Toshiba 46WX800U 3D TV Review

[Mike Osadciw]

Hi everyone

If anyone is considering a decent performing flat panel TV for casual viewing in a brighter room environment, I've had the opportunity to spend time with the Toshiba 46WX800U 3-D edge-lit LED LCD. It's a slick looking TV that has nice cosmetics and is easy to fall for it's looks, but what surprises does this TV have with image quality? Let's take a look...

TOSHIBA 46WX800U
Michael Osadciw

Many Canada HiFi readers probably remember Toshiba as the rising king of CRT. Delivering cutting edge widescreen HDTVs equipped to receive high resolution component video connections from DVD players, they were solidly built and looked fantastic after performing the necessary CRT adjustment and calibration. But after the demise of the CRT, Toshiba worked in the shadows deciding on their newest offering as consumers began to have available an array of new technologies to choose from - and new technologies that needed to be proven worthy to the general public who was used to the great looks of CRT. Even though Toshiba stumbled with a slow start, it’s great to see Toshiba on track right where they used to be with a strikingly handsome line of LED TVs. It ain’t just good looks; these TVs also have a bit of 3-D muscle under the shirt. The TV in review is the REGZA 46WX800U 1080p 3-D TV mated with Toshiba’s BDX30000 Blu-ray player and FPT-AG01U glasses. Together these three pieces create the latest 3-D entertainment experience.

Appearance & Technology

I stared dreamily at my review sample for some time before I turned it on. In fact, I was content not turning it on at all! I found the design to be very attractive when considering the competition. The screen is virtually flat with the black frame as all of it is covered by a thin protector. At the very outside edge runs a subtle silver pinstripe around the perimeter adding a touch of modernism and class. The bottom right hosts touch sensitive buttons for power, channel, and volume.

The back panel is tight like virtually all other flat panels these days. Gone are most analogue RCA connections except a composite input on the side and the component inputs are input via a mini connector. Considering the TV’s depth of only 29mm, there isn’t room for such large connectors. Since North America is converting to HD, most people buying this set will have a means of getting any signal easily to this TV. Among the most important connectors are four HDMI 1.4 inputs, a bunch of mini-plugs for component video and audio, a VGA for computer, 2 USB slots, a connection for Ethernet and a digital audio output. There is an RF input that is tight for big fingers and I found it a bit of a struggle twisting on the connector from my outdoor antenna. The built-in speakers sound worse than a tin can. If you buy slim, expect thin. It may be enough sound to fill a 10x12 room but anything larger is pushing the limits.

Toshiba’s remote control hasn’t changed too much over the past 10 years. While the aesthetics have changed slightly, the button layout is very similar. This remote feels bulky making it hard to easily access certain buttons without having to slide my hand up and down the remote for a better reach.

Among the most notable technological features beyond 3-D capability is ClearFrame 240 which increases the 24/30/60 frames per second in our video sources to a common multiple of 240, thus eliminating most judder and blurred images with minimal added side effects. A CrystalCoat screen protector is said to reduce room reflections but my measurements proved otherwise. InstaPort proves fast HDMI switching while the PixelPure 5G engine uses a 14-bit video processor to ensure that the 8-bit signals we feed to the TV are reproduced without any increased banding. An Expert image adjustment mode allows for very precise calibration and includes both 2 and 10-point greyscale/gamma controls. An 18-point Colour Management System labelled Colormaster in theory should have allowed me to make colours more accurate, but it failed by creating a blocky picture with the feature turned on. There are many other image controls that may be helpful in very specific applications but most are best left turned off if a pleasing picture is desired.

Continued in next post...

[Mike Osadciw]

Video Settings

There are too many settings and selectable options to mention and neither time nor space will allow me to write about all of them. I would suggest reading the manual online if there is something in particular you are interested in. I prefer to speak about the ones that deliver video performance. The best image mode presets are Movie1 and Movie2 with the SmartSensors turned off and with lowering the Dynamic Contrast control. But the picture still needed a lot of work to get where I wanted it to be. Setting contrast to 100 doesn’t introduce any clipping or major greyscale shift, so it was easy to determine where the backlight should be. The backlight was reduced to the point of making sure that 100% white didn’t drop below 35fL which is the minimum target for how much light the TV can emit. The lower the backlight is dropped the darker the black level gets and that’s desirable on any display, just as long as we have enough white on the other end. There came a point where lowering the backlight control further was eroding light output faster than it was deepening black levels, so finally I settled for a 35.9fL light output with a black level of 0.021fL.

The sharpness control should be left at 0. Bringing the control higher introduced too much edge enhancement in the image and bringing it lower reduced the detail capability of the TV by blurring the signal. At 0, it seemed almost pixel-perfect showing the fine detail of a single-pixel width image without struggle. This is only achieved in Native aspect ratio mode. The default is Full and that introduces some minor image cropping and forces the TV to do some rescaling of the image and thus a loss of resolution.

Resolution+ did nothing to help the video so I left it off. Clearframe 240 brings any frame rate to 240Hz, which is a multiple of the 24Hz, 30Hz, and 60Hz frame rates commonly used. There are several settings in the menu that rids the TV of image blurring with moving pictures. There is off, standard, middle, and high. The high setting produces the “soap opera effect” that many people dislike including myself. It doesn’t seem real or film-like, but more like sped up home video. Standard is the only mode I was able to compromise with, and while it did clear up moving images and showed resolution much clearer with objects in motion, turning the feature on did add a bit of edge enhancement to the image. So…on or off? You decide the better evil.

Video Calibration and Measurements

I calibrate using the Konica-Minolta CS-1000A spectroradiometer with video signals being generated by an Accupel HDG-4000 in 1080p/60 mode. Both devices are controlled by CalMAN v.4.1 where my measurements display information for me to make my calibration decisions. In the preset Autoview which is the mode the TV came to me new out of the box, it measured 9658K at 100% at 38fL of light output, 9417K at 70%, and as low as 8593K at 10%. This created dEs between 30-40 which is far too high. The goal is to be under a dE of 5, with 4 or less being close to perfect to the eye. Gamma was a very poor value of 1.52, which means that the image is too bright throughout the video range rather than getting gradually brighter. This is also far too blue for any decent viewing since all colours will have a blue tint. The TV has both a 2-point greyscale system and a 10-point greyscale system that cannot be used at the same time like the 6-series and higher Samsung displays. The 46WX800U operates like an LG when one or the other can be used. The 2-point balances the amount of red, green, and blue in the bright and the dark parts of the image and the 10-point balances red, green, and blue levels at 10 different intervals throughout the video range. This also helps to shape the gamma curve. Using the 10-point system, I was able to achieve phenomenal greyscale tracking with a dEu’v’ of 2.3 at 90% and 40%, and 1dEu’v’ and less for all other intervals. Almost perfect 6504K (D65) was achievable with the TV measuring the highest at 6546K at 100% and 6357K as the lowest at 40%. Fixing the gamma with the gamma control and the 10-point greyscale created a respectable average of 2.21 with the lowest point being 2.18 at 20% and the highest being 2.29 at 90%.

All of this cannot be said when putting on the 3-D glasses. The glasses, yellow in tint when turned off, shifts light output lower and changes the perception of colour and colour temperature greatly. Viewing 3-D movies in my 2-D settings does not apply with this TV or any other TV. All 3-D modes need to be calibrated to look correct through the glasses. Calibration must be done with the 3-D glasses turned on with the meter pointing through the glasses to the video display. It’s not a problem with my meter, but this will be a huge challenge for most other meters, if not downright impossible. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to calibrate Movie2 mode specifically for 3-D, but the availability of a 10-point greyscale system is encouraging to achieve very accurate results through the glasses. This TV excels at reproducing black and white imagery, so how does it do with colour?

Colours looked much better after greyscale calibration as they measured closer to their specified CIE points. While this television does have a full 18-point Colour Management System (CMS) under their ColorMaster control, it doesn’t work well when real images are played with the feature turned on. I can get graphs to look correct when measuring static test patterns, but when watching real video material, the image is blocky and unwatchable in my point of view. Therefore, any improvement made by the ColorMaster control during measurement cannot be enjoyed when watching real programs. This is a bit of a shame because it did help out somewhat. I am left only to adjust colours using the colour and tint control as tightly as I can – which has been standard practice for all of these years. CMS controls, especially 18-point ones that help adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of each primary and secondary colour, are relatively recent on video displays each with their own set of quirks. Maybe some day another manufacturer will get it completely right. With the 46WX800U, the panel’s design prevents red from being fully saturated so there is no amount of adjustment that will help this out. We can’t make more colours than the TV is designed to create! Blue also suffers from not being close to its primary giving the colour a slightly dark purple look to it.

Contrast Ratio & Uniformity

Forget the manufacturer’s specs and let’s get down to the real business. The television’s full-on full-off contrast ratio was measured with a D65 100% white field and a 0% black field. With the TV set at its optimal image settings, I received readings of 35.9fL for white and 0.021fL for black. This gives me a contrast ratio of 1747:1. But who watches TV this way? We are interested in the ANSI contrast ratio which gives far more accurate telling of contrast within an average scene with various light levels. After measuring 16 alternating full white full black rectangles on the screen at once, the contrast ratio measures in at much more realistic 225:1. This exceeds theatrical screen contrast ratios of below 150:1. A much higher contrast ratio could have been achieved but the screen produces a glare even in a dark room. The light the TV creates bounced off my walls which are a medium shade of gray and reflected off the walls right back to the video screen which in turn affected my readings. I could see my reflection in the screen in a completely dark room through the lens of my spectroradiometer. The solution to this is to have a completely black room or encourage Toshiba to but a non-reflective material on the front of the screen in the next generation product.

White field uniformity was not unique on this video display because of the non-uniformity of the backlight. Compared to the center of the screen, the left corner measured 93% of the screen’s brightness, the bottom left at 91%, the bottom right at 96%, and the top right at a low 77%. This drop in light output affected the upper half of the television and certainly influenced the TVs contrast ratio as well.

Continued in next post...

[Mike Osadciw]

2-D Image Quality

Using the supplied Toshiba BDX30000 3-D Blu-ray player and connected using a Monster 1000HD HDMI cable, I enjoyed the solid imagery from the 46WX800U after calibration. Before I got to work, the TV came “out of the box” in Autoview mode. It displayed a dim and crushed image, unimpressive, very blue, and had a low gamma. I tend to view a montage of images on the Spears and Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray before and after testing. Before any work was done, the sand on the beach looked purple from too much blue and red in the greyscale. It also made it difficult to distinguish the sky from the water all blue tones looked the same. With dark parts of the picture crushed into a deep black and then the image rapidly rising to bright, the image is best described as uneven and confused. The image after the calibration proved to be very rewarding. For specific calibration and technical results, please visit our LCD Forum at http://canadahifi.com/forum/

Calibrated in Movie1, the image was much brighter throughout with loads of detail seen in the darker parts of the image. The TV was able to hold its depth of black regardless of varying light levels. This gives the Toshiba’s 2-D image a 3-D feel. I watched a few movies on the 46WX800U including Anchor Bay’s thriller Frozen. About three skiers left alone high up on a chairlift over a few days, it’s one of my favourite survival movies of 2010. Not only is it a great movie to watch, but it has some pretty good imagery featuring real environments and very little CGI. Now that the excessive blue was removed from the white snow, far more shades of white and gray are noticed than ever before. The image of the 46WX800 is alive with so much detail, I was forgetting that I was watching a movie and feeling like I was on the chairlift with the main characters!

The daylight scenes are dominated by white ski slopes and look fantastic, but the reality sets in when viewing scenes set in darkness. The non-uniformity of the edge-lit LED panel became strikingly noticeable. The bursts of white cloudiness through the black could not go by unnoticed, most notably on the right hand side with this review unit. For a movie that adds suspense in darkness, I felt like it took away from the nail biting events as they unfolded. I couldn’t help looking at the white blotches. Affecting screen uniformity, it caused reduced light output in bright scenes as the affected area looked a bit dimmer. A D65 bias backlight placed behind the TV to create a white glow matching the white point of the TV. It will increase the viewer’s perception of black and reduce the noticeable blotches of LED TVs in dark room environments.

When viewing more colourful films with Colormaster turned off, the deficiency in red and warmth is noticed when viewing the opening scene from The Dark Knight. Skin tones seemed to have been missing some of the warmth and pink I’m used to seeing on other reference video displays. In HBO’s fabulous The Pacific miniseries where colours are altered in post-production to create a very specific mood on a scene by scene basis, most other colours were satisfactory with exception to blue and the aforementioned red. So while I was happy at the high level of detail and the greyscale capability of the TV, I felt a little wanting in colour fidelity.

3-D Image Quality

I had on hand five titles distributed by Warner Bros. which allowed me to view some 3-D content. Three were IMAX titles: Under the Sea, Deep Sea, and Space Station 3-D. All were created using an IMAX 3-D process with Space Station leaving the least impression on me. The 46WX800U plays back these 3-D titles without a hitch; it locks onto the 3-D mode when the signal is sensed from the player. The TV and player do warn of the health side effects of watching 3-D for some people, but more on that in a moment.

I viewed the 3-D imagery in the Movie1 picture mode I calibrated for 2-D. As I’ve mentioned before, all 3DTVs used with 3-D glasses darken the image and alter the perception of colour. Despite this, I found the 46WX800U mesmerizing to watch for the simple enjoyment of 3-D and reserved my feelings for absolute image fidelity in 2-D mode only. The fish swam out at me in Under the Sea. I felt as if they were touching my nose and at times I could reach out at the imagery and swim with the fish. The perception of depth was incredible and got me pumped for more 3-D titles. To rain on my IMAX parade, the other two Warner Bros. titles, Clash of the Titans and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore are neither good films nor good 3-D films. Terrible stories aside, these films were not natively shot in 3-D but were processed in 3-D as an afterthought to take advantage of the theatrical 3-D hype. The unimpressive image quality shows and the 46WX800U does not hide it. The 3-D effect was present sometimes but goes down in my books as mostly flat. These movies are much better enjoyed in 2-D - if you actually did enjoy these films.

I did have some issue with crosstalk while watching through the glasses. There was some mild ghosting throughout if one is quick enough to notice it. While it bothered me at first, I did stop thinking about it when watching the IMAX films. As I put in the other titles, I couldn’t help to see it probably because I was less involved with the films and therefore spent more time analyzing the picture. I also had a difficult time finding the FPT-AG01U glasses comfortable. They are thick rimmed, large and heavy, and I probably would get beat up if I were a kid wearing them in school today. Maybe putting some masking tape around the center of the glasses would have made it more comfortable for my nose rather than feeling the plastic digging in. These are supposed to be one size fits all, but maybe they were a bit too big for me. I found that when watching 3-D programs, it was difficult for me to focus on the bottom portion of the image. The image appeared a bit blurred and I couldn’t quite get it clear enough compared to the image in the center.

A few other quick items to note: this TV is small and to fit within the 30-36 degree viewing arc recommendations, you should be sitting between 5-7 feet away from the 46WX800U. The further you sit from this television, the less resolution you will see and the 3-D effect diminishes. Move far enough away and the 3-D glasses will eventually lose the signal. Going back to the health warnings, 3-D is not for everyone and can make people feel sick after some time. I tend to feel nauseated after a short while of 3-D viewing so I had to take plenty of breaks before I finally called it quits.

Conclusion

It’s great to see Toshiba coming back to the market with high performance video displays. I admit I was afraid for Toshiba when the CRT diminished as the dominant video display technology. While this edge-lit LED TV wouldn’t be my first choice for my primary video device in dark theatre room, I would not hesitate to recommend it as secondary TV where moderate light from the sun or ceiling will always be an issue. I became a bit attached to the Toshiba 46WX800U during its stay, and I can’t help thinking how attractive it would look on a stand between my large front window and fireplace.

Mike Osadciw
11.01.24

[Mike Osadciw]

Technical Data/Measurements - Before Grayscale Calibration

Let's interpret some of the technical data above by looking at the graphs and tables. The image below is a snapshot of the performance of grayscale and gamma prior to calibration. To achieve D65, the TV needs to reproduce a certain amount of red, green, and blue throughout the whole video range. This TV, not surprisingly, is very blue, as noticed in both RGB balance graphs. The D65 whitepoint is measured at .313, .329. The DeltaE UV bar graph to the right shows the distance away from that target that the TV is measuring at. To be within acceptable limits, the bars should be below the YELLOW line. If the bars are below the green line, the eye shouldn't be able to notice at all. Note that not all televisions can achieve either target from steps 10-100, although many can.

Gamma luminance shows us how bright the TV gets at each step relative to the target of 2.2-2.4 (target selected based on room environment). This TV, unsurprisingly, is much too bright throughout measuring low at 1.52, rising out of black much faster than intended (getting bright too fast relative to what the signal like a Blu-ray disc is telling the TV to do). Serious gamma correction is needed on this television during calibration.





Technical Data/Measurements - After Grayscale Calibration

After much work with the Konica-Minolta CS-1000A spectroradiometer and the CalMAN program, the image below shows the grayscale/gamma results after using the 10-point grayscale/gamma controls. Notice that all of our DeltaE UV is below the green line (3 and below), the RGB balance dialed in very nicely, virtually even across the range. I selected a reference white level of 35fL to measure grayscale and gamma which is the target for very dark room environments. For this screen size, I would normally like to choose a higher reference (40fL-45fL), but doing so with the backlight on this TV caused the black level to increase beyond what I believe is acceptable. Video priority #1 is keep black levels dark; setting higher backlight levels turn black to gray. This choice turned out well because grayscale was very linear after my measurements, and gamma was adjusted to an average of 2.21. Looking at the raw data below in the table, I was able to adjust gamma to be virtually consistent from step to step - an excellent capability of this TV. I found grayscale performance of this TV to be extremely acceptable and high performing. Great job, Toshiba!

[Mike Osadciw]

Technical Data/Measurements - Colour Master Turned Off

The only way to measure and see colour correctly is to do so AFTER grayscale has been corrected - it's the way our TV system works. As I later found out, this was the way I needed to leave the TV because the Colour Master feature did not make the image look good after it was set correctly. So, with grayscale set correctly at D65 ("white" in the table), we can now find the TV's ability to reproduce colour. Colour is measured in three dimensions to the measured reference: brightness (luma level - how light or dark it is), saturation (how far away from the white point it is), and hue (otherwise known as tint/where it is located between each colour point).

The Toshiba's colours' brightness/luma were in and around acceptable limits for all but blue, which is much too dark (graphs not shown - I didn't save one). This, combined with the fact that blue saturation cannot be reproduced correctly, give blue an darker and oddly under saturated appearance when viewing real material (Toshiba's blue doesn't match the TV system's blue). The same can almost be said the same for red; while red brightness is correct, it's far too undersaturated making the TV lose the warmth in scenes that require it. It's stripped down to looking a bit dull on the red end. I find that almost all LCD televisions suffer from this deficiency, so this isn't just a Toshiba thing. As a result, the hues for both colours aren't correct either. When viewing source material that one is very familiar with, it's evident that there is colour missing.

The following image shows the colour after adjusting the Colour Master Control:




Trying to calibrate with Colour Master turned on proved to make better graphs putting most items below the green line, but not a better picture. While I was able to align the colour more accurately after calibration. As mentioned in the review, while colours were slightly more accurate, the image became blocky looking so I turned the feature off and was content with the colours reproduced with the perfect grayscale set in place.

Below is the summary of the work - grayscale and colour (colour with Colour Master turned on only because I took this image before I found out it was blocky through my viewing). Expect colour to be slightly less accurate than from what's presented here - but not by a large margin and still within very acceptable limits.


Toshiba 46WX800U Post-Calibration Summary



I'll reiterate that while I wouldn't use this TV in my primary dark-room viewing environment, I would would strongly consider it as a secondary TV in a room with moderate ambient light.

Mike Osadciw
11.02.20

[Suave]

Thank you for sharing this very insightful and detailed review with us Mike! I can't think of anything else that a potential buyer of this set might want to know

[Mike Osadciw]

...and now the graphics are included! Let the discussion begin, everyone!