Toshiba Regza 26in combi TV

You need to use the remote to switch from TV to DVD playback - slotting in a disc won't do - and the slot-loading drive is rather noisy.

The screen has a close-to-720p resolution of 1366 x 768. Output from the analogue tuner was a throwback to the 1980s, but Freeview looked fine and DVD playback was somewhat sharper and clearer still.

Fiddling with the picture presets revealed that the Toshiba has four modes: Standard, Movie, Memory and Preference. Movie looks a tad darker than Standard, while Sports is brighter and Memory would be better if it was named Mystery as its function failed to become clear.

We were happy with Standard but there’s not much to choose between the four, and the same was true of adjusting brightness, contrast and sharpness. All the settings started in the mid-point of the adjustment range and that’s also where they ended up.

The only change that we found worth making was to enable surround sound as it made the audio sound fuller and more convincing than the thin default setting. It came as something of a surprise to learn that the speakers are only rated at 3W. They sound louder but they’re never going to deliver a convincing cinema experience so you may wish to use the headphone mini jack which is tucked away behind the control buttons on the left side of the TV.