Well I took the plunge and got a 57H82. I've only had it a few hours and already some minor annoyances are becoming apparent: 1. there is an audible hiss from the built-in speakers when using the cable/antenna inputs. this hiss is constant with volume. has anyone else noticed this on their Toshiba sets? 2. regular cable/antenna quality is very poor. i tried using a digital set-top box, but with that arrangement the non-digital channels were unbearable, whereas the digital channels looked better, but suffered in wide-screen mode. I was gonna wait a few weeks before I got satellite, any suggestions on how to watch high quality tv in the meantime? I haven't committed to an extended warranty yet. Any more suggestion on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Specially from some of you who are electronics retailers, please dispel the myths of extended warranties. Thank you.
Kalvin, I own the 65h82,but I use my audio system for sound so dont have a fix for the hum your experiencing.As for the picture,the h82 series needs to be calibrated with a setup disk such as the avia,s&v,or video essentials. Once this is done,you can tweak to your personal taste.I was very unhappy with my set until I tweaked it.Now the pq is excellent. Good luck and dont be discouraged.
I would say that the hiss is something that shouldn't be there. Call the store and exchange it ASAP. As for the picture quality, regular cable broadcast is not going to be pretty. Although, in my area I range from unwatchable to not that bad at all. I agree with Alan, you need to get a setup disc to get your set looking good. The biggest thing is set it to movie mode and do your adjustments from there. This way you disable the SVM which can make things look very bad, especially a poor cable signal. Hope this helps.
The first step you have to take to imprive picture quality is get DirecTV. A typical cable source is not going to ever really look acceptable (my opinion.) While i am totally new to the RPTV arena myself, I have a couple of simple things that I picked up from this forum; 1. Wait until about 100 viewing hours have been put in and perform a 56pt covergence. This changes everyuthing as far a picture qaulity. I was amazed at results that this made. 2. Get the AVIA guide To Home Theatre form Amazon.com. This will help clean up the rest. I have found that these simpel adjustmets (a total of an hour or so in time) made a world of difference. I am also finding that the TV is actually geeting better as it "wears" in. got to this link for the 56pt convergence instructions. There is also a service manual here to help you. Use the 50H81 manual as your basic guide for accessing the service menu and convergence instructions. i belive it is page 9 & 13. Good Luck and Enjoy http://www.bus.ucf.edu/cwhite/theater/ToshibaTips.htm
By the way, I had the same hiss. The speaker hiss is easily fixabel. It takes about 20 minutes for a tech to solder a CAP to the sound board-totally miner.
What part of the country do you live in..There are not too many areas of the country where you can't get HD/digital channels over the air...Get and HD/satellite set top box and you will be able to get digital and HD both ota and via satellite..
