Toshiba 20AF44 20" FST Pure Flat Color TV with Stereo Sound
Nice TV marred by flaws
After looking for a small 20&quot; TV for my bedroom, I recently purchased this model.  At this price point you probably shouldn't complain, but this set does have serious flaws you might want to consider if you're thinking of buying it. <br />First, like most inexpensive consumer TVs, this model's color decoder is extremely inaccurate.  It's heavily biased towards red, to make it look &quot;good&quot; to the average buyer.  You can try to correct it using Digital Essentials, but you won't get it even close to right.  As Digital Essentials points out, this is usually done to compensate for a bluish white point, in order to create the illusion that the screen is brighter than competing models.<br />The 20AF44 also only has one memory setting, although it has 3 video inputs.  If you use several different sources, such as cable TV, a DVD/VCR, and/or a game console, it's very hard to find a setting that looks correct for all, and since it only saves one setting, you'll either have to compromise or keep resetting it.<br />The most annoying aspect is the VSM (vertical scan modulation).  Although it's touted as a positive &quot;feature&quot; by the literature, believe me, it's not.  The effect on the picture is rather like turning the sharpness control all the way up, giving edges in the picture bright white outlines.  It especially makes text (such as in video games) look awful.  Unfortunately, even turning the sharpness control all the way down doesn't help matters.  This set doesn't offer any way to turn VSM off (not even in the service menu).  I can only imagine this was done to make the picture look &quot;sharp&quot; to the uneducated viewer.<br />Furthermore, the set is filled with consumer level gimmicks to make the screen look brighter, such as the presence of an invar shadow mask.  Invar shadow masks help prevent the phosphors of the television from burning into the screen at insanely high contrast levels.  It doesn't make the picture quality any better.  It's nosurprise then that out of the box the TV is set to maximum contrast:  not good for the TV or the picture quality.<br />At the under $200 price point I really don't know if you can find a decent television without such problems.  I hear the Sony models allow you to turn off VSM, even on the low end sets.  It might be worth investigating the Sony if you're in the market for a set similar to this.