Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 26HLC56 26-Inch LCD Tunerless HD-Ready Monitor

I found this TV sitting among some notable brands in the store: LG, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, and Samsung. I was surprised to see that the picture was on par with the Sony and Samsung and outclassed the others (the Panasonic was skewed too much towards red and the LG and Sharp both seemed lifeless in comparison). The hi-def on this TV is excellent (both component and HDMI) and even the regular S-video looked great! Also, there was no ghosting to be seen on this TV.

The most amazing part about this TV that I found out when I got home was its speakers! I was surprised by the limits of their volume, all without distortion from the bass they were pumping out. Makes me not need to go out and get a home theater setup! Overall, I would recommend this TV (and the Toshiba name in general) to anyone.

*Just remember that you need to get a cable box to watch TV on this LCD*

I bought a Toshiba because the 26HLD56 was the top rated model for its size from Consumer Reports and Amazon was offering a very good price. The only difference between that and the "C" is the lack of a tuner. But if you're only going to watch cable and DVDs there's no need for a tuner, so save some money.

Very good LCD Monitor/TV with superb sound but one flaw regretably, did I mention the sound is great. This product is a 2006 manufactured of the Toshiba "Custom Series" LCDs. Incorporates SRS WOW sound effects, stable sound & 1\2 mute, and most of all five apect ratio resizing modes to choose from with an auto aspect ratio selectable in it's menu. Can also connect to a PC VGA (standard 15 pin RGB connector) with working compatibility modes of 640x480, 800x600,1024x768 and 1280x1024 all at 60HZ refresh rate; ie. to say only of viewing the entirety of your desktop in these four modes. However will also display widescreen resolutions of 1360x768 (max resolution of this model) and a few other resolutions but PC settings from within the monitor's menu will become disabled (I wonder why Toshiba made the firmware like that ???). Don't let that be a flaw you have to stick with, powerstrip software takes good care of that.
Quality is outstanding, I had to add this paragragh because I didn't get the cable I ordered for the first time review. My computer is connected to the HDMI through an "Atlona High-quality Dvi to Hdmi Cable", I dropped the VGA connection. You must be technical somehow before hooking this up as to knowing in which DVI category your video card lies. The DVI pins on this cable look somewhat like this - ::: ::: (Digital) rather than the custom :-: ::: ::: (Analog+Digital). The pins that would normally fall in the middle like :-: :::::::: are for digital audio. So to say your video card DVI must be DVI-I or DVI-D, not DVI-A but the cable must be DVI-D. HDMI is Digital only, not compatible with analog (RGB). With this hookup 720p and 1080i is possible, my inexpensive recommendation to you who would need to change your video card is an EVGA FX5500 card or later model.

I checked botht he Amazon product review and Toshiba website before buying and deduced, based on the size, that it was VESA 100 and bought a VESA 75/100 mount. There is nothing on either site that indicates which it is. Unfortunately, it is VESA 200 compliant only.

In addition, please be aware that the weight w/o the stand is 24.5 lbs. This was also not clear on either site. I had purchased the Sanus Systems VM2s w/o the 200 mm converison plate and now have to go back and buy it.

Aside from that, the TV arrived quickly and in good condition (shipped from Beach). I have not used the TV yet but assume, based on previous experience with Toshiba, it will be great. It is a very nice looking TV.

Being the typical Engineer, I did a lot of research before purchasing any HDTV. Due to documented Quality issues with Sharp, Samsung, and Sony, I concentrated on Toshiba and a very few other brands.

Since I have Dish, I really didn't need a set with a built-in tuner, so the Toshiba monitor was the logical choice.

I was aware of Consumer Reports selection of the Tosiba HDTV as the best in class. Now that I have this monitor set up and running, all I can say is WOW!!! CR was right as were the previous reviewers here on Amazon and various AV forums.