As soon as that great big box makes it's way to the tv room you get extremely excited about the contents. When you first look at the top of the box you are shown simple diagrams explaining how to safely get the tv out of the box. The first thing you have to do is assemble the stand which, although no instructions are included telling you how to do this, is rather simple. Just insert the bolts into the correct slots using the alan key supplied. Once you have assembled the stand you can chooses to connect it to the wall using the supplied plastic strap which just helps prevent the tv sliding off whatever it is sitting on which probable wiuldn't happen anyway due to the weight of the whole set.
It is then the "simple" matter of lifting the tv up and lowering it onto the stand which both slot together easily. I found this was quite hard and took a few attempts of the two of us to get it to fit in but once on the tv can just be left while you use the magnetic alan key to fix the stand onto the tv to make it even more secure. The stand swivels to about 10 degrees either side which comes in handy when you are untangling the power cable and attaching all the hdmi cables etc. Although there was a manual that came with the TV it had no informaton in it about how to attach the TV to the stand.
Once you turn the TV on it takes you through simple setting options such as date and time. It then automatically searches for freeview channels as it has a digital tuner built all you have to do is plug in the aerial cable and it does everything itself.
The Remote
The remote looks very stylish and matches the tv very well with it's body mainly black with a small silver strip on the side. The remote can be used for a dvd or vcr aswell by just flicking a switch. Overall it is rather siple to use and understand.
Sound
Although the 42x3030d only uses Nicam sound system the Toshiba SRS Wow virtual surround sound really gives you a good experience and the sound quality overall is pretty good.
Picture
Now for the ultimate test. The 42x3030d is 1080p compatible and although many devices cannot handle that resuloution I was fortunate to have a PS3 connected via hdmi which meant I could see the TVs true capabilities. You can really tell the difference between SD and HD even at the distance of about 3.5 metres which was what I was sitting at. When you read those TV size guides you always have to realise that they want you to buy bigger tvs in order to ake more money and 42" is fine for up to even 4.5 metres.
When you watch the Standard definition freeview on the 42x3030d the picture quality isn't great but it is ok when you sit further back but when you actally walk up to the screen (not that you would do that normally) you can see that the picture is blotchy and pixels can be seen and overall colours are quite dull.
However when you attach an HD input into the 42x3030d (the PS3 in this case) the difference is amazing. No matter how close you get to the screen it looks incedible. The colours are incredibly bright and incredibly dark when required (this is the contrast ratio) which makes the picture all that much better. Although on some reviews of this tv they exagerate that there is a lot of smearing when there are fast moving images I did not see any even on the fast, action packed Full Auto 2 Battlelines (which is 1080p cabable). Infact the TV did extremely well to keep up with the movement.
Overall this is a great TV and don't be put off by the low price Toshiba did not cut down in the quality of this HDTV
Problems
Like all TVs this TV does have a few little problems that don't make a huge difference but just annoy you a little bit. One as I already mentioned there was no instructions on how to attach the TV to the stand and the other was that the HDMI slots and some other slots are in places that are quite hard to access.
More details
Remote Control
Excellent Quality
Instructions
Quite Helpful / Understandable
Durability
Excellent
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