Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black

Review by A. English for Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black
Rating:
Unless you want an inch thin LCD TV, this should be your TV of choice. I went to Sixth Avenue where they had an exceptionally large selection of LCD and Plasma TVs. This TV had the best picture quality of any LCD TV they had. I was planning on getting a Samsung 1080P 120Hz thin LED TV (could not quite swallow the price of the 240Hz) model until I read reviews of streaks in the picture quality when watching the TV in a dark room. I then moved on to the less expensive non LED Samsung 240Hz LCD TV which is still $400 more than this Toshiba. Luckily, the salesperson asked me to take a look at this TV first. This TV is back-lit LED which makes the TV thicker, but provides better picture quality than the side-lit LEDs in the thin Samsung. The 240Hz was a real bonus–especially in a TV that sells for this price. I have had the TV for a month now and could not be happier with it. I have had friends that visit comment that this TV has the best picture quality they have ever seen in any TV. This is the best 46-inch LCD TV you can buy that sells for a price that’s unbelievably low when compared to the competition. It might not be the thinnest LCD LED TV, but it does have the best quality picture in any LCD TV. It is just one awesome TV.

Review by T. J. R. for Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black
Rating:
Ordered this TV around the beginning of August. Amazon shipping said to expect it on the 14th. It arrived on the 12th, lucky I had just returned home because I was all set for the 14th! Anyway, The delivery guy carries it in, takes it out of the box and set it on the stand for my old Sony Bravia.(Since I didn’t put the new stand together yet. He then helps me take the old TV down to its new location in the basement rec room. (Nice of him!) We plug in the new Toshiba and I connect it to my cable HD DVR box with the new HDMI cable I also purchased from Amazon. It works! Beautifully! The sound is better than expected. The picture, especially the HD channels is great and the colors and contrast are fantastic. Everything I expected and more. The Dolby sound leveling seems to work (still checking). Our collection of wide screen DVD’s looks great. Maybe because of the Resolution+ upscaling. So check out all the features and compare the price with the only LED TV somewhat similar: Sony’s BR8 series. I think you’ll be very pleased with this new Toshiba 46SV670U (55SV670U is similar). By the way, mine was manufactured in JULY 2009!

I’ll update this if problems develop.

Well, it’s now October and this TV is still the best. And it’s great to be able to plug in a SD picture card and watch a slideshow or plug in an USB flash drive and play music or other media.

I’ll update this if problems develop.

*******************************************************************

June 22, 2010 — Sorry I haven’t updated before this but we’ve been so busy enjoying the OUTSTANDING picture quality, I guess I haven’t had a chance. Yes, this TV is still amazingly brilliant in every way. Audio is good for normaal viewing but of course I switch on the sound system speakers for all the big sound DVD movies. No complaints. At all.

Review by JPMDallas77 for Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black
Rating:
1st, let me say this, I upgraded from the Toshiba 46XV545U 120Hz LCD T.V. (bought in April 2009, it got stolen 🙁 “Last year’s model”). The picture on this one is noticeably better. In fact, it is awesome, BUT this TV has a couple drawbacks that people should be aware of, and I think its why it is $700 off its MSRP only a few months after it came out:

1) Case size: If you’re expecting one of those “thin” LED backlit LCDs like Samsung’s, look elsewhere. This TV is 4-6″ thick, thicker even than the straight LCD I replaced. Also, it has about 3-1/2″ fascia around the screen itself. This is also much more than my old TV, presumably to hold the LED backlights. So, the case is bigger. This fact, combined with the design, makes it look old, like a 5 year old LCD. I much preferred my old Toshiba in terms of design.

2) Glare. Maybe I didn’t look closely enough at the description, but my last Toshiba had a matte finish on the screen, which given my sunny living room, was a huge plus and should not be underestimated. This TV has a glossy finish on the screen, which results in lots of glare. This affects watching TV during the day big time and unless you have a dark media room, you need to be aware of this.

3) Backlight “halo” around bright objects on dark backgrounds, flickering. UPDATE: This problem was fixed by a firmware update, so disregard. Picture great now. There is still some halo effect around bright lights on dark screen, but this is endemic to local dimming LED technology. Its basically the best they can do right now. Much better than the alternative!

UPDATE: I have had the TV for a little over a month now 1/14/10, and I have to say I really love the picture. It is truly one of the best you can possible get in this price range. The DynaLight feature (local dimming technology for the LED backlights) make the blacks very dark once I got the firmward update from Toshiba. Highly recommend, so long as you’re aware of the size of the TV and the glare issue.

I have begun to notice some tinny, buzz sound from the TVs internal speakers that might be what another reviewer referred to as a problem with audio coming in on HDMI after a couple of hours. All my inputs are HDMI, so this might be the issue. I usually use external speakers, so this isn’t a problem for me. I’ll check on a firmware update in a couple months. Otherwise, its a great TV, especially at today’s price!!

Review by L. Glenn for Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black
Rating:
I purchased this TV on Jan 2, 2010. This is a great TV and the picture is awesome. The on screen menu is okay and slightly complicated for those that are not tech savvy and there are many things in the book you really need to read.

This TV has the newest in technology when it comes to picture quality and it could have improved on the sound quality, but most of us having TVs like this hooked up with surround sound systems. The speakers are hidden and there are preset sound outputs you can have to create standard and simulated surround sound from two speakers.

Other than the picture, the TV has an issue with the sound. When you play a DVD disc from a regular DVD player with HDMI capabilites to this TV, the sound garbles and reverberation begins afer an hour of play. Toshiba America says I am and a group of people have this rare problem. They did not offer to fix it and they said they were working on the problem. What does that sound like to you?

So, I purchased the newest Toshiba BDX2000 Blu-ray player and played a blu-ray movie with the sound output from the TV and the sound never garbled throughout the movie or even skipped a beat, Great!

I then played a regular DVD disc on the blu-ray player and after an hour of play, the sound starts garbling from the TV again. Toshiba had instructed me to turn off certain features to prevent this, under the HDMI settings, you are to turn off Deep color, lip sync and instaport. If it did not resolve the issue then use RGB (red,green and Blue) cables instead of the HDMI cable and for the sound, use left/right audio patch cords.

We as consumers or customers should not have to fiddle around with this.

We buy these expensive TVs to utilize the newest technology, HDMI.

The cabling is not an issue. The versions of cabling is another gimmic for manufacturers to charge you

big money for pretty cables.

I was going to retire the older DVD player, but instead kept it to play DVD disc with the RGB cabling and the sound connected through my stereo so I did not have to keep dealing with the garbled sound. I have over 600 DVD movies. I now have one blu-ray player with no blu-ray discs.

So, you make the choice. Do you want to be apart of the rare group of people with this problem and how will you know if yo are getting a good set or not.

Review by J. Darby for Toshiba REGZA Cinema Series 46SV670U 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV with LED Backlight and ClearScan 240, Black
Rating:
We purchased this on March 22, 2010 and the same night the audio went out for the first time. It just becomes very fuzzy and unintelligible. We phoned Toshiba tech support and were brusquely just handed off to a local service center to coordinate our own service. The service tech advised he had to wait several days for Toshiba to instruct him on what to do but was sure a simple firmware update via USB would fix it.

Several calls and days later he advised Toshiba was instructing him to order and replace the main board. His exact words were “good luck getting this board from Toshiba, if it were Sony or Samsung or anyone else it would be a few days but Toshiba is terrible in supplying parts, they are always in permanent backorder.”

He was exactly correct.

Three weeks later we still have no working tv and appear no closer to one. We have over half a dozen calls to Toshiba, who at best are bored and rude consistently on every call. We had this “escalated” to a higher department and were contacted by that person at Toshiba to say they also have no idea when this part will arrive but would try to pull a board out when one did. Otherwise, wait. The entire “customer service” plan is to just see if a board arrives before thirty more days passes and if not – we have not been able to get any answer on what happens then either.

And that they condsider a thirty-day plus time period to fix a brand-new tv perfectly good service. We still have no date or time or solution for a new tv we still cannot use a month later on April 25. Nor is anyone at Toshiba willing to do anything more than tell us to just wait until they may get the part -which again they have just a “back-ordered” status on and zero info of any solution.

Update- April 29: called again and again requested the supervisor, denied and told someone will get back to us in 24 hours. Still no status on the main board and no interest by Toshiba in helping us.

We decided no more Toshiba products for us, period. I am now trying without success to contact Toshiba Corporate somehow but nobody at Toshiba will step up and resolve this and all refuse to provide any contact for Corporate.

Be very wary buying any Toshiba – it truly is the most apathetic, just terrible service we have ever encountered.

They are incredibly uninterested and impotent in anything approaching customer service.

Update: 5/11/2010 – the main board seems to have arrived at the local parts center – we found this out on our own by calling the local tech, nobody from Toshiba (Marna) bothered to call us or follow up as repeatedly promised. We still do not have a working tv as it is now having the board replaced over the next four days by the local tech.

Update: 6/24/2010 the main board was replaced about a week ago finally which seemed to fix the garbled sound problem, however now the sound is failing completely. We have no sound at all on any ports – using HDMI or fixed audio or RCA or Component. The tv speakers also have no audio. Called Toshiba again, I have been told someone in “advanced troubleshooting” will get back to us.

Again I asked them to simply replace this lemon TV and they will not, want us to go through parts troubleshooting again. Toshiba advised replacing the TV would take even longer than replacing a main board. Which they just replaced once already.

This should be illegal. We are now getting in touch with the California consumer affairs and trade office through government to see if anyone can help us get this resolved.