Toshiba 50L7300U Review: A 50-Inch LED HDTV With Wi-Fi

OSD Setup And Calibration

You’ll see from our photos that the 50L7300U, like a majority of HDTVs, has an extensive menu system offering many more calibration options than the average computer monitor. There are also plenty of settings for the set’s audio and network features.

We’ll go screen by screen to show you what makes this display tick. The moire pattern in the photos is not visible to the naked eye. Apparently, there is something in the screen's anti-glare layer that interacts with our camera.

Pressing the Setup button on the remote brings up a menu tree typical of most modern HDTVs. The categories are on the left side and specific settings are on the right. The first screen, Picture, has everything you need for a thorough and precise calibration. There are six picture modes and all have different purposes. The default is AutoView, which uses a built-in light sensor to manipulate various image parameters based on ambient conditions and picture content. Dynamic is the expected torch mode; it's extremely bright and defaults to a very cool color temp and oversaturated color gamut. Standard is fully adjustable, but uses an oversaturated color gamut. The place to do your work is Movie, which is fairly accurate out of the box and can be calibrated to a very high standard. For gaming, choose Game. That mode eliminates extraneous video processing and improves response time and input lag (we were able to confirm this in our tests). PC uses a linear gamma curve to optimize computer images.

After the picture modes, you can see separate controls for brightness, contrast, and backlight. Most LCD HDTVs have this feature and we like it. It’s much easier to set the proper light level and maximize contrast when you can adjust the backlight independent of the black level. Sharpness adds unneeded edge enhancement and is best set to zero.

The remaining image controls are in the Advanced and Expert menus.

When you turn on ColorMaster, the CMS is unlocked. Although it won’t manipulate the color points well, it’s very effective at dialing in the luminance. The gamut in Movie mode is pretty good without adjustment, but it can be improved with an instrumented calibration. Color Temperature is simply three presets. The actual white balance sliders are in the Expert menu shown below. Auto Brightness Sensor modulates the backlight to match ambient lighting conditions. It’s best to leave it off. Dynamic Contrast and DynaLight work in concert to increase contrast by selectively dimming the backlight and altering the gamma based on image content. We experimented with them and you can see the results on page six. Finally, ClearScan is the frame interpolation algorithm. It has three levels plus Off. All options produce smoother motion, which some viewers prefer. Video purists will usually avoid this due to the “soap opera effect” it produces. If you leave it off, the TV will repeat frames to match the native 240 Hz refresh rate. When 24p content is received, it does a 10:10 pulldown that properly reproduces the original film-based content.

Here is the CMS.

It’s laid out correctly, but the saturation control acts more like a brightness (luminance) slider since it won’t alter the color points. Hue works well on the secondary colors. As you can see, we didn’t need to make large adjustments to render an accurate gamut.

The Expert menu gives you a series of test patterns, and both two- and ten-point white balance controls. You’ll have to choose one or the other. We were able to achieve a decent grayscale with the two-point sliders, though the 10-point rewarded our efforts with near perfection.

To set the 10-point white balance, you need to use the TV’s internal test patterns, which are accessed by turning on Window Display. Then you enter the 10P White Balance menu to adjust each brightness level individually.

While IRE is an older term for brightness level (it actually refers to an input voltage), it’s pretty much interchangeable with percent. There are red, green, and blue sliders for each level from 10 to 100 percent. We found that it’s best to work from the top-down when setting these controls. It’s a time-consuming process, but well worth the effort.

Audio from the 50L7300U is pretty good, considering the modest speakers. You can adjust the bass, treble, and balance, and utilize the Audyssey algorithms to simulate surround sound. Turning this on increases the sense of depth and spaciousness in the sound stage. If you want to use an external sound system, turn off the TV speakers altogether.

The remaining menus cover networking, which is very easy to set up thanks to built-in Wi-Fi, and convenience options like sleep timers, USB port settings, and the Bluetooth keyboard that comes in the package.

Calibration

Since this display is used in a different environment than most computer monitors, we’re doing things a little differently with regards to setting the maximum light output. However, all other standards for gamma, grayscale, and color remain the same. Our spec is Rec. 709/sRGB for the color gamut, D65 for the white point, and 2.2 for the gamma. For our tests, we calibrate the set for a day mode of 170 cd/m² peak and a night mode of 120 cd/m² peak.

We use the basic controls, along with the 10-point white balance and color management system, to make adjustments. The list of settings is long. However, if you want to get the most from the 50L7300U, they make a good baseline. The results are completely worth the effect if you have the gear to calibrate this TV yourself, though.