be the answer.

We looked at the Toshiba, the Panasonic, and the Sony 34" 16:9 units all side by side on the same signal. The picture on the Toshiba blew the others away. The Panasonic was $500 more and the Sony was $1000 more. No contest. The images are striking, with an almost 3-d effect. I had to fight long and hard to get permission from my wife to get an HDTV set. After 1 day I would have an even bigger fight to take it back, as she is now converted. It is strongly recommended that you go out and purchase an HDTV satellite system to really make this puppy dance!

This unit has a menu for setting up the tv and makes it easier for the average user. I found the sports setting too grainy for any use, the different settings for picture may be a variable detail gain. I found the movie mode to be the cleanest, with velocity modulation off. It comes shipped with contrast set to 100% and brightness too high for a low light room so lowering this will make quite a difference. the onboard sound is outstanding. All the a/v in-outputs are nice but I would appreciate a svhs input/output splitter on at least one channel. The picture quality (once set for the room) is nearly unbelievably good. The wide screen size settings nearly simulate hdtv using cable input with the line and pixel doubling. Highly recommend this TV.