Toshiba 32C3500 issues...

[Razenko]

Hello,

About half a year ago I purchased a Toshiba 32C3500 LCD TV, at the time, it seemed like a good choice, not too expensive, good user reviews, but I'm not quite satisfied with it.
The main problems are viewing angles and black levels, they are not that good, at least as far as I can see.
Part of me wants something different, but I do not know whether for instance a Sony 32W4000 would be that much better  .
Problem is, I only have the Toshiba for half a year and I think its pretty crazy to even consider something different, and I do not want lose much money if I were to trade the Toshiba in or sell it  .
Would would you do, Keep it and buy something else later on (when the technology has improved even more), or buy something else now?
But the Toshiba still is a pretty good TV right...? 

[patrik_f]

Did you set it up to get the most out of it?

My 4 years old 32WL48 still looks spectacular in the right viewing environment, and with good settings. OK, blacklevel is pretty high, but it mostly bothers me when there are letterbox bars top and bottom.
If you want something in the same size I would not upgrade at the moment. It is likely you will want a bigger panel soon to delivery the benefits of Blu-ray and High def TV. LCD technology will move on with local dimming backlight in a couple of years.

[Razenko]

Well, I did tweak it to my own preferences, but still, the black levels are still irritating me, no matter how low I set the backlight.
A bigger screen is no option, since right now I dont have space for it.
What do you mean by local dimming backlight? LED Backlights?
A friend of mine went to a Samsung demonstration where they demonstrated screens with LED backlighting, and he was not impressed,
He said that clouding appeared next to higher lighted objects, the only way to properly use LED backlighting is if you use a LED for each individual pixel.

But, would there be a lot of difference between lets say a Sony 32W4000 vs my Toshiba? Or would the improvements be quite small?
If there something i'm looking forward to and worth waiting for it would be OLED, but it better be here within 5 years 

[patrik_f]

When tweaking the settings it's important to realise that "Brightness" is actually black point. If you increase Brightness for example during daytime, the black level will be very bad for night viewing. You need to find out which combination of brightness and contrast uses the full dynamic range of the panel. (I would turn off dynamic backlight, if you have that, during this process.)

Note that Contrast may modify the gamma curve, so you may never get clipping of whites, but you will get a gamma that is unnatural if you push up the contrast too much. For my TV I have calibrated the Contrast once and for all, and I have a calibrated value for Brightness for night viewing. I move up brightness a bit in the daytime to add a "bias light" to blacks to compensate for the ambient light.

Purchase a calibration DVD, such as Digital Video Essentials, to aid in setting up the TV. DVE also comes with a RGB transparent filter to aid in getting the colours right.

[Razenko]

Adjusting the brightness setting any lower than 50 (my current setting) will improve the black level slightly, but will also greatly reduce the details in darker areas.
I did run a free calibration DVD and used it to tweak the settings, but I'm unable to improve black levels.
Even when the screen is totally black, that black is (dark)gray-bluish compared to the glossy black frame of the TV.
Thus now I start to wonder whether high end models such as the 32W4000, blacks would actually be black, not gray-bluish.
Although LCD is still LCD, and the kind of black level I want might be impossible with current LCDs.
But when I read that the 32W4000 has 'inky blacks', it sounds a lot better than gray-bluish, but maybe the difference is really not that big.

[Razenko]

While talking on some other forum (http://tweakers.net) I posted a few pictures of my Toshiba 32C3500.
Here is a picture of my Toshiba being fully 'black'(and with dimmed backlight settings):


And here a picture of a Toshiba 42C3502 someone else took:


Call me crazy  , but I think my Toshiba looks like crap in comparison, and considering these two TV's are of the same brand and in the same series, except for different screen sizes, I would almost think that my Toshiba is defect  .
And yes, I have calibrated my Toshiba and dimmed the backlight quite a bit in that first picture, so this is as good as it gets  .