Toshiba 37AV500U 37 Inch 720p LCD HDTV :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Can't go wrong

2008-04-21
No complaints. Can't beat the quality for the price. Same price at Best Buy as it is on Amazon. Beautiful picture and easy to use remote and menu's. Sound is hooked up to my home sound system so don't know or care what the TV speakers sound like.

great LCD!!!!

2008-04-15
No tv out there can match the Toshiba for the price and quality of this unit. I went around to the various stores, CC, Best Buy, Etc. and for the 720p/1080i 37 inch lcd's , this was far the best. The color ratio is outstanding with a 12,000:1. I was thinking of going with a 1080P, but for tv under 37 inches i was repeatedly told the human eye wouldnt be a able to tell much difference. You cant go wrong with this LCD!

Very Satisfied

2008-03-29
I recently purchased this TV from Amazon. I bought it because I wanted the largest TV that would fit into the space I had (forty inch TVs were too big, 32 inch too small, but 37, just right) and the Toshiba was within my budget. I did no comparison shopping, per se, in that I did not look at any TVs in a show room, nor have I watched any other large screen HDTV for comparison purposes. However, I read a lot about various brands and talked to work colleagues--each of whom after extensive comparison shopping and armed with a larger HDTV budget than I, purchased a Sony. (Oh, I might have paid more for a Sony, but only the 37 inch Toshiba and smaller HDTVs had Amazon Prime shipping with UPS, which seems much simpler than the white glove shipping offered on the other 37 inch TVs I considered--I notice that the Toshiba now gets the white glove treatment. Ha! Ha! Lucky break for me, I say.) Since I have a 5.1 surround sound system, I don't use the TV's built-in amp and speakers. I have an Apple TV as a source and rent iTunes HD movies (which are 720p quality). With these caveats in mind, I am quite happy with the quality of the viewing experience. The auto brightness feature coupled with a non-glossy screen somehow manages to eliminate the glare from my reading lamp that is right next to my chair and only slightly off perpendicular to the TV screen. The TV's anti-glare capability continues to impress. As for actually viewing a HD movie, we have. For example, we rented August Rush from iTunes last weekend, and, with the TV's "movie" option selected, the images were bright, detailed, and smooth and the colors were lifelike and not overly vivid (if you like vivid, the "sports" option supplies it or you can fiddle with the settings). When the first HD images appeared on screen, I made an exclamation, "Oooo, I like it!" and thought, "this was worth the money!" I'm very satisfied, but perhaps my expectations were low--my only viewing comparison is against our old 26 inch standard definition Sony. Caveat emptor?

Skip 720p - Spend a little more for a great 40 inch 1080p

2008-07-22
I wanted a medium sized bedroom HDTV without paying a high price for a premium model. After reviewing 37 inch HDTV's, I decided the Toshiba 37AV500U had great reviews and it was relatively inexpensive. Installation and setup with standard cable went fine. The picture was good, but not great (I am spoiled with 1080P on two other high end sets that I own). All was well until I tried to delete unwanted channels. The manual says you can hide channels in the setup menu. The deleted (hidden) channels kept coming back, and worse yet unused cable channels started to appear when the channel up/down buttons were used. I contacted Toshiba customer service and basically got nowhere. They said there was an update for the TV that would fix the problem. I had the local Toshiba service rep come out. He said there was no update for this TV. He tried in vain to delete/hide channels and gave up. He agreed it was a defect in the TV. I could not find a report online about this problem, so maybe it was a one off. I returned the set and decided to try a different model. I upgraded to the Samsung LN40A530 (a 40 inch 1080p) for about a third more than the Toshiba. The difference in picture quality, ease of use, remote control, etc., was amazing. Well worth the extra money. I expect that with broadcasts going all digital in less than a year, large 720p sets will soon be dinosaurs. My advice is to pay no attention to people who claim you cannot see any difference between 720p and 1080p at 37 to 40 inches. It was obvious to me. In my opinion Samsung makes a much better HDTV than Toshiba. Comparable to, or even better than Sony, and that says a lot.

Nice TV for small price

2008-07-12
I bought this tv based on size and price. I already have a Sony LCD 1080 in another room. This tv is better than the Sony. The Sony's non HD stations look terrible. The Toshiba non HD look good and the HD stations look great! Very nice tv for the money.

A very good TV at an excellent price

2008-07-10
My wife and I are extremely satisfied with out new Toshiba 37 inch HDTV. We have it placed in our bedroom and have DirecTV's DVR playing through it. We are extremely pleased with the bright, sharp and clear picture. We only wish that we had found this type of LCD TV before buying the 52 inch Mitsubishi rear projection TV that we have in our living room. It is 3 years old now and we live in dread that the $300 bulb sill burn out every time we turn it on.

Nice Picture at a Good Price

2008-06-18
I'm happy with this purchase. Delivery was no problem. Set up was easy. The picture is very good. I added a sound system to this TV and now it sounds as good as it looks. I'd recommend this TV with no reservations.

overall good

2008-06-05
Some software problems:

Remote control makes mistake occasionally
Once, it turned on only the audio but the video was not running. I had to switch off/on the TV to get the video back.

Quality:
good video and audio quality. channel change over the ATSC tuner is ok. Not too fast but ok (I've seen very slow tuners).
HD is very good. To be a 720p I'm impressed.
A little bit heavy but the gloss frame is cool.

Overall, very good HD Tv for $840 bucks !!

Thanks Amazon

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