Home > Consumer Reviews > Toshiba 19AV500U 19-Inch 720p LCD HDTV (Black)

I live in a "fringe" area for OTA reception in a densely wooded neighborhood 30 miles from the cities and have a rooftop antenna with a pre-amplifier system. I currently own Hitachi, Sony and Olevia TVs with built in ATSC tuners and find the Toshiba 19AV500U has the most trouble maintaining good reception from several of the HD channels. I've tried hooking it up to the other antenna leads in the house and results were the same so I've concluded the tuner sensitivity is not as good as my other TVs. However, when locked-in to an HD channel the picture quality is excellent. The Toshiba is very attractive with the piano black bezel and adjustable stand. The interface is simple and intuitive, setup was a breeze. I found the "DynaLight" feature annoying as it seems to randomly change the overall brightness ever so slightly too often. At first I thought there was something wrong with the backlight because of this "flickering" effect. I discovered that DynaLight is enabled by default. When I turned it off in the Advanced Video menu the problem was resolved. Overall this is a very good budget priced LCD HDTV from one of the best names in the business. This is a darned tootin' fine TV.

All 19 inch HDTV's regardless of brand have a 16:10 aspect ratio.
This is because 19 inch computer monitors are 16:10 and they out number televisions by the billions.
To keep the cost down TV makers buy the same LCD panels made for computer monitors. Unless you would pay $1000 for a 19 inch set, I doubt any company will ever custom order a 16:9 panel for television manufacture.
A lot of these TV's can be set to 16:9. There will be a small black bar on the right and left edges since the panel is wider. But a lot of people hate the black bar, so there you go..
The reviewer here who was returning the TV because of this "defect" will be sadly disapointed when he buys a new 19 inch set and discovers it is also 16:10

I ordered this TV to take advantage of the HDTV channels available over Comcast Cable in the San Francisco Bay area, without having to rent Comcast's pricey cable box. It fills the bill perfectly.

Using the default settings, the picture is sharp and contrasty. There's plenty of sound volume. The screen hardly reflects light at all, which is nice since we have a lot of windows. The Natural picture size setting chooses the proper picture width all the time. (I've never figured out why some people view everything in full width, even if it adds 50 pounds to all the people on the screen.)

I got a scare when first hooking it up. I ordered it only after a Comcast agent verified that with the built-in QAM tuner it would receive HDTV just by plugging the cable signal into the antenna/cable coax jack. But when first turned on, it only received analog signals. Calling Comcast back, I was told that I would need a $7/month cable box. Fortunately this turned out to be baloney. While my wife was channel-flipping, she started getting HDTV stations too, and now it shows every analog and digital channel, even on my non-digital cable service plan. My wife claims full credit for "fixing" it. I suspect it took a while to lock into some aspect of the cable service. Who knows.

So here's two recommendations: Double check everything Comcast tells you. And buy this TV.

(Oh - and also see the reviews for the 19AV500U - it's the identical model in black.)

This Tv is ,in my opinion, the best lcd in its size range. It gives you the option to control the backlight which HELPS cut down "edge lightbleed"(I try not to sweat it too much)it's found on all lcd tvs and monitors I've ever seen..
Its kind of hard to see the "lightbleed" in stores because of the great HD connections stores have,,,as well as the high lighted store rooms.
This TV picks up analog ,digital & free HD channels superbly.
The speakers deliver the best sound (better bass) in this size and price range. The colors are VIVID...
I have this and the Toshiba DR560 recorder. They work great together.
Got the best price in tha Amazon.

Got this TV and thought the video features were great...but the sound was awful - very "tinny" sounding speakers. Sounded like a bad Nextel phone! Could not even add external speakers because there is no audio output jack - only optical digital outputs. We bought this to use in our kitchen, and have no room to hook up a surround system. We don't want that just to watch the news, etc., so the TV went back.