Toshiba 27WL56 review

There are plenty more hidden treasures to be found if you dare to enter the menu system. You can adjust the backlight to quite a high level, and you might need to turn it down a notch if you like to watch movies in the dark. The MPEG Noise Reduction is useful if you watch a lot of Freeview, because it can help smooth out some of the last remnants of blockiness (which is a hulking great LCD bugbear for us). Finally, there's a sleep timer, and the television can format a PC image automatically -- a VGA signal often needs adjusting.

Things aren't quite so expansive on the audio side. You can change the bass, treble and balance levels, but there are no presets for movie or music listening. SRS Wow mode can be activated, which might help if you don't have a surround-sound system (we preferred the sound au naturel, to be honest). It's also good that you can assign the audio sockets on the side to be used with different inputs, not just PC/HDMI.

Unlike Philips' similar-sized 26PF5520D, Toshiba's LCD doesn't have integrated Freeview. iDTVs are very popular at the moment, with Philips' coming in at under £1,000 and also featuring high definition. Philips' TV comes without any advanced picture processing modes though, so if picture quality is paramount, you're better off with the Toshiba and a set-top box.

Performance
Thanks to a combination of Active Vision picture processing and a wealth of tweakable options, Toshiba's LCD is a great picture performer. High-end picture quality through HDMI (provided by our reference Denon DVD-2910 player) appeared grainy round the edges, and you might want to turn off MPEG Noise Reduction to compensate.

If anything, picture quality from Freeview is the most impressive feature, specifically for how well the TV copes with Freeview's relatively poor bitrates. We watched Big Brother, which is filmed on low-resolution cameras, and whereas most televisions would struggle with the water sprinklers, the Toshiba managed to show ample detail between the droplets and the background. The picture is solid, so the only problem is the lack of component inputs -- you'll have to upgrade to an HDMI DVD player if you want the best-quality pictures from your movies.

On the audio side, the speakers can sound a little weak. You can boost the bass in the menu slightly, and turn on SRS Wow for your movies, but we'd suggest supplementary speakers where possible.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additonal editing by Nick Hide