This set has a built-in analog/digital/digital cable tuners (NTSC/ATSC/QAM) that will receive free over-the-air HDTV signals (ATSC) and HDTV signals from a cable connection (QAM). It's also Digital Cable Ready (via the CableCard slot), so you can enjoy digital cable without an additional box or remote using an optional CableCard. It also comes with TV Guide On Screen and Toshiba's innovative Channel Browser "back" button feature--similar to a PC browser back button--that allows easy access to recently viewed channels.

You can use the 27HL95 as a computer monitor with its VGA 15-Pin D-sub input. In addition to its HD component-video input, the 20HL85 has a HDMI input terminal for direct digital connection with an HD set-top box or HD Satellite receiver. This LCD TV has a 500 cd/m2 (candela per square meter) brightness rating and 900:1 contrast ratio. (The higher the contrast ratio, the greater a TV's ability to display subtle color details and not get washed out by ambient room light.)

The 27HL95 performs 3:2 pulldown detection and reversal, too--a handy feature for watching progressive-scan movie programs in their native 24-frame format. To adapt 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video, frames in the original movie must be duplicated; 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this duplication by removing the redundant information to display a frame-accurate picture.

A 3D Y/C comb filter (4 MB, 10-bit with Vertical Contour Correction) further enhances resolution by removing blurred edges between colors and reducing dot crawl (tiny, moving dots of color along a sharp color separation in a vertical line, as in a depiction of a character's striped T-shirt). Toshiba's PixelPure AT (Adaptive Technology) includes Motion Adaptive De-Interlacing, Adaptive MPEG Processing, Adaptive Contrast Enhancement, and Adaptive Color Enhancement--all critical elements to deliver a consistently high quality picture.

Convenience features include color temperature control, closed captioning on mute, sleep timer, tri-lingual on-screen display, V-Chip parental controls, video input labelling, channel labeling, and Toshiba's GameTimer feature, which allows parents to set the television to shut off after a specified period of time and stay off until a lockout key code is entered.

The speakers provide a total of 10 watts of power (5 watts per channel). The SRS WOW virtual surround sound system provides amazing, enveloping sound through just the two built-in speakers. It also provides MTS stereo/SAP with dbx.

It offers the following connection options:

• Composite AV (RCA): 1 in
• S-Video: 1 in
• Component video: 1 in (480i/480p/720p)
• HDMI: 1 in
• PC VGA: 1 in
• RF: 1 in
• Analog audio (RCA, L/R): 1 out
• Headphone: 1

Tech Talk
SRS WOW -- This virtual surround sound processing technology consists of three separate sound expanding systems, which work together to extract "buried" highs and lows. The three systems are, SRS 3D, TruBass, and FOCUS. SRS 3D creates a three dimensional sound field from just two speakers, thus giving the listener the feeling of hearing a multi speaker surround sound system. TruBass produces a powerful, yet low, frequency sound by utilizing a process called psychoacoustics. From only two small speakers, TruBass will give the effect of an expensive sub bass woofer that will leave the listener amazed by the quality of the sound. FOCUS was added to direct the energy from the speakers of the television set in a vertical direction up towards the listener's ears. The addition of FOCUS means that there is virtually no loss of sound from the speaker's position on the bottom panel near the floor, which achieves a clear, undistorted range of audio.

HDMI -- HDMI makes an uncompressed digital RGB connection from the source to the screen. By eliminating conversion to an analog signal, it delivers an unblemished image. The non-degraded signal reduces flicker and leads to a clearer picture. HDMI intelligently communicates the highest output resolution with the source device. The HDMI input is fully backward compatible with DVI sources but includes digital audio. HDMI uses HDCP copy protection.