Toshiba 43H71 43 HDTV-Ready Projection TV
HDTV display with bright picture and excellent line doubler
After researching several 36\\" to 43\\" HDTV-capable projection and direct-view TVs, I picked Toshiba's 43H71 for the following reasons:<br />1. 43H71 was the shallowest among all HDTV display units I looked at. (except for the plasma ones which cost way too much) It is only about 20\\" deep.<BR>2. 43H71 seemed to have a brighter, higher contrast picture compared to several other rear projection units (I was able to do side-by-side comparisons vs Sony, Mitsubishi and Samsung RPTVs in a showroom)<BR>3. In addition to 1 front and 2 rear RCA/S-Video inputs, 43H71 also has two sets of component video inputs. This is especially useful if you want to connect an HDTV source (e.g. sattelite receiver) and a DVD player through component video at the same time.<BR>4. 43H71 was priced lower compared to other large direct view and RPTVs with similar features. <br />My 43H71 arrived ahead of schedule (right before the winter olympics) and the delivery people were very courteous and set the unit up exactly where I wanted in the room. This unit is not nearly as heavy as some of the larger flat-screen direct-view TVs, but still needs a couple of people to move it around.<br />The picture quality is pretty good. It actually has better horizontal resolution than higher priced direct-view units with smaller screens. I prefer sets with 4:3 aspect ratio over 16:9 since most of the current programming is in 4:3 format. 43H71 has a vertical compression feature where it can compress all the scan lines in a 16:9 area on the screen so that you can watch widescreen DVDs or HDTV with maximum resolution. Watching an HDTV movie on this set is almost better than going to the theater.<br />A pleasant surprise was the quality of the line doubler in this TV. It really does a great job with progressive scan conversion when the video source is DVD or good quality NTSC broadcast. Unfortunately, if you have a video source with poor picture quality and compression artifacts (e.g. sattellite and/or digital cable) this TV is not going to create miracles. Overall, I end up using the line doubler in the 43H71 instead of the line doubler in my sattelite HDTV receiver since it seems to do a much better job.<br />Sound quality from the built in amplifiers and speakers is very good. <br />After using this TV for about 3 months, here are some of the minor issues I came up with:<br />1. The remote control is nice but a little bit too large for my preference.<BR>2. It seems to require slightly different convergence settings for the 4:3 and 16:9 (with compression) modes.<BR>3. The built-in off-the air tuners (it has 2 of them) are not necessarily the most sensitive.