Toshiba Regza 37XV505D

Hello there, greetings from cnet.co.uk and indeed from my good friend next to me, the Toshiba 37XV505 a 1080p LCD TV. The first thing that struck us about this TV when we unboxed it was the new look, which differs in subtle ways from the Toshiba TVs we've seen in the past. This has rounded edges, which we think look great. The gloss black finish is fairly standard, but there is a silver trim around the outside edge of the screen, which we rather like. It's a bit like the lovechild of Darth Vader and Johnny 5 in some ways, although it probably won't try and blow up the planet. One of the things that will actively help save the Earth is the power button on the side of this TV. Toshiba has a fancy copyrighted name for this, something along the lines of ultra-mega-power-off-to-the-max, or something. But actually it's nice to see our old friend the off switch making a comeback, and it will save you money too. The TV has three HDMI sockets, two of which are at the back and one on the side. This is an increasing common configuration for TVs these days, we presume that side HDMI sockets are useful to gamers who like to move their consoles around a bit and can't be bothered messing around at the back of the TV to plug them in. You'll also find component, VGA and a pair of scart sockets too. The remote control, while being the standard Toshiba affair is also pretty decent too. It's slender and comfortable to hold and the buttons are positive the push, and the TV is reasonably quick to respond when you tell it to do something. The picture quality of this TV is actually very good indeed. Even Freeview looked pretty good, and HD material really impressed us quite a bit too. We're always pleased when we get a TV that performs well with Freeview, because it's still the material that makes up the majority of people's viewing. We did have to spend quite a bit of time setting the TV up to get the best quality though, particularly turning down the backlight. The only main criticism we can level at this TV is that the sound was a bit weak, with very little low-end response, but it wasn't terrible enough to spoil the whole thing for us, but we'd suggest you hook up some external speakers for movie viewing. A well known electrical retailer sells this model for around £750, but if you look around there are discounts to be had, and this is an excellent TV that we really have no problem recommending at all. I'm Ian Morris for cnet.co.uk and this is the Toshiba 37XV505