Toshiba 36ZP38 Review

Written on: 25/08/2003

Review of Toshiba 36ZP38

Good Points
Great sound and excellent RGB picture

Bad Points
Picture geometry errors.
Poor screen convergence on some UK built TV's (even static convergence errors on some sets).

General Comments
Some Toshiba 36ZP38 sets have some poor picture geometry issues not helped by Toshiba not setting up the geometry correctly at the UK factory on some sets. On my set Toshiba seemed to have forgotten to set up "TRAP" in the service menu for the "WIDE" picture setting, which results in poor vertical line geometry in 14:9, 4:3 and 16:9. Setting it correctly fixed awful vertical bend on the images. Maybe someone took a tea break and forgot where they were in the setup at the factory!!

Convergence was also disappointing for a £1300 TV. There were even static convergence errors on both TV's I have used. I have alwasy thought that 36in tube TV's were too large for current tube technology and this set seems to back that up. The 32in version of the same set (which my neighbour has) has a much better picture. On my 36in 36ZP38 the convergence got worse as the set warmed up, so maybe the TV is set up at the factory before the tube has fully warmed up (takes over an hour). I have also noticed that using very high contrast settings on this TV results the tube being overdriven and red fringing appearing above bright objects on the screen. TURN DOWN the contrast to remove this unpleasant side effect.

RGB pictures from a Sky Digibox or DVD player were excellent with very good depth of contrast and definition, but aerial (analogue) images were far less inspiring with lots of dot type interference round edges. The aerial picture is in fact worse than my ten year old Sony Trintron TV.

Teletext images have a very low contrast and can be hard to read on my set. Maybe Toshiba are worried about text images buring the screen?

The set comes with the user menu contrast set to 100%. This results in loss of detail on the picture as the tube is grossly overdriven at this setting. Take a look the bright Sky on-screen menus and you'll see what I mean! Try contrast settings of 70 - 75% and notice the difference immediately.

4:3 (letterbox either side) pictures aren't actually 4:3 on this set as Toshiba have set quite a lot of overscan on the vertical aspect of the picture and fail to allow for this in the horizontal width which is too low. When a test card is viewed in 4:3 it's more like an egg shape stretched vertically. Fortunately, the service menu allows you to increase the screen width and good old Toshiba allow you to turn down the width in 16:9 mode from the user menu. The result is that you can get perfect 16:9 aspect ratio and 4:3 pictures after a few minor tweaks.

Now the really annoying thing:
SCREEN PURITY. My second 36ZP38 has very poor white tone consistency across the screen. In other words, when a totally white screen is shown, the white tone has a pinky white on the right side of the screen and a greeny white on the left. This is very irritating and shows poor factory setup yet again. Both 36ZP38 TV's that I have used have had this issue to some degree but my second set is awful.

In summary, this set can give great pictures if you get one that's actually setup right from the factory. If you are looking for perfect images, buy a PLASMA!