Customer Reviews

Toshiba 42HP66 42-Inch Plasma HDTV

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Had the TV over a month now and am really pleased. I've always wanted a plasma but of course, the prices were way out of reach. Once they hit two grand and below I decided to take the plunge. People were telling me to go with the EDTV as they are a bit cheaper but its not high def. I decided with this one. I got it at Fry's Electronics. The tv has a very big wow factor in my middle sized apartment and I find myself watching more of my DVDs. The picture quality is excellent. I got comcast HD cable box with DVR for only 9.95 more a month so I cancelled my Tivo as they don't have HD (yet) on their drives. The sound is also excellent, much better than my sony trinitron that weighs a ton (over 100 pounds). The tv weighs somewhere around 80 pounds and is less than 5 inches thick. Panasonic makes the panels for Toshiba so you know the quality will be good as Panasonic's plasmas are always on the top of lists of best plasmas. Hope this helps.
UPDATE:
The TV has been working wonderfully. NO BURN IN. THe picture shift is on, meaning that it is always orbiting the screen unnoticeably though and about once a month I put on the White Screen to clear any burnin that may have occured. The BANDING is noticable in blue skies only. My PS3 games look unbelievably good.

The price of this television has dropped drastically since I bought it in May 2006. I paid two grand and now its availible for as little as $1200 ;(.

I got a wonderful deal (i.e. <2k) for this TV at Amazon. Having been enamored by the high definition images on plasma TVs at local stores, and being a huge sports fan, I decided to bite the bullet and get an HDTV for myself.
I researched TVs for hours and hours on the internet and went on scouting trips to local Best Buys and Circuit Cities to see the TVs live. Ultimately I decided on the Toshiba for the following reasons:
- I didn't want to break the bank with my first plasma
- At the same time I didn't want to get a "no-name" "low-cost" brand TV
- Unlike many of the lower cost plasmas, the Toshiba has 2 HDMI inputs
- I liked the aesthetics and black color (didn't want a silver model)
I have had the television for a week, and so far so good! I am still tinkering around with the settings to try to get the best possible picture in standard definition TV. HDTV looks amazing. And SD looks darn good too, it's just that compared to HD it looks downright primitive.
Some things to also consider with this TV:
- The glass is actually made my LG, not Panasonic. Also apparently the television is assembled in Thailand by the same folks who assemble Orion TVs
- There is no Picture-in-picture

My 5 year old 65 inch Toshiba Rear Projection TV worked so well, I decided to stick with Toshiba to get a flat Panel TV.
This TV works OK, but not excellent like my other TV.
The Panel is made by LG, not Toshiba themself.
I start to notice the burn-in fact, the ghost image on the panel.
I already have 1 bad pixel after only 2 weeks.

I would give Amazon 5 stars for their excellent support. They did 2 price adjustment for me.
Make sure you buy from Amazon for their reputation.

After reading many reviews, we purchased this TV for $2400 on March 22, 2006. Yesterday, March 16, 2008, a loud popping noise and the TV goes black. We have sound, but no video. Toshiba says "sorry." Expert repair guy says probably will require major work and suggests we start looking at the new and improved and cheaper TVs out there now. It won't be a Toshiba.

I bought this TV based on the previous model's high ranking by consumer reports. I am extremely displeased with the quality of the picture. Any dark portions of the screen show color contours and banding that drive me crazy. Where a normal TV will show a gradient of a sunset for example from light to dark of continuous shades of orange. This TV shows a series of bands of successively darker colors red, reddish orange, orangey red, etc. Mostly occurs during dark scenes. The other big problem I have, also in dark scenes is dancing pixels. An almost black area of the screen will show, rather than a dark gray image, will show pixels changing from dark gray to light gray, swimming and dancing. Try pausing the display during a dark scene and watch the supposed static scene display an annoying pixel dance. The HD quality is okay during lighter colored scenes. The regular signal picture quality is poor also. Additionally the channels take three seconds to change and up to ten seconds if it has not been saved during channel scan. The tuner locks up and requires the TV to be turned off before it will allow a change of channel again. Do not buy this TV.

I am a tech consultant; nonetheless excuse me for this non-technical review. I must say I truly like this TV. The banding others have spoken about is certainly real, but only visible with certain content. Otherwise the display is excellent, especially for "older" technology (it's now July 2008 and the set is what? 2 years old?) The audio is very decent compared to some other TVs I have seen, though I usually play audio through my receiver. The remote control is no-nonsense and the entire device has given me no trouble whatsoever since I purchased it (more than a year ago). I don't know who actually makes the set (see comments in some of the other reviews), but it seems like a "Toshiba-quality" product. Oh yeah, there's no apparent burn-in whatsoever.

I researched LCD and plasma HDTV's and decided on this plasma mostly because of price. Amazon had this Toshiba for $1199 with free shipping, which was a great deal - $300 less than Best Buy for the same tv and less expensive than any 42" HDTV with an ATSC tuner.

I don't have cable tv - just an older on-the-roof antenna stuffed in my attic. All the local (Minneapolis) stations broadcast digital signals - most of the primetime stuff is broadcast in widescreen HDTV. The HDTV signals are stunning on the Toshiba.

My biggest gripe with the tv is that there is a 3-second pause from the time you change the channel until the picture shows up. That's pretty annoying for a channel surfer like me.

I am a little concerned about burn-in. I think if I were to do it over again I'd get an LCD instead so I wouldn't have to worry about it. The Toshiba owner's manual is littered with "BURN IN IS NOT COVERED BY TOSHIBA'S WARRANTY" on almost every page.

I was also a little disappointed in the picture from my progressive scan DVD player. I guess I was expecting a picture closer to HDTV, which it clearly is not. However, my DVD player only has the component cables (not HDMI) - maybe a progressive scan DVD player with an HDMI cable would produce a better picture.

Bought this HDTV in September 2006 for about $1500.00. After about 18 months it slowly developed a red distortion along the bottom of the screen. At almost exactly 2 years, the thing made a poping noise one morning and no picture. Luckily (I guess)I purchased a three-year extended warranty from Mack. In short, it took about 8 weeks to have them pick it up and return it. It has been working OK up until last week, the 3 year anniversary, and the same d**m thing happened. Currently summiting a new claim with Mack (UGH!!!), so we will see what happens. I will definately buying Panasonic next time!

We purchased this TV 2 years ago and just yesterday the screen just went out with a pop. The repair is estimated between 6 and 700 dollars. That is just way too much when HDTV's now sell for much less then the 2000 dollar price. I've been a fan of Toshiba through its CRT days, but will never purchase another again.

Be wary of the one year warrantee. My set failed at 13 months and Toshiba (so far) would not help. There are hot spots and color distortion in the clouds and basically any white areas on either regular TV, DVD or video games.
The tech support was worthless to the point of being annoying. I've done a web search and I'm not alone. However, as of yet there are no recalls.