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The start-up menu is pretty straightforward. There's an uneventful walk-through of country and location menus before it starts scanning for channels. It only takes a few minutes to populate the EPG.
Despite the provision of an Ethernet port on the rear of the set, there is no online content portal to explore. Toshiba has yet to announce a start date for its Toshiba Places IPTV offering and on this set you don't even get YouTube to pass the time with.
Toshiba has opted for a conservative user interface. Compared to the screaming graphics favoured by many of its competitors, the presentation is understated but intuitive. To save mucking about through numerous boxes, there's a Quick menu that groups everything you actually might need in a single box (Picture Mode and Size, Media Player etc).
Picture controls are versatile. There's a full range of parameter calibration on offer, along with Backlight Adjustment Pro and base colour management. It's unlikely that the target audience of this type of TV will want to get their hands dirty at this level, but it's a nice option to have.
The Native mode, which prevents overscanning, seems to be the best option for watching HD broadcasts and content.
It goes without saying that the best way to hook up any TV screen to a home network is with a wired connection. This may not always be possible, of course, and so you might feel a need to opt for a Wi-Fi dongle.
Alternatively, consider looking into Power Line, which uses the mains ring to carry network traffic to anywhere there's a power socket – it's often much more reliable than Wi-Fi and a two-pack Powerline system sells for around the same as a dedicated branded dongle.
Powering up the screen immediately brings one problem to light: a buzzing backlight. It oscillates depending on how the screen is set up. Bizarrely, when you select the retina-frying Dynamic setting the noise disappears; choose one of the other viewing modes and the screen begins to hum.
Increase the brightness to the mid-90s on the sliding scale provided and the noise abates, however dive into some of the other menus and it comes back immediately. It could well be that this is a sample fault; however the fact it turned up on this test-bench sounding like a demented contestant trying to answer a question on Family Fortunes is enough to earn several demerits.
The programme listing, meanwhile, is a generic Toshiba affair, and is wide and easy to navigate.
