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Review: Toshiba 37RL853B

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The Toshiba 37RL853B offers a little bit of everything - it's a contemporary looking LCD TV with an LED edge-lit Full HD panel, decent connectivity, Freeview HD, plenty of user-adjustable tweaks and smattering of multi-media features including access to iPlayer and YouTube. Not bad really for what is after all, a budget TV.</div>
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The 37RL853 sits slap bang in the middle of Toshiba's RL series, with the 32-inch 32RL853 and 42-inch 42RL853 offering the same specification for around £50 less and £100 more respectively.</div>
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The RL series itself is more or less in the middle of Toshiba's 2011 range of flatscreens, adding a terrestrial HD tuner to the basic standard definition Freeview tuner found on the HL series (which only comes in 32-inch and 42-inch sizes).</div>
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Above the RL series is the step-up SL series, comprising the 32SL853, 37SL853 and 42SL853. These add Toshiba's ActiveVision image processing engine and an eco-friendly panel to the mix, plus Toshiba Places, which is a platform designed for people who like to conduct social relationships through online means.</div>
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Want more? Looking for USB recording? Head for the UL series. 3D you say? That will be the VL and WL designer models (but neither of the latter two come in 37-inch size. At this end of the scale were talking big bucks of course.</div>
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As for rivals, consider Panasonic's TX-L37E30B with excellent networking or the Samsung UE37D5000, which lacks a Freeview HD tuner but if you're a Sky HD or Virgin Media customer could be considered an irrelevance.</div>
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As previously mentioned the Toshiba 37RL853B has a Full HD panel with a Freeview HD tuner. It also has a generous four HDMI inputs (including one with an audio return channel), which should satisfy most users' HD habits (say for a games console, PVR and Blu-ray deck or home cinema system) and Resolution+, which upscales standard definition sources to 1920 x 1080 resolution.</div>
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There are also a broad set of tools that give you every chance possible of optimising the picture. You get the regular picture modes – Standard, Autoview, Dynamic, Game, PC and a brace of movie modes, which are called Hollywood 1 and Hollywood 2. It's quite likely that none of these will suit your tastes, even Autoview, which automatically adjusts the picture depending on ambient light conditions.</div>
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Naturally, it's a simple process to tinker with the contrast, brightness, colour, sharpness and backlight for each mode and any changes you make are saved for each mode. Further than that though is a surprisingly diverse range of adjustments.</div>
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But delving in to the Advanced Picture Settings menu to find such options as Colour Master, Base Colour, Colour Temperature, Backlight Adjustment Pro, White Balance, Black/White Level and Static Gamma, to name but seven, can all seem rather daunting.</div>
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And when you get down to the nitty gritty of tweaking the hue, saturation and brightness of red, green, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan you start to wonder if it's ever possible to find the right combination of settings that are just right for your preference. Even more so, when you consider that different sources need different settings, as do different times of day when the ambient light changes.</div>
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And just to complicate matters even further there's an 'Expert' sub-menu that has an RGB filter for adjusting each colour in isolation, plus a white balance tool and a test pattern to aid image adjustment. There's also a Control Visualisation graph which puts a brightness histogram and control curve up on screen and makes you feel as if you're wearing a white lab coat doing GCSE physics experiments.</div>
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And with no way of saving settings to different presets it makes you wonder how often any of these parameters will be used by the vast majority of owners. It's not as if Toshiba offers a cheaper model of the same size that includes a Freeview HD tuner and some multimedia capability but excludes the calibration toolset.</div>
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Talking of multimedia, Toshiba has not exactly blazed the trail when it comes to internet-based TV entertainment and the 37RL853 doesn't do a lot to change that perception. Other brands, such as Sony and Samsung, are offering a much broader selection of IPTV portals on their budget TVs than just YouTube, BBC iPlayer and Flickr, which you get here once you've hooked up to a router using Ethernet (or an optional extra wi-fi dongle). On the plus side though, at least iPlayer allows access to HD shows (and is a cinch to use).</div>
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If you're not using the USB socket for a Wi-Fi dongle you can enjoy multi-media playback from a flash drive. The ethernet socket can also be used for hooking up to a Windows 7 computer for the purposes of DLNA networking.</div>
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Other socketry includes a Scart, component video and composite video for any legacy analogue kit, plus a 15-pin PC input and a digital optical audio output. Finally, a CI slot will accept a CAM module if you want access to ESPN using TopUp TV's subscription service.</div>
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The 37RL853 can also act as a giant photo frame. Choose one of your favourite snaps from a USB drive or networked computer and copy it to the TV's own flash memory. It can be displayed with or without the date and time.</div>
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Some of last year's Toshiba screens suffered badly from excessive MPEG noise but the 37RL853B is significantly better in this respect.</div>
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Hitchcock's <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">To Catch A Thief</span> stored on our Sky+ HD box in standard definition features a scene where Cary Grant chases a thief across some rooftops at night. The pitch black skies are a great test of a how solid a picture a panel can muster. The results are not perfect, as part of the picture can clearly be seen to break up, but it's not the overwhelmingly disastrous distraction we've seen before. And the same scene in HD is completely solid.</div>
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The same HD recording also shows the 37RL853's talent for serving up finely detailed static images. A shot of the watching crowd in their fancy dress features some interesting characters and you can clearly see every detail and nuance of their sun-withered faces. Their costumes also show how well the screen renders a diverse colour palette with accurate well-contained hues.</div>
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When watching a movie it pays to experiment with the various modes. In a bright room it's better to stick with the Standard mode than either of the Hollywood modes, which reduce the backlight and contrast such that the picture seems limp and dull.</div>
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The Autoview mode is worth trying but can't be relied upon, for example when watching cricket the green grass is far too bright.</div>
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Blu-rays serve to reiterate the panel's strengths and weaknesses.<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">No Country For Old Men</span> has some vast desert skies that are served up with a high level of noise and DNR seems to have little effect. There are also plenty of dark scenes that show that shadow detail is not the best but at least the detail in well-lit scenes is very good.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">Avatar</span> looks superb: the level of detail in Sully's face at the first Pandora briefing is astonishing. Overall there's very little motion judder and colours remain true.</div>
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The Freeview picture is generally very good, especially the three HD channels. The standard definition picture is about par for the course and engaging Resolution+ certainly sharpens things up. Finally, viewing angles are very good.</div>
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Don't expect to get calls from angry neighbours complaining about the sound coming from the 37RL853's speakers. They're ok for regular daytime telly but are seriously underpowered for watching more involving material such as TV dramas and movies.</div>
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The presence of Surround settings in the menu should be taken with a rock of salt; according to the manual "Stereo Extension and Voice Enhancement help to create an enhanced surround sound experience. Your TV's audio will sound fuller, richer, and wider." Voice Enhancement does give dialogue a small lift but it's bordering on egregious to claim the 37RL853 can generate a surround soundfield.</div>
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Value</h4>
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Priced at only £50 more than its 32-inch 32RL853 stablemate the 37-inch 37RL853 looks like something of a bargain.</div>
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It may lack a few niceties such as USB recording, 100Hz processing and a broader Smart TV selection but it gives other 37-inch screens a good run for their money. Samsung's UE37D5000 for example doesn't have a Freeview HD tuner.</div>
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Ease of use</h4>
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Setting up the screen is no more taxing than making tea and toast. The operating system is substance over style, the latter of which it really doesn't have a lot of. But it is easy and uncomplicated to navigate the menus and the remote control has the right number of important command buttons on it.</div>
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The Quick button is especially useful for accessing features such as Picture mode, Picture size, connected TV and channel options (adding to favourites, locking, etc). Some of the buttons on the remote are fiddly, which seems odd when there's a fair bit of unused real estate that would have allowed for a more user-friendly layout. But overall it's a decent effort.</div>
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It's annoying that the full instruction manual is only available as a PDF that you have to download, and a bit cheeky of Toshiba to shift the printing cost to its customers. And surprising as it may seem, not everyone has access to a computer.</div>
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The Freeview EPG is one of the best around in that it displays 13 channels over 2.5 or 1.25 hours and uses black text on a white background. It also has a handy genre guide and search facility but it can be slow to load sometimes.</div>
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The networking and online features are mercifully simple to set-up but the file handling is clunky and laboured. Loading photos and videos on a Toshiba netbook took ages and the folders are displayed in a boring grid structure with no visual information. Unsurprisingly, file compatibility is far from comprehensive and certainly not consistent.</div>
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The 37RL853 is a solid middle-of-the-range Freeview HD screen with few frills and not many thrills either. What it lacks in built-in picture enhancements it makes up for with a surprising degree of user adjustment features. It dabbles its toes in the Smart TV waters with a trio of online services and is prepared to have a go at home networking, albeit with mixed results.</div>
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We liked</h4>
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Greater than average panel noise can't hide the fact that the 37RL853's pictures are generally very good, especially with HD sources.</div>
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The pre-set picture modes are easily tweakable to find the optimum setting and Resolution+ is one of the finest built-in upscalers around. Access to iPlayer is certainly welcome as is the ability to show multimedia files from a flash drive or computer.</div>
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We disliked</h4>
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The 37RL853's sound is just about acceptable for daytime TV watching but is seriously underpowered for more involving soundtracks.</div>
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The graphics and font used for the onscreen menus are rather uninspiring, the Smart TV offering is teasingly small and the networking is rather hit and miss.</div>
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Final verdict</h4>
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The remote control, user interface, networking features and even the ability to make so many picture adjustments give you the feeling that the 37RL853 feels more like an engineering sample rather than the polished article.</div>
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Overall though, such versatility should be welcomed in a TV that is capable of delivering good-quality pictures, and for the money looks like a fairly solid proposition.</div>
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Review: Toshiba 37RL853B

The Toshiba 37RL853B offers a little bit of everything - it's a contemporary looking LCD TV with an LED edge-lit Full HD panel, de...

App developers could face US privacy investigation

<br/><br/><img alt="Privacy on the iPhone" src="http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/4052/iphoneprivacy2011040613.jpg" style="border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 8px; width: 252px; height: 415px; float: right;" />Hey app, did you just send my personal data or my phone's unique electronic identification number over the internet without my permission? Federal prosecutors in New Jersey are trying to answer this question in an ongoing investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports.<br/><br/>The federal probe aims to discover if any apps built for iOS, Android, or other smartphones are illegally collecting or transmitting personally identifying information, such as the phone's unique device identifier (UDID), to app makers or third parties without consent from end users. Gathering information that can be used to personally identify an individual without adequately disclosing what data will be collected and how it will be used could violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act designed to prosecute hackers.<br/><br/>The investigation, which could continue for months, appears to be in a preliminary phase. In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the online music service Pandora revealed it had been "served with a subpoena to produce documents in connection with a federal grand jury, which we believe was convened to investigate the information sharing processes of certain popular applications that run on the Apple and Android mobile platforms." The Oakland, CA, company added that it's "not a specific target of the investigation" and believes the subpoenas were issued "on an industry-wide basis to the publishers of numerous other smartphone applications."

App developers could face US privacy investigation

Hey app, did you just send my personal data or my phone's unique electronic identification number over the internet without my permissio...

HANDS ON: Chumby8, a Bigger, Better Networked App Player [PICS]

<div><br/><div></div><br/><div><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-578101" src="http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/7389/piconchumby8.jpg" title="picon-chumby8" width="225" /></div><br/></div><br/>The third model of the Chumby line is about to hit the streets on April 5, and the bigger, better networked app player is called Chumby8. We got one of the first ones available for review.<br/><br/>What the heck is a Chumby8, anyway? Depending on how you’d like to use it, at $199, it’s either the most sophisticated alarm clock in the world, or it’s a clunky, anachronistic distant relative of the iPad with a non-removable kickstand in the back.<br/><br/>Like its older brethren, the Chumby Classic and Chumby One, Chumby8 wirelessly connects to your Wi-Fi network, and then lets you use one of its 1500+ apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Pandora. By far, its strongest capabilities are its alarm clock features, able to launch apps or wake you up to music or anything else, whenever you schedule them.<br/><br/>I’ve been a Chumby user for a couple of years now, so I’ve grown accustomed to its idiosyncrasies. Why did I call it a clunky distant relative of the iPad? Because if you compare its screen with that of the iPad, this one feels like a throwback to the ’90s. It doesn’t use the easy capacitive touchscreen of most of today’s tablets that requires just the lightest of touches. Instead, it has an old-fashioned resistive touchscreen that’s a lot less sensitive, making you push harder or even use a fingernail to assure that it works. It takes some getting used to.<br/><br/>Chumby8′s 8-inch 800

HANDS ON: Chumby8, a Bigger, Better Networked App Player [PICS]

The third model of the Chumby line is about to hit the streets on April 5, and the bigger, better networked app player is called Chumby8. We...

Ford's AppLink to support iPhone voice control of apps

<div><img alt="Ford Sync" border="0" hspace="8" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2010/12/fordsyncxyzyc.jpg" vspace="8" /></div><br />
<div>My, how far we have come since Ford offered a "standard" iPod jack in its 2008 Ford Escape. Starting this month (and next depending on the model), SYNC-equipped Ford Fiesta owners with iPhone, Android or BlackBerry smartphones will be able to use free software from Ford called AppLink, which gives SYNC users voice control over several apps on their phones. Available for download over at owner site <a href="http://www.syncmyride.com/">www.syncmyride.com</a>, the first apps compatible with AppLink are Pandora (internet radio), Stitcher (news radio) and OpenBeak (for listening to Twitter posts).</div><br />
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While AppLink was initially only supposed to be for Android and BlackBerry phones, Ford decided to add the iPhone to its list of supported devices. By using Bluetooth streaming with Android and BlackBerry devices and a USB port for the iPhone, users just press the VOICE button on their steering wheel to enable voice command control of their apps. Currently only for SYNC-equipped Ford Fiestas, Ford says that additional vehicles and controllable apps are coming in 2011.<br />
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Just 12 months ago Ford started offering iTunes tagging in their cars with HD Radios, giving users the ability to tag songs for later purchase in iTunes. While that's a neat idea and something I am sure we will see more of in the future, it's really encouraging to see more work being done on the voice control front in the automobile world. With more and more people taking advantage of their smartphones while driving, and with Apple looking to hire more voice recognition specialists, anything that can make the roads a little safer to drive on is all right by me.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_">Source</a></span>

Ford's AppLink to support iPhone voice control of apps

My, how far we have come since Ford offered a "standard" iPod jack in its 2008 Ford Escape. Starting this month (and next dependi...

Wall Street Journal says apps may violate privacy, fingers MySpace and Pandora

<img alt="" src="/ip4main.jpg">You might have heard how careless some third-party apps can be with your personal data, but it may not yet have hit home -- offenders can include must-have programs like MySpace and Pandora, too. The Wall Street Journal</EM> tested 101 popular apps for iPhone and Android and discovered that over half transmitted unique device identifiers (UDID) to a flock of advertisers without so much as a prompt, and that some (including Pandora) even transmitted a user's age, gender and location to better target their marks. Now, before you boycott your favorite music apps, you might want to hear the other side of the story, which is that all this data is typically processed in batches and anonymized so that advertisers can't necessarily separate you from the crowd. However, the worry is that there may be little stopping nefarious individuals from creating a database that links your UDID to all this other data you send out. It's a juicy proposition for targeted advertising, sure, but also potentially real-world crime, so we doubt this will be the last we hear of UDID privacy scares.

Wall Street Journal says apps may violate privacy, fingers MySpace and Pandora

You might have heard how careless some third-party apps can be with your personal data, but it may not yet have hit home -- offenders can in...

Pandora for Android adds Ford Sync AppLink compatibility

<DIV class=separator style="CLEAR: both; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR05x-uej_W7UDd0In3SLRkRcadzjad6AMbmJa8RoiUc26J4eJfROz4jTlmbFFOjdaagOu8SbmQ82JZ8HVrowwBSUNllcndAdn6Sl-S_bj10w13GbwUGvMCibdtlunxdAh5SBvCyMd9BM/s1600/pandora-android-sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 1em; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR05x-uej_W7UDd0In3SLRkRcadzjad6AMbmJa8RoiUc26J4eJfROz4jTlmbFFOjdaagOu8SbmQ82JZ8HVrowwBSUNllcndAdn6Sl-S_bj10w13GbwUGvMCibdtlunxdAh5SBvCyMd9BM/s1600/pandora-android-sm.jpg"></A></DIV>Hey, new Ford Fiesta owners: did you realize that your plebeian family hauler is actually one of the most geek-awesome vehicles on the road today? We were just reminded of that today on news that the latest version of Pandora for Android supports Ford Sync's AppLink technology, a protocol that lets smartphone apps chat with your car's entertainment system. In short, that means that you'll be able to control Pandora with your car's physical buttons, knobs, and doohickeys along with voice controls, hopefully giving you another great reason to keep the phone firmly planted in your pocket (or storage compartment) and your eyes on the road. The update's available now -- and while you're downloading, you might as well start gathering paperwork for the dealer to run your credit report.

Pandora for Android adds Ford Sync AppLink compatibility

Hey, new Ford Fiesta owners: did you realize that your plebeian family hauler is actually one of the most geek-awesome vehicles on the road ...