Toshiba Regza 37X3030D review

Performance
High-definition performance is very good indeed. Our old favourite Happy Gilmore on HD DVD makes a great test disc because of the bright, vibrant colours. The scene that simply features a camera tracking past a bird cage judders on some televisions; fortunately the 37X3030D doesn't have any problem with this. Indeed, motion generally looks very natural.

Upscaled DVD quality from our Denon DVD-1930 was superb. We looked at Spiderman 2 and were thrilled with the results. Sometimes upscaled DVDs can look a little washed out with poor colour. This wasn't the case with the 37X3030D -- the quality was excellent with only a small amount of grain visible in the picture.

Standard-definition material fed from Sky via the RGB Scart looked acceptable. Pictures weren't as sharp as we would have hoped and the colour struck us as looking slightly unnatural, especially with skin tones, which seemed overly bright. Despite these small faults, however, we found it was perfectly watchable.

Freeview performance is reasonable, too. Digital terrestrial suffers when blown up to 37 inches, but apart from the deficiencies of over-compressed video we quite liked the picture. Once again, we noticed that the colour settings need to be adjusted for Freeview -- the defaults that the television comes shipped with leave the picture looking over-saturated. A quick fiddle around with the multitude of settings soon improved the picture, though.

The sound on the 37X3030D was a pleasant surprise. Despite the small speakers, dialogue on both Happy Gilmore and Serenity was crisp and clear, something that we are always happy to hear.

If you want the impact of lots of bass you can add an optional subwoofer, which simply connects to the TV via an RCA socket at the rear. That said, the bass on the 37X3030D is far from awful, and there is certainly enough low end to provide a kick to explosions and make music sound rich and punchy.

Conclusion
If you are looking for an LCD that copes well with pretty much everything you can throw at it, the Toshiba 37X3030D is ideal. We'd like to have seen the M100 technology found on the Z series to reduce motion blur, but it isn't a big deal.

If you're looking for an alternative, we were very keen on the Sharp Aquos LC37XD1E, which also offers 1080p support and similar connectivity.

But for the 37X3030D, it's two thumbs up. With an increasing number of sources producing 1080p, from HD DVD to the PlayStation 3, this affordable TV is a good choice.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield