Consumers are a shallow bunch. As soon as we're presented with wonderfully thin TVs, we start complaining about how the bezel is fat and unsightly. The poor TV manufacturers have to put their new babies under the knife to shave off a few centimetres to suit our fancy.
Luckily for us, Toshiba doesn't seem to mind, and has taken its high-end Z series LCD panel and installed it into a teeny, tiny frame. Available for around £1,200, the Toshiba Regza 40ZF355D is amazing to look at, and with such a competent panel, it should perform brilliantly, too. Does it?
Design
Every now and then, we review a product that causes a right old fuss. This week, it was the ZF355, a TV that has been due out in the UK for ages but has taken longer than usual to appear. As soon as we got it out of the box, we knew the wait had been worthwhile.
The ZF355 is very similar to the Toshiba Regza 40XF355D we reviewed a while ago -- and loved. The main difference on the ZF is the advanced picture processing, which should lead to an amazing picture quality.
The bezel is what makes this screen so visually impressive, but it's important to remember that it's not all about looks. The thin surround on this TV means that it will fit into the same sort of gap a standard 37-inch TV would take up. For homes with limited space, that's a real boon. Be aware that it's a deep TV, making it less ideal for wall mounting.
Although there's a speaker grille, the TV has a relatively unbroken front, but it's quite small and unobtrusive. There's also a large blue light, which seems to be purely decorative. You can turn it off via a menu, which we think you will probably want to do -- it's distracting.
At the back of the TV, you'll find two HDMI sockets, with a third on the right-hand side of the screen. A pair of Scarts and a single component input are also present alongside a VGA input for hooking up a PC or media centre to the TV. VGA is an increasingly odd choice on TVs, given that most computers have DVI these days. It would seem logical to provide one of those instead. Still, no matter -- VGA is still useful and very high quality.
Features
The thing that sets the ZF355 apart from its little brother is the addition of the Active Vision M100 HD processing mode. One of the main selling points of this TV is the proper 5:5 pulldown mode. Explaining what pulldown is can be tricky, but essential if you want to get the best out of Blu-ray movies.
Pulldown is a method of repeating film frames because it's impossible to show a movie at 24 frames per second -- the flicker would be unbearable. Even cinemas use a form of pulldown where each frame is shown twice, and a shutter on the projector opens and closes quickly enough to be unnoticeable. The Toshiba aims to reduce motion problems by showing each film frame five times. The upshot is that 24p Blu-ray movies should look fantastic.
The inclusion of a 10-bit LCD panel should also greatly improve the colour reproduction of the TV, offering over a billion possible shades. This is a huge improvement over the older panels, and as impressive as it is, we're going to hazard a guess that you'd have to have the eyes of a hawk to actually notice a massive difference.
on Televisions 
Facebook 
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
Twitter 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips
User reviews2
Add your review
AsciiSmoke 22 October 2008
Good: Great contrast, Sharper than sharp HD picture
Bad: Poor out-of-the-box settings, some colour issues, settings aren't per-input
Comment: Long story, short - great tv with shockingly bad out-of-the-box settings. Be prepared to spend a couple of hours setting this one up. But it will be worth it, I promise.
Oh yeah, and that long story was...
I've had the svelt and pretty Toshiba 40ZF355DB sat in my living room for around 10 days now and an interesting 10 days it's been.
I ordered from Dixons.co.uk to take advantage of a really quite special price of £860 plus the convenient option of having my old tube carted off and disposed of 'responsibly'.
The smaller than expected cardboard box of wonder arrived a couple of Sunday's ago and the anticipation was electric. The delivery guy hefted it out of the box and on to the floor for me then buggered off leaving me and the wife to lift the considerably proportioned box onto it's stand and in place on the corner unit. After a quick rest and a box of ibuprofen for a worn out back I got to switching the beast on.
Bathed in a cool blue glow my grin spread at the shear size of this thing up close. My old 28" Panasonic already a distant memory. Performing acrobatics worthy of the Moscow state circus I got the thing hooked up and eagerly switched to 'HDMI 1'.
What a crash. Here I was expecting a picture to blind me with punch and clarity and all I got was a blurry faded mulch. Ouch, suddenly the cries of abuse could be heard emmenating from the wallet hanging in my coat in the hall.
Ok, so not a good start. But hey, I'm a techy, I can fix this surely. Once I switched the Sky box to an HD channel and disposed of half an hour of my life fiddling with the brightness, contrast, etc controls I got a pretty sharp and acurate picture going on the feisty channel Rush HD. Really watching pimpled teenagers riding their BMXs has never been so mesmerizing.
OK, now that the swelling's gone down from the inital hurt. Time to switch back to standard-def. Sky channel 101 - BBC's flagship channel suddenly looked like one of those poor channels that fall of the end of the line-up, y'know the ones that sell plastic shoe horns, and fake watches in job lots.
So here was my first taste of the dilema I faced. I could get the HD to look good but at the cost of inacceptible SD. Well, after more than a week of fiddling, googling, fiddling some more I found it was this mysterious xvYCC setting that made the HD channels look so clean. Turn that bugger off and suddenly standard definition is bathed in a world of colour!
So, word from the experienced, if you expect to get anything out of this box you must be prepared to get friendly with the settings menu.
Next test was with the Xbox360. Following the intrepid footsteps of CNets reviewers I chucked Burnout Paradise in first. Wow! Up to now I've been playing on a cheapy 26" Philips first gen HDTV. The step up was like the difference between the 360 and the old xbox.
The 40ZF355DB was more than capable of keeping up with the breakneck speed of Burnout and every detail of a wrong move at 200mph was played out beautifully.
So, great tv, pain in the arse to configure.
The points you should know:
1) The settings aren't input specific so if you like your games with more contrast you'll have to manually change settings when you switch between tv and your console.
2) Don't use the following settings they'll only degrade the picture or slow down the 100Hz processing: xvYCC, Black Stretch, DNR (digital noise reduction)
3) The sound is really quite flat, consider factoring in the cost of an amp or you'll constantly be turning the set up to hear what people are saying then turning it back down when the action heats up.
4) Don't use Sky HDs built in resolution switcher (just use 1080i or 720p). The colours are presented differently (especially yellows), which makes it impossible to set the tv up to look good on both SD and HD.
5) Also consider getting an upscaling DVD player, I've got a really, really cheap Goodmans and the picture quality is fantastic even fro
John Roberts 12 June 2008
Good: Spectacular presence
Bad: Clunky user menus
Comment: I have not been able to find a user review of this panel so here goes my experience, I bought the Tosh zf on a gut feeling really and the way it looks, it really is a spectacular sight & you get a 40inch panel for the size of a normal 37 inch, I heard a few bad reviews about the zf's sister panel the xf {light bleed etc] I'm no expert but I can see no such problem here, I have found no dead pixels & the sound is good via ONKYO speakers though the volume is only 10 watts pc but that is more than enough for me, contrast ratio is 10000-1, I know you can get higher but it is more than adequate here, colour depth & brightness is superb, there is no smearing or jerkiness when watching action movies or sport, the zf is 1080p full hd and has all the latest features for getting the best out of high def and blue ray, reception is amazing I use a portable aerial would you believe and get all the channels perfectly.
The only cons with the zf are the somewhat clunky menus but once you get used to them it's no problem it's also a bit light on some menu features like picture in picture etc, so to sum up if you want a screen that looks astonishing has a great picture with no discernable cons, has brilliant reception, has all up to date features, has very good if not massively loud sound, and do not mind spending a little time learning the fiddly menus and don't mind the price [best price £1090 12/06/08] then this panel is for you, highly recommended.
See all 2 user reviews