Toshiba 3787db Awesome 37inch with Dolby

ID: 15897
Date: 2006-10-16 14:34:54

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Text: Toshiba 3787db Awesome 37inch with Dolby 5:1 Television. see review below. Perfect condition throughout, complete with stand shown in picture. FOCUS Wonderful, colossal pictures matched for impact by classy Dolby Digital sound make the 3787DB one of the best home cinema TVs yet Picture ***** Sound ***** Features ***** Overall ***** Model : Toshiba 3787DB Price when new : £2,000 Features : 100Hz picture processing; picture NR; 16:9 mode; Dolby Digital, Pro-Logic, 3-Stereo, pseudo surround and Nicam sound modes, plus Hall, Theatre, Disco and Stadium DSPs; 2 x 10W to front left/right, 13W to subwoofer, 2 x 5W to centre, and 2 x 5W to rears; test tone; NTSC 3.58/ 4.43MHz playback; three Scarts; audio left/right phono out; two S-Video inputs; composite video/stereo audio input; coaxial and optical digital audio inputs; headphone socket; speaker connections for rears and optional external fronts; auto tuning; on/off timer; blue screen; horizontal shift; teletext with 500-page memory Dimensions : 1,006(w) x 784(h) x 647(d)mm Weight : 76.5kg Now it’s your turn to watch big brother Dolby Digital cinema sound meets 37 inches of extreme screen - could Toshiba’s £2,000 3787DB be the ultimate home theatre telly, asks John Archer? It’s the plaintive cry of movie groupies everywhere: ‘Size does matter, and mine’s not big enough!’ Yup, for the man who loves watching films in the comfort of his own home, 14, 21 and maybe even 25 inches just aren’t enough. A big screen is a must. Those scuttling bugs in Starship Troopers don’t look half as scary when they’re only a few inches high, and the Death Star is nothing like as Imperial when it’s the size of a Malteser. Then there’s the sound. What’s going to do it for you more: hundreds of Imperial and Rebel fighters zooming all around your living room, from left to right, back to front, over your head and back again, or hundreds of Tie Fighters just zooming around the edges of your TV? With these factors in mind, Toshiba’s ground-breaking 3787DB would seem to be the TV with everything. Its 37in screen is as big as cathode ray tube technology gets these days, and the Dolby Digital multi-channel sound processing the set carries is pretty much where it’s at as far as cinema sound is concerned, beating the pants off ordinary Pro-Logic. So is this monster Tosh (an even bigger brother to the Dolby Digital 32MW7DB 32in widescreen set we looked at and loved oh so long ago) as dreamy in action as it is on paper? WORTH THE WEIGHT? FOCUS Wonderful, colossal pictures matched for impact by classy Dolby Digital sound make the 3787DB one of the best home cinema TVs yet Picture Sound Features Overall Model : Toshiba 3787DB Price : £2,000 Features : 100Hz picture processing; picture NR; 16:9 mode; Dolby Digital, Pro-Logic, 3-Stereo, pseudo surround and Nicam sound modes, plus Hall, Theatre, Disco and Stadium DSPs; 2 x 10W to front left/right, 13W to subwoofer, 2 x 5W to centre, and 2 x 5W to rears; test tone; NTSC 3.58/ 4.43MHz playback; three Scarts; audio left/right phono out; two S-Video inputs; composite video/stereo audio input; coaxial and optical digital audio inputs; headphone socket; speaker connections for rears and optional external fronts; auto tuning; on/off timer; blue screen; horizontal shift; teletext with 500-page memory Dimensions : 1,006(w) x 784(h) x 647(d)mm Weight : 76.5kg 01276 62222 ‘It’d blooming better be,’ were my first thoughts as I rounded up the entire population of Luxembourg to help me lift it from its box. It’s a genuine back-breaker. But as I massaged my spine into shape again and surveyed the ocean of screen now before me, it looked as if the effort had indeed been worthwhile. The 3787DB looks splendid. Bearing an unusual silvery façade, it sits like some indomitable AV god that, as they (probably) say in the Bible, has no intention of taking any stereo crap from anyone. Unlike many enormous sets, the 3787DB makes no attempt to hide its size by hanging the screen in a diminutive frame. The unashamed chunkiness reminded me of some of those funky big ghetto blasters ‘youngsters’ are wont to lug around these days. And, trendy chap that I am, I liked it. Extremely. Setting it up for full-on Dolby Digital action is a cinch. The front left/right, centre and subwoofer speakers are all built into the TV, so all that was left for me to do was attach the rear speakers to the sockets on the TV’s rear and position them to their best advantage at the back of the soundstage. Then it was just a case of sticking a DVD or NTSC laser disc player into one of the three Scarts on the rear, running a TOS-Link digital audio cable from the DVD/NTSC LD player to the correct socket on the TV, and telling the set which of the AV sockets the digital audio input is to be used in connection with. All this is well explained in the instruction manual, but you’ll scarcely need it. Sockets other than those mentioned are (to the rear) the RF in, a coaxial input in for alternative digital audio connection, spring-clip connections for external front left/right speakers should you choose to add some of your own, and (up front) composite video/stereo audio phono inputs, an S-Video input, and a headphone jack. Everything you might expect and more besides. Kicking auto tuning into action brought me up against Toshiba’s current exhaustive but cumbersome onscreen menu system. The tedious bit is that accessing the main control menu (necessary even for changing basic picture settings) means pulling down a flap and playing around with a fiddly roster of navigation and adjustment buttons. In light of how impressive the feature count is - 16:9 mode, child lock, on/off timer, teletext memories, many sound modes - I definitely think there’s room for improvement in the user-friendliness department. Lessons might be learnt, perhaps, from Sony’s recent adventures in tracker-ball cursor control. At least the auto tuning did its job well - albeit slowly - and again the instruction book was well up to scratch, so I’ll try not to complain too much. A first impression of the set’s ability with tuner pictures was difficult to form because I was too busy shielding my eyes. The set is shipped with the contrast set to maximum, and it’s a frightening sight to behold. A few tweaks later, though, I found myself staring agog at a highly impressive example of whoppervision. The subtle shades of blue on Channel 4’s Fifteen To One looked superlative: bright, clearly defined, rich and, best of all for a tube as big as this, largely unaffected by grain or dot crawl. Presenter William G Stewart also looked terrifyingly realistic - not least because on the 3787DB he was practically life-size. A quick bit of investigation revealed that this excellent picture was under the influence of a noise reduction routine. Turning this off revealed definite grain and a little dot crawl, though it was still very impressive considering how far the source material was being forced to stretch. I reckon for most viewing you’ll probably want to leave the NR on (though only on the ‘low’ setting; ‘high’ softens the picture too much). Good old Jerry Maguire on DVD looked magical without the noise reduction on, however. As with so many Toshiba sets we’ve seen recently, there’s a wonderful movie-like snap to high-resolution pictures that few other manufacturers can currently match. The main reasons for this are a superb finesse with detail reproduction, a canny ability with the black level, and a wonderfully natural tone. Its pictures really are a delight to watch. Not surprisingly the 3787DB also delivered an exemplary performance on our test benches. A frequency response sweep showed clarity right through to an unbeatable 5.8MHz, with zero chroma noise interference indicating the presence of a top-class comb filter. Given the size of the screen, the geometry is exemplary too, and the colour performance is fine, with no tizziness to speak of.

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