Toshiba may have taken it on the chin when the dust settled from the HD disc format war, but the company stormed right back with an impressive line-up of HDTVs and Blu-ray players that garnered solid reviews. The company embraced Blu-ray 3D and recently unleashed its 2011 line-up of Blu-ray 3D players and passive 3D HDTVs, joing the company's active 3D TV sets already available.
Toshiba had one of the larger (and busier) booths at the CEA Line Shows in New York last month; which included a new line-up of laptops and the new Thrive tablet. The Thrive looks like a very solid alternative to the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab, not to mention Apple's category leading iPad. It's clear that Toshiba isn't remotely intimidated by the competition.
On the 3D TV front, the flagship 55TL515U 55" LED 3D HDTV ($2,399) was on display in New York and its passive 3D performance seemed impressive in our admittedly brief observations. Toshiba used Tangled on Blu-ray 3D for its demonstration material and the Disney adventure showed off the set's capabilities; fairly deep black levels, lack of crosstalk, and bright image. As with competitors' passive 3D TV sets, the Toshiba passive 3D set does not reproduce a full 3D HD image in 3D mode due to its Pattern Retarder filter (missing all of those lines of resolution), but it was not as obvious as some other passive flat-panels that we've seen of late. We had just visited another booth where passive was on full-display and the Toshiba reproduced a better looking image. The 240Hz refresh rate certainly didn't hurt.
Toshiba also introduced the 47TL515U 47" LED 3D HDTV ($1,899) which looks like an ideal 3D-capable HDTV for the bedroom or smaller den. The set exhibited the same strong image capabilities as its larger sibling. The set offers a 1080p 2D image and passive 3D performance with a 240Hz refresh rate. All of the new TL-series sets have 4 HDMI inputs and built-in Wi-Fi.
But what about the kids or that guest room/kitchen that is crying out for an inexpensive DVD/HDTV combination? Toshiba has been strong in this category for years and the 32-inch 32SLV411U LED combo HDTV at $649 looks like a winner to us. Amazon has some great deals on this set already.
Toshiba also offers 3 Blu-ray players including two Blu-ray 3D units; the flagship BDX5200 ($199.99) offers all of the usual bells and whistles including wireless streaming of Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow, and Pandora. There has been some grumbling on the internet about some Toshiba Blu-ray players requiring frequent resets, although nobody has complained about the picture quality which has generally earned a "thumbs up." Also, it's important to note that we have not observed these issues with our own review samples of the BDX2700, BDX2500 and BDX3000.
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