At the end of the new millennium's first decade, people are consuming entertainment on all kinds of devices, from smartphones to computers to big-screen HDTVs. Sometimes the content we want to see or hear isn't on the device we're using at the time. What do you do if you're sitting in your home theatre, and you'd like to show off your vacation pictures? Or listen to an album you've just downloaded? Or share a laugh over some YouTube videos?

That's the point of DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), a cross-industry set of standards for moving content over a home network. Theoretically, sending music, photos and video from one DLNA device to another should be almost seamless. All Windows 7 PCs are DLNA-compliant; and so are a growing number of smartphones and HDTVs, including the TV reviewed here.

Toshiba says its new Regza UX600 LED-backlit LCD TVs are "the first DLNA-certified televisions recognized by Microsoft as compatible with Windows 7." In English, that means that you should be able to able to use your TV remote to "pull" content from a Windows 7 PC, or use a Windows 7 PC to "push" content to the TV - and that it should all be easy.

Is it as simple as it sounds? In my experience, not quite. To get this stuff to work the first time, it helps to have a small propeller on the top of your head. But after navigating over a few rough patches in the setup process, day-to-day use should be pretty straightforward.

The Big Picture

For this review, I tested the 46-inch Regza 46UX600 ($1,900). The UX600 series also includes the 40-inch 40UX600 for $1,600 and the 55-inch 55UX600 for $2,500. These are slim, attractive TVs, less than two inches deep. The black bezel surrounding the screen is covered with a clear frame that has interior three-dimensional accents. The whole presentation is quite elegant. A football-shaped pedestal is supplied. The remote control is basic, but easy to use and read. However, it is not backlit.

Toshiba also supplied a Windows 7 notebook for this review, the Satellite E200. Interesting as the UX600's network features are, most people buy a big-screen TV to watch television and movies; and they want the best picture they can get. So that's where I'll start.

Setup: When you turn the UX600 on for the first time, an onscreen menu asks you to confirm language, time zone and location, i.e. whether you're using the TV at home or in a store. Choose Home, and it will default to the Autoview mode. This mode automatically adjusts settings to suit room lighting conditions and picture content. All the main picture controls, including brightness, contrast, tint, colour and sharpness, are in the centre default position. In the Advanced Picture Settings menu, ColourMaster is turned off, DynaLight (which adjusts the backlight to suit picture content) is on, and Dynamic Contrast and Static Gamma are in the centre position.

With these out-of-the-box settings, black levels are excellent, yet there is very good detail in dark areas. The picture looks slightly too vibrant though, with a mild magenta tinge.

Of the UX600's preset picture modes, Movie is the one that gets closest to the picture a video purist would like for viewing in subdued (but not dark) lighting conditions. In this setting, backlight is reduced to 30 from the maximum of 100, contrast reduced slightly to 90, and other settings are at the centre position. In the Advanced Picture Settings menu, Colour Temperature is set -2, which produces a more accurate colour balance, warming up the picture and making it more film-like. Various picture processing options, including DynaLight, are turned off, and Dynamic Contrast is reduced to 3.

As I always do, I used test patterns on a calibration disc (DVE HD Basics on Blu-ray) to check and adjust picture settings. Confirming my initial impressions of black level, test patterns displayed correctly with the default brightness setting of 50. The magenta tinge showed up in mid-tones in the brightness test patterns, confirming my initial impressions. With the aid of colour test patterns, I shifted tint towards green, with a setting of 10, and boosted colour to 10. This cured the magenta tinge and created a more pleasing picture. Taking sharpness down to -20 made the edges of objects on the screen look more natural. For viewing with moderate room lighting, I found it helpful to increase the backlight setting to 50.

Evaluation: When the screen went blank, I noticed some mild hotspotting, but this was never an issue in regular programming. Mid-tones look a little brighter than I'm used to, but I think most viewers will like this TV's slightly bright tonal curve. I was more concerned about viewing angle. Even 30 degrees off axis, the picture became milkier and less vibrant. For viewers off to the side, this could certainly be an issue, especially if they're lying on the floor.

From my primary viewing position, the Toshiba UX600 produced wonderfully satisfying pictures on all kinds of programming. Not surprising given the excellent blacks, the UX600 dealt superbly with the demanding high-contrast (and almost monochromatic) scenes in The Book of Eli on Blu-ray. Dark interiors were moodily atmospheric. Blacks never looked milky or crushed, yet dark tones and colours were excellent, with details emerging convincingly out of the darkness.

BBC Earth's Life (the sequel to the fabulous Planet Earth) looked amazing. In the "Insects" episode, overhead shots of Lake Erie in Ontario and a Patagonian rainforest in South America had superb depth. The close-ups of insects had exquisite detail, and the deep blacks made a great contribution in dark scenes, for example an underwater sequence of a damselfly laying her eggs underwater.

The final episode of Lost in HD looked wonderful. Modeling of faces in closeups was superbly three-dimensional, with great detail, for example in the whiskers of Jack's beard. Colours in the island and sideworld scenes had lovely warmth.

A high-def Blue Jays baseball game looked great, with natural skin tones and convincing modeling of players' faces. The picture had just the right vibrancy, creating a real you-are-there feeling. I noticed similar virtues on a Stanley Cup finals game, with one flaw: texture in the ice was lacking (perhaps a result of the bright tone curve I commented on earlier). Taking contrast down to 80 restored some texture in the ice.

On rare occasions, I noticed mild motion blurring, for example during a pan across Nicolas Almagro's face during the French Open tennis championship.

In terms of picture quality, the UX600 doesn't quite match the best HDTVs I've reviewed this year; but it comes close. And this series is priced a couple of hundred dollars lower than top models in competing lines. One other issue for viewers who want to be at the top of the technological curve; these TVs aren't 3D-ready. But they're excellent 2D HDTVs.

On the Network

As noted, the UX600 series has some really neat connectivity features. In addition to a full suite of connection jacks (including four HDMI 1.4 inputs), there is an Ethernet network jack, two USB connectors and an SD memory-card slot.

You can load a USB thumb drive or SD card with digital photos and view them on the TV screen. In the setup menu, you can program the UX600 to automatically display this content whenever you insert an SD card or thumb drive.

A Wi-Fi dongle that fits into the TV's second USB port is supplied. It supports the 802.11b and g flavours of the Wi-Fi standard, but not the latest and fastest 802.11n. That means that people who have 802.11n home networks won't be able to take advantage of their router's speed, which is too bad, because when you're moving big media files around, speed really helps.

Setup: Basic network setup isn't terribly difficult. When you select Network Setup in the Preferences menu, you're asked if you're using a Wired or Wireless network. If you choose Wireless, you use one of the three Wireless setup options to scan available networks and select the one in your home, and then enter your security key. It's slightly fiddly, but pretty straightforward. After setup, you can perform a test to confirm that you're successfully connected to your home network and the Internet.

Some of the UX600's network services, including Vudu video downloading, aren't available in Canada. For most Canadians, the most appealing online feature will probably be the YouTube video. As on other TVs with YouTube, you can select popular and featured videos from the opening menu, or use your remote to search for videos on an onscreen keyboard. Again, it's slightly fiddly; but the best you can expect without an actual QWERTY keyboard. When you find the video you want, you can view it in a small window, or fullscreen.

Pull: There are two ways to get content from a PC onto the TV. To "pull" content, select the Media Player function in the TV's Application menu. The interface is plain-Jane, but for the most part works well enough. In the first screen, you select whether you want Music, Photo or Movie. You'll then see a list of servers (PCs) on your network; choose the one with the content you want. Then strangely, you see a menu offering a choice of Music, Photos or Videos again. If you mistakenly select a different option from the one you selected previously, nothing will happen; the application goes dead and you'll just have to exit. If you make the same choice you did initially, you'll see appropriate options for the content you've selected, for example artist, album, composer etc. if you choose music; or album, date, rating etc. if you choose photo. Navigate to the content you want, select it with the remote, and it should start streaming to the TV. It works very well, aside from the glitch that occurs if you're not consistent about the content you want.

For music playback, the UX600 supports the MP3 and WMA digital-music formats, but not AAC, the default format for the iPod and iTunes. It would not display album art from the music files on my test system. The sound quality of the TV is not great; it sounds rather hollow and papery. If you want decent sound, you'll have to use the optical digital audio output at the back of the TV to send sound to an external sound system.

Push: The other way to get PC content onto the UX600 is to "push" it from a Windows 7 notebook. This is actually really cool, once you get past the setup process on the TV. To do this, you first have to go into the TV's Preferences menu, and select Media Renderer Setup. In the next menu, you turn the Media Renderer on. Now the TV will accept content from any DLNA device on your home network.

If you want to restrict access to specific PCs, you have to turn Access Control on in the TV's Media Renderer Setup. In the next screen, you'll see a list of the MAC addresses of devices on your network; you check the boxes next to the addresses of devices to which you want to allow access. This may be a bulletproof method of controlling the devices that can send content to the UX600 TV; but it's also ridiculously unfriendly. How many users even know how to find the MAC address (a long sting of alphanumeric characters) that identifies the network adapter in their computer? Why not present the actual name the network uses for each computer (e.g. "Gordon's notebook")? Of course, you can just leave Access Control off, and not deal with this issue, or if only one MAC address is presented in the Access Control menu, select it assuming that it corresponds to your PC.

After you've got over this hurdle, it's pretty smooth sailing. On a Windows 7 computer, you can select Music or Pictures from the Start menu. Then in subsequent menus, when you right-click files or folders, one of the options will be Play To. Select it, and you'll see DLNA devices on your network that are configured to receive content. Choose the device you want (Toshiba LCDTV, in my case). A very short time later, you'll see a notice on the screen that a server is sending content to the TV, and the pictures, music or videos you've chosen will begin playing.

On one occasion, the feature mysteriously stopped working (Play To wouldn't appear in the right-click menu). After a few hours of frustration, I stumbled on the solution: turning off Access Control on the TV made the Play To function reappear on the Satellite E200 notebook. The feature continued to work after I later turned Access Control back on. Go figure.

A friendly face: On its new notebooks, Toshiba is bundling an application called Toshiba Media Controller, which is supposed to simplify the Play To process. The left pane of the application shows media content on your PC: music, pictures, videos and playlists. When you click the Plus icon beside the content you want to stream to the TV, it appears in the right pane. When you've assembled the content you want to play, click the triangular Play icon and it will be streamed to the TV. The application is pretty, and it works well.

Mind you, I don't think it fixes anything that's broken. The basic right-click procedure for Play To is also pretty easy.

The more unfriendly parts of the whole streaming process, whether you're pushing or pulling, are the setup routines and applications on the UX600 TV. Whereas the Media Controller software and Windows 7 Play To functions have a pretty friendly consumer feel to them, the software on the TV has more of an institutional IT feel. However, if you're using the "push" method of moving content, you probably won't have to deal with the TV's networking software much - just during setup.

The Bottom Line

As a TV, Toshiba's Regza 46UX600 is a very fine product. It has some mild flaws, limited viewing angle being the main one, but far more virtues, especially its outstanding blacks and shadow detail.

As a networking client, it's a mixed success. Its built-in software has a Version 1 feel to it. But once you get past its rough edges, the UX600 lets you do what more and more people want in our digital age: free your music, pictures and videos from your PC and move them into the home theatre.

Article Tags:  Toshiba, Regza, UX600, LED, LCD, HDTV, Windows 7, Play To, Media Controller, Satellite E200, Wi-Fi, DLNA, 802.11