46LX177 Remote and Interactive Features

The Toshiba remote will appeal to some. It is fully backlit, mostly in a pleasing amber but with orange buttons for changing the device control. It is very large, as most display remotes are. It is not a learning remote, so don't expect it to run your entire AV system flawlessly, though it does have enough buttons to be more than functional. I have big hands but I found it to be less than comfortable to use all of the controls. Typing in a direct channel, for instance, is most easily accomplished as a two-handed gesture. The light button is remotely located at the top left of the remote – completely out of reach and thus inconvenient. A side switch or option to have it go on automatically would be most welcome. The remote lacks direct input selection – a disappointment, especially given its ample size. Overall I'd say it was average and not particularly bad, but certainly not a great remote.

Using the Television's Media and Interactive Features

The Toshiba 46LX177 was fun to use. Seriously, it was fun. That is not typically a description I use when reviewing televisions. Most are boring and don't do very much. I found myself taking copious notes on the REGZA, astounded that I was actually finding new things to discuss about an LCD TV. When you first turn the unit on it goes into an Initial Setup mode and requests the following:

• Language (English, Espanol, Francais)

• Demo Mode (set to Off unless you are setting this up for a retail environment)

The system then dumps you into the first channel. When you activate the Setup > Installation > Terrestrial channel setup it begins first with the available analogue channels and then proceeds to the unencrypted digital channels. The 46LX177 indicated that it found 427 channels and took 5-6 minutes to complete the full scan. When it was finished there were far less listed. Presumably the secondary digital channels beyond the xxx-1 designations existed, but were not of sufficient strength to register as tunable.

The analogue NTSC tuner is of high quality. I have seen very poor tuners that show scaling, noise, interference and any many other artifacts on analogue channels. The Toshiba's rendition of even lower numeric analogue stations was quite clear, with acceptable edge detail. Tuning was quick for today's standards and I could hit about 1 channel per second. If I held down the Channel button I could continue to channel scan at that pace.

Channel Browser
Channel selection is easy with the Toshiba REGZA. You can either dial in a channel directly, tune up and down with the Channel buttons or use the Fav Browser which brings up the Favorites list in the Channel Browser. The Channel Browser brings up your first stored favorites, but you can scroll left and right to select from others. Scrolling up and down gives you access to:

• History List – Saves the last 32 channels or inputs you've viewed

• ANT List – Cruise through or tune through your regular antenna or cableTV channels.

• Inputs List – Select a different input/source

• Favorites List – Browse or tune through stored Favorite channels

The Channel Browser works in two modes: Browse or Select. Browse lets you jump through the displayed selections and forces you to click to indicate your choice. Select mode will actually change the channel/input as you move through the list. Either mode can be selected from the Preferences Menu.

THINC System with Personal Email
When setting up my home network the Toshiba easily pulled my IP address from the router. The first thing I had to try out was the email system. I mean, jumping over to check your email during commercial? That's like the coolest geek idea I've heard in a long time. And what's even better than that? It works! I entered my information including POP server and password and the system grabbed my email... spam and all for me to see. Now if that isn't the neatest diversion in the history of television I don't know what is.

The only thing cooler than this would be integrated Pong or Tetris...

Audio Player
Since the networking was a breeze, enabling the Audio Player of the Toshiba 46LX177 was quick and painless. It easily located the Shared folders on my primary PC and I was able to quickly browse and get some tracks playing right away. The file list can be expanded by using the left and right navigation buttons. Up and down sends you quickly through your music or album list.

When you call up a track or album, the system scans the MP3 meta data and renames the titles and artist accordingly. There are no visualizations, but basic player controls are provided.

Picture Viewer
Picture viewing was good, but pulling large 3-4MB files across the network meant a slow top-down load which, when it finally came in, almost immediately jumped to the next photo. A slide show interval (delay) setting is available in the Setup menu, so you can extend this period of time beyond the default 5 seconds. The system will also load up to 6 photos at one time during the preview process – this helps speed up the display process when evaluating which images to load.