Toshiba’s latest foray into the 1080 LCD TV panel business comes in the guise of the 42” X3030D LCD TV. Joining the ‘X’ series of panels under the now familiar ‘Regza’ product line name, this flat panel scores well in the design stakes almost looking like a picture frame thanks to it’s thin surround design and hidden speakers at the bottom of the set. It comes with the table stand already attached out of the box and is fairly light in weight when compared to other flat panel sets, you will be able to lift it on your own quite safely to place on your TV stand (Obviously if wall mounting it is a two man job).
Initial set up is pretty straight forward with connections round the back being fairly generous with 2 x Scart, 2 x HDMI, 1 x VGA and three various audio connections using RCA jacks. The set has a built in DVB receiver which took a matter of minutes to self tune and save all available freeview channels; and analogue set up was just as easy.
The remote control supplied with the 3030D is a basic Toshiba design found across their range of TVs and if you have ever owned a Tosh, then you will no problems getting used to the new design here. Everything is laid out in a logical manner and you will soon be changing channels and settings without having to look down at the remote itself. Choosing an input is fairly straight forward with a small graphics box opening on the left of the screen to show your choices, plus setting the aspect ratio and stretch controls involves a similar routine with an option to set 1:1 pixel mapping on certain inputs.
This set boasts a full 1920 x 1080 LCD TV panel which will accept 480/576/720/1080 interlaced and progressive signals unless you are using the VGA connection which only allows 1366x768 to be used.
User set up controls are also well thought out and executed with the usual Picture, sound, set up and function menus which open up under each into sub menus for fine settings. Under the picture menu you have the usual contrast, brightness, tint, sharpness, backlight adjust, colour, Mpeg NR, Dynamic Noise Reduction, colour temperature and a black level stretch mode.
All fairly straight forward stuff, but also of note and most welcome is a full colour management
system which you will see later in the review and which is thankfully of high quality and accurate. The only problem I could find with the settings available was a lack of gamma control and greyscale adjustments within the menus, however accessing the service menu will allow professional calibrators to set the greyscale correctly. (Please note that the settings shown in the pictures here are not the final calibration results).
The set also includes full audio control for the built in sound system
as well as SRS WOW capability. The menu controls allow adjustment of the usual treble, bass and balance controls, plus some extras for the WOW settings.
Moving onto the set up menu allows adjustment of the language and country settings, plus options to change picture positions and assign AV connections and name them. Finally you have the function settings which allow for automatic aspect control, panel locks and other options to fully customise what you want the set to do.
So after allowing the TV to build up a few hours and settle on my TV stand it was time to get the laptop and calibration tools out to do some testing.