Plasma HDTV Reviews

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Toshiba MW26H82 26-Inch Pure Flat CRT HDTV with VCR and DVD Player Eliminate clutter in your entertainment cabinet with the 26-inch, HD-ready Toshiba MW26H82 flat-screen CRT television with integrated, full-featured DVD player and VCR. It has a a widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratio (used for high-def TV programming and letterboxed DVDs) and the set’s built-in ATSC (DTV) tuner pulls HD signals (480p/720p/1080i) right from the airwaves. It also has a QAM tuner that’s fully compatible with unscrambled HDTV cable reception. A standard analog NTSC tuner receives standard-definition (SD) programming. The MW26H82 makes it easy to connect to brilliant imagery with its component and HDMI connections–the latter offering pure digital audio/video performance with no degradation of signal. Toshiba’s CrystalScan HDSC technology upconverts all video signals (including 480i/p) to 1080iHD, resulting in a significant reduction in jagged line artifacts to create the sharpest, most realistic picture possible from every source.

The DVD player features compatibility with DVD-R, VCD, and CD-R/CD-RW discs. With the JPEG Viewer, you can easily display your favorite digital photos and create custom slideshows with a few simple clicks of the player’s remote control. You can play discs burned with MP3 and WMA digital audio files, and it’s also DivX Home Theater Certified–meaning that it’s compatible with video burned to disc using both the DivX video format. The interactive Digital Picture Zoom feature allows you to select an area of the video from a DVD and magnify it. This set also includes a USB interface, enabling you to connect “mass storage classification devices”–i.e., external hard drives, portable thumb drives, and compatible MP3 players/digital cameras–and play JPEG, WMA, MP3, and DivX files.

The four-head VCR offers 8-event/1-month programming as well as easy one-touch recording. The commercial skip feature automatically advances the tape 30-seconds forward, bypassing recorded commercials. The SD Bridge Recording feature allows you to record content received via the HD tuners onto VHS in a standard definition (SD) format. After receiving the HD signal, the VCR downconverts it to SD and record it on a VHS tape. Other VCR features include an auto head cleaner, high-speed rewind and fast-forward, and SP/SLP record speeds.

The FST PURE flat screen picture tube delivers increased viewing angles along with the enhanced picture linearity necessary to produce accurate, life-like images. This feature eliminates unwanted reflections from room lighting, which is a common problem in conventional tube designs. It also improves sharpness and brightness. The 3D Y/C digital comb filter constantly analyzes the three dimensions of picture height, picture width, and picture changes-over-time, to reduce dramatically edge image artifacts while improving transition detail.

It includes four Picture Preference presets (standard, sports, movie, memory) as well as a Memory Mode that allows you to customize your own settings and save them. Other features include a glow-key remote control, sleep timer, video labeling, tri-lingual on-screen displays, and V-chip parental control.

The MW26H82 has a space-saving bottom speaker design, and it can produce virtual surround sound through its integrated speakers. It also includes coaxial and optical digital audio outputs for connecting to a surround sound home theater system in order to take advantage of the DVD player’s Dolby Digital and DTS decoding capabilities. The StableSound feature eliminates the annoyance of normal program volume being followed immediately by extremely loud commercial messages or drastic volume fluctuations while changing channels.

Here’s a full listing of the set’s video and audio connections:

• Composite A/V: 2 (1 front)
• S-Video: 2 (1 front)
• Component Video: 1
• HDMI: 1
• RF: 1
• Digital audio: 1 coaxial, 1 optical
• USB: 1

Tech Talk
DivX is a compressed digital video format (like MP3) that’s based on the MPEG-4 video compression standard. It can reduce the video from a DVD (MPEG-2) to around 10 percent of its original size while still retaining good video and audio quality, enabling you to store several two-hour length movies on burned DVD media.

HDMI is a lossless, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface to link any audio/video source (such as a set-top box, DVD player, or AV receiver) with your TV–all over a single cable. HDMI supports standard, enhanced or high definition video, plus multi-channel digital audio on a single cable. It supports all ATSC formats–standard (SDTV), enhanced (EDTV), and high (HDTV).

Component video (also called Y/Pb/Pr) features a three-jack video input, which provides separate connections for luminance (Y), blue color difference (PB) and red color difference (PR). This results in increased bandwidth for color information, resulting in a more accurate picture with clearer color reproduction and less bleeding than you would get with S-Video or composite (RCA yellow video plug) connections. You will need a separate RCA left/right audio cable for sound.

What’s in the Box
Flat-screen CRT television with integrated DVD player and VCR, remote control (with batteries), printed operating instructions
Customer Review: Records digital channels…
A great space, saver design. Despite it being a HDTV, what nobody knows is that you can record digital channel shows onto VHS. You won’t find this in any machine. This is the last TV ever made with a VCR and DVD player built-in together.
Customer Review: Great Picture, easy to use, fits in cabinets designed for 27″ TVs
I originally found an early model after searching high and low for a HDTV that would fit where I currently have a 27″ TV. Most HDTV’s have the speakers to the side, making a large screen impossible. Not with the Toshiba – speakers on the bottom and DVD/VHS helped remove all the clutter. The picture is GREAT-from both my HD Satellite and off-air antenna (yes it has a built in HDTV tuner). The biggest complaint of earlier models was no audio output – that has been fixed somewhat: only digital audio output (coax or fiber), so if you have a newer amp you’re good to go. Unfortanately the only audio in is via HDMI or standard RCA. If you haven’t seen a CRT HDTV you’re missing out on a clear bright picture. Overall this is the best TV for the money, other manufactures should take note: build TVs to fit in the same form factor of older TVs, everyone doesnt want to purchase new furniture too!