Toshiba Regza XV545 Cinema Series

[MCI]

bought one of these when they came out Oct 2007 -- that is, the "fat bezel" model 120 Hz Clear Frame yada yada. It's fabulous (and much cheaper this year). Go for it. I don't know what the issue is with "no support for LCD market".

He is reaching on the " no support " comment, 100% not true..They are very big on their LCD's..Heard this from alot of vendors.

[JesseJ]

I tend to use theaterwide 2...does 1 do a better job?
I thought 2 was full stretch.

[joudbren]

Theaterwide 1 is a "smart" stretch mode for 4:3 to 16:9. What it tries to do is leave the image area in the center of the screen at a normal 4:3 aspect ratio and then stretch more of the side areas away from the center. That way the image area in the center of the screen doesn't make everyone look short and fat like a regular stretch mode does (but anything on each side of the whole image does get stretched out of shape). For the most part it works really well and was one of the reasons I bought the Toshiba. You tend to not notice the stretching at the sides as much when the center area is still at a correct aspect ratio so it's a really nice touch if you tend to zoom a lot with 4:3 material.

I had this smart stretch mode available through my Microsoft Media Centre when I was still using the old analog tuners in the home theatre PC. They called it an Anamorphic Zoom mode and I seriously missed that mode when we went digital and had to dump the PC for watching TV. My Samsung 46" that we bought a couple of years ago didn't have a smart stretch mode so everyone on screen looked short and fat when we zoomed.

One thing to watch for though is occasionally you'll see a 4:3 broadcast where they are showing what looks like a 16:9 broadcast but in a 4:3 space on your set. If your TV was set for Native mode so that you have black bars on each side of a 4:3 broadcast, then you would also have black bars on top and bottom of the image in the 4:3 area when they broadcast like this. It's like a "mini movie" on the screen with black areas completely around the video image. In that case, Theaterwide 2 works better as the image is already in a miniature 16:9 format and mode 2 will simply stretch it out to the edges of the screen with no distortion. Cheers!

James

[eldercanuck]

I just picked up a 52XV545U last night for a song on a sale that started today. So far it looks great (deep blacks and good detail on SD programming), but I'm run into a quandry that has kept me up all night. Perhaps one of you Regzanites might have a solution:

I've read the pertinant parts of the manual inside out and backwards, and no matter what I try I cannot get "Optical Output Format" in the Audio Setup menu to become "un-greyed out". I know that the TV can output audio through the digital optical output in either PCM or Dolby Digital formats, but I can't seem to change the setting to Dolby Digital. My receiver (a Technics SA-DA 10 - an oldy but a goody) requires the Dolby Digital feed to produce 5.1 surround sound, but the default PCM feed only allows for 2 channel listening.

In case it makes a difference, my setup has HDMI cables from the Shaw HD PVR, a DVD player and an Xbox into the back of the TV and a digital optical cable from the TV to the receiver.

Please help! This is more important than sleep right now.

[57]

Most HDTVs cannot output DD5.1 signals that are going "through" a TV. You need direct connections from each device to the AVR. Please read the following post on the topic:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17870 Bolding.


Please also read the following post with useful search tips and FAQs for those new to the forum.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=57741