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Toshiba Regza DB (32DB833B) review

Toshiba's 32-inch, 1080p Regza 32DB833B is one of the first LED TVs  we've seen to come with an integrated Blu-ray player . It's an entry-level set, but the LED backlighting and the Blu-ray player add to the price, with the result that the TV will set you back around £520 online, which isn't all that cheap for a 32-inch model.

The TV is reasonably stylish, and almost identical to the Regza 42HL833B that we looked at recently. In fact, both models share the same chassis, with the difference being that this one has a Blu-ray drive fitted on the left-hand side, whereas that space on the 42HL833B is simply blocked off.

From the front, the TV looks handsome, thanks to its glossy black finish, cut-away corners and the aluminium strip that runs across the bottom. The plasticky stand feels rather flimsy, though, and the overall build quality of the set screams 'budget' rather than 'premium'.

One big annoyance that this TV shares with the 42HL833B is that it doesn't have an integrated Freeview HD tuner. Instead, the tuner only allows you to watch standard-definition Freeview channels. If you want hi-def services, you'll have to resort to using an external set-top box, which is pretty lame for a 2011 model.

Also, the TV's electronic programme guide isn't all that great. The presentation is very dull and it uses a vertical layout, rather than the more traditional, horizontal, bricks-in-the-wall approach. This can make it difficult to spot programme clashes across different channels. Nevertheless, the EPG is fairly speedy to navigate.

Presumably, Toshiba felt it could cut back on the number of ports on offer due to the presence of the integrated Blu-ray payer. We think Toshiba's cut back too far, however, as you're left with just two HDMI ports, when most 32-inch TVs now come with four sockets. Nevertheless, the HDMI ports are joined by a set of component inputs, as well as a single Scart socket.

The TV also has two USB ports. The first is mounted on the main chassis and used for digital-media playback. The media-playback interface is very basic -- it's little more than a file browser -- but the format support is good. The set had no problem playing HD MKV files, along with Xvid and DviX videos.

The second USB port is attached to the Blu-ray player housing and can only be used for storing BD-Live downloaded content. The Blu-ray player also has an Ethernet socket. This is, again, only used for accessing BD-Live content. There's no support for media streaming via Internet TV services like BBC iPlayer.

Nintendo Wii U Tablet Screen Resolution Revealed | Golgotron.com

Here at Golgotron, we consider ourselves scientists. We go where others dare not go, and we get the info others dare not get. So, when we were introduced to the Nintendo Wii U and realized that Nintendo only had some of the answers to our many questions, we set out to find the answers ourselves. We found one.

What is the screen resolution of that fancy wireless LCD built into the Wii U tablet controller? First off, we knew it wasn’t super high res. You could tell that just by looking at it, and no one expects a 6.2 inch screen to be 1080p. At least, not anyone who knows anything about present-day LCD technology. However, we were kind of hoping for what is commonly referred to as QHD – 960 x 540. That’s a quarter of the 1080p that we love so much, and if you didn’t already know, hi-def scales down better when it works out evenly like that. Unfortunately, it looks like the units at E3 were not quite that good. Now, they didn’t look bad. In fact, the screens looked quite good in practice, but technically speaking, QHD is a bit better than WVGA, especially when the source material is hi-def. Just think about all the NetFlix’ing that’ll happen on this thing.

So this is what we found after staring at some hi-res photos and manually counting individual pixels – by our estimation, the screen on the Wii U tablet is about 870 pixels wide. However, that doesn’t jive with any standard screen resolutions and it certainly doesn’t match any LCDs commonly in production. 854, though… now that’s a winner. 854 x 480 (WVGA) is a very common widescreen resolution, and it’s within 2% of our not-scientific-enough measurement. Unless Nintendo changes things for the final units, we’re confident the Nintendo U tablet resolution is WVGA.

If you’re up for it, you can use our images to count the pixels for yourself. Click on the thumbnails for the full resolution images.

854×480 is still technically a higher resolution than what the Wii outputs so I guess that is good.u00a0nnI do find it strange that it is not full QHD as one of the things we have seen and people have talked about is having a 4-player split screen game where each quarter of the 1080p screen would be streamed to each individual controller. Obviously this will still work with the slightly lower resolution.

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