Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 42H83 42-Inch TheaterWide HD High-Definition Projection TV

Being an avid audiophile for years, I felt lost in the new arena of high-fidelity video. However, even on the showroom floor, this model had "something" about it that set it apart from the pack.

I have to say that after several evenings of fine adjustments to suit lighting conditions, and personal taste for contrast, hue, black level, sharpness . . . this set has far exceeded my expectations on delivering a high-fidelity image. Simply put, it is extraordinary.

I would suggest however, that you brace yourself for the "out of the box" image-quality experience. If you are in any way aware of what an accurately reproduced image should be, you will be assaulted by the intensity of the factory settings. Don't panic . . . there are plenty of customized preferences for all parameters that can be set to your taste.

I would also suggest that you perform the 9-point convergence adjustment once you have the unit to your liking. It does have an "auto" feature -- but this really is more for in-between quick resets of the manual 9-point feature once performed and set. If you have experience with service-mode, you can also perform an extremely accurate 56-point adjustment (56-points each of RGB -- the set is synched to G). Once performed and in-place, this set is capable of showing such detail, that you will see the individual threads and fibers of clothing, etc. and entire scenes take on a dimensional quality that I have never experienced before.

The bulit-in sound (all things considered) is superb, and the field-expander setting is as pleasing as anything I've ever heard . . . coming close to the famed Carver Sonic Hologram Generator for creating an accurate, "expanded" sound stage. Kudos on the quality of this circuit for "standard" listening in the home when external audio components are not wanted or needed for material.

I am rarely as happy and satisfied with a product's quality as I am with this. But, once again, remember . . . the quality is up to YOU. It IS there, but you're not going to get it out of the box with factory settings. With proper calibration of all parameters, I will go out on a limb and say this is as close as one can get to plasma -- with it's look & feel -- with a rear-projection system, and at this price.

Stunning.

After a brief but intense period of widescreen HDTV comparison and study, we picked the Toshiba 42H83 rear projection HDTV (HD-ready). Tons of features, lots of inputs (including a DVI input) and it looks great. On the showroom floor, its picture outshone many other tv's two or three times its price, very bright, detailed, intense colors. The 42H83 is very compact depth-wise, and weighs only 130 pounds - pretty amazing. I have a small viewing room, and went with the 42" (once it was placed in the room, it was clear 42" was plenty, almost too big). GREAT price, got a 10% discount, with the money left over (plus a little extra) we also grabbed the new Samsung DVD player with DVI 1080i output.

Got it home and fired it up. I believe (if I read the manual correctly) that the 42H83 upconverts regular signals (S-video, etc.) to at least 540 lpi (?) Scan lines are non-existent, even on regular broadcast/cable signals. Picture is brighter and has more accurate color than my old Panasonic Superflat CRT. The picture using the Samsung DVD with DVI connection is like looking at a Kodachrome slide - no scan lines whatsoever. The Samsung HD931 upconverts DVD to 1080 lines interlaced and the picture and color are absolutely stunning.

The 42H83 has different screen modes to allow widescreen viewing of 4:3 signals. One in particular stretches the sides of the image but leaves the center relatively unmodified. This provides for a pleasing widescreen view of non-HD signals, and the effect is more or less transparent - nice. Also featured are multiple Picture-in-Picture modes, which go far beyond the small image in the corner that you might be familiar with.

Due to the built-in resolution, any flaws or artifacts in the signal will be magnified; it is easy to tell which cable channels are strong and clean, and which are not. Plenty of rear inputs, including two sets of component, two S-video, coax, etc., as well as DVI input (DVI is the ultimate input for HDTV signals - requires a very expensive computer cable). Also has front panel S-video input set for easy connection of your camcorder or console video game box.

This TV has scads of features that I won't try to recall at the moment, but it is a complete package. I haven't delved completely into fine-tuning the picture yet, but the adjustment menus provide plenty of tweaking if that is desired. The set also features Touch Focus which automatically adjusts the focus quickly and accurately with the push of a single button - for most folks, this handy feature is all that is needed to obtain a good, sharp picture. The 42H83 has a very full-featured and advanced sound system, although I've bypassed it altogether to use my home theater sound setup, so I can't describe here how it actually works.

Reservations: By using the 9 point manual convergence, color bleed can be minimized to a large extent, but there seem to be some types of signals where it isn't completely tuned out (although it comes very close). Some DVD's have a lot of dark scenes, which do not come out pure black, but have a dark grayish tinge - although this may be particular to RPTV's. These might also be remedied by going deeper into the picture settings. Much of it depends, of course, on the quality of the signal... One last nit-pick - we've had some experience with occasional momentary signal "dropouts" using the rear S-video input - it's possible these are due to a complex home theater switching system I'm using, but time will tell on that one.

But I'm being a perfectionist here - the picture is truly amazing for a RPTV. We are very happy so far with the 42H83 (we hope we don't have any reliability problems, but so far so good).. Huge amount of features, small footprint, gorgeous picture, and a truly reasonable price. We can't wait until ESPN HD comes to our area.
Update: 1 month later of steady use, and no quality or reliability problems. Still churns out a big, beautiful widescreen picture - Monday night football is truly satisfying and DVD's are like going to the theatre without getting gum stuck to your shoes. Forgot to mention - we were a little shocked to realize this set was "Made in the USA." Nice surprise these days.

Unfortunately, my deluded fellow reviewer has posted that same comment on many different sites. Nice strategy Best Buy.
I just ordered and picked up this machine last week. It is a tremendous addition to my rather small living room. I would have liked to go bigger and I almost purchased the 46H83 model because it is a table top version of this tv with an extra 4" viewing area.
I was quite happy to see that this tv was easy to setup and operate. My wife likes the remote and she was able to figure out the menus herself. Personally, I like the fact that you can really drill down into the setups and manipulate the settings.
The viewing angle of projection tv's is what had always kept me away from purchasing a set. With this box, I have a slight darkening of the picture when I get to >45 degrees, but the picture is still excellent. You should really see the set in a showroom before you nix it for something you might have heard elsewhere.
The picture itself is quite bright and we have had no problems with viewing programs even in mid-afternoon. You won't need blackout curtains to watch this projection television.
The only thing that is lacking for me right now is the Toshiba HDTV tuner. Once I have that I will be able to crank out HDTV with no problems. . .but th 42h83 only has one DVI-HDTV Input and that means that I will only be able to pull in one HDTV input source at a time.

Over the past 4 weeks, I have been shopping a lot for the perfect TV, Projector and flat screen box (all HDTV). After discussions with many, I heard mixed reviews on all flat screen box TV's, except Hitachi and Toshiba. Sony TVs, on the flat box style, generally will inherit a black line at the top and bottom of the HDTV mode (if 4:3). It was illustrated to me that this can not be fixed through the TV, however, the HDTV Digital Cable box will hopefully fix this. The features of the Sony are nice, PIP (2 at a time, as well as scrolling), however, it came down to quality of picture for me. Toshiba sold me on that. The Toshiba picture, if compared to other projection TV's, is brighter, additionally, the "touch focus" which aligns the projectors is a pretty neat function (don't know if that is included on the other projection TVs). So far, I have been pleased and would definitely recommend upgrading the connectors for enhanced clarity. I have heard great things about Mitsubishi projection TV's as well.

Thanks in great part to the helpful other reviewers on this site, we selected this set after about a year of research on HD-ready tv's. Prior to checking this out, I'd looked mostly at flat-screen 36-40" CRT's, but since most of the best-reviewed were Sony, and I've had bad recent experience with Sony electronics (an expensive 5-disc DVD player that completely died 1 month after the 1-year warranty expired...which I'm reading is all too typical these days), I decided to seriously consider alternatives.

My spouse & I decided impulsively to toss our Christmas lists out the door last December and instead splurge on a big-screen tv as a mutual gift to each other; it was to replace our 10-year-old 27" stereo Zenith CRT. Having the reviews/specs in my head for the few models I'd narrowed to, we went to the showroom of a large local retailer who had dozens of brands and models so we could compare, and yes, as another reviewer noted, this Toshiba had the clearest, sharpest picture of any other RPTV's its size. Though a bit concerned about the "black" issues of RP's that others have commented on, we just couldn't overlook the value for the price. Plus, we have a very small space -- barely 12 feet from one wall to the other in the viewing area we favored -- and the narrow depth of RP's meant we could get a 42" screen where with a CRT we'd probably have to go smaller. (But it's true; there is a slight graying of the blacks, evident mostly on non-HD signals and from our PS2 when playing DVDs over its standard cables. My spouse doesn't notice it.)

Right out of the box, we thought the picture looked great. But, as another reviewer noted, it looked even better after playing with the foolishly-easy menus. And it had stunning sound; crisp in the upper ranges (i.e. dialogue), solid midrange, and a rather surprisingly impressive bass. We've since hooked it up through a new A/V receiver (Yamaha HTR-5650 -- very nice also, although a bit more brilliant & less mid-rangey than I'm used to), and are even happier.

Pleasing remote, with larger, intuitively-grouped buttons, backlit.

As one of the other reviewers mentioned, there are several screen appearance settings, and I agree: The one that stretches the edges of non-HD images does so imperceptibly. The tv knows when you switch to an HD station, and adjusts accordingly, so we leave it on that setting at all times. Wonderful.

As for the glare that the disgruntled reviewer mentioned: We hate overhead lighting, especially in our viewing room, so we can't comment on that. We have ambient, 40W incandescent lamps, one stationed above-right and others to the sides of the room. (If you have overhead lighting, get a dimmer on the light and maybe that would solve the problem, if there is one. Who wants to watch TV or a movie while there's an overhead light on, anyway? :-)

There are tons of hookups on the back of the set, so if we wanted to, we could hook VCR, DVD, PS2, cable, etc. directly to the tv instead of going through the A/V receiver. We just ordered a Toshiba progressive-scan DVD player (& of course component cables) from Amazon today, and can't wait to get it & hook it up. (We've been using our PS2 to play DVDs ever since our Sony DVD player died, and have been waiting for progressive-scans to come down in price before replacing it.)

And just wait 'til you see HD on this set! Our local cable company provides an HD receiver & the DVI cables "free" (well, their usurious monthly fees subsidize that), and we get several channels in HD. Jaw-dropping clarity. We'll even watch shows we have no interest in just to be transfixed by the amazing picture, and this unit with its great price is a fantastic, value-crammed way to experience HD.

Footnote: As mentioned before, this unit can shine as a stand-alone, but we have it hooked into a home-theatre setup that we've built over the years, that includes the Yamaha HTR-5650 (which replaced an older Pioneer A/V), a DCM center speaker, 5-1/2" Advent front speakers, Sony 5-1/2" rear speakers, and a Sony SAWM500 subwoofer (overkill for our little room, but the smaller one was out of stock so we got a discount...being a Sony we are nervous whether it will last, because we love it -- rounded, customizable sound, great features including a 20Hz basement, good price).

One little watchout re the universal remote: Our cable box is labeled a "Pace" brand, which the Toshiba owner manual doesn't show as a programming option. Closer scrutiny of the back of the box showed it was made by Pioneer, so I programmed the Toshiba remote for the Pioneer setting that successfully turned on/off the box. Later we discovered it somehow squirrels the cable box when using certain commands, so that the standard cable picture was loused up, & HD was completely deactivated. (To correct, we'd have to disconnect the cable box from its power supply to reset it.) We've never had the problem again once we stopped using the Toshiba remote to control any cable-box functions on this hybrid, private-label box.