With a decent 120Hz LED-backlit display, a pretty good media player, and support for Yahoo Widgets, Netflix, Vudu, and a few other top-tier commercial on-demand Web services, the Toshiba SL417U Series enters the connected-HDTV fray in style. But the field is tough these days, and the SL417U Series faces stiff competition from highly rated models (some with 3D support, which this set lacks) at a similar or somewhat lower price.

It’s not so much that this set has any major problems. It’s just that the SL417U Series has a slew of design annoyances, and while nothing in our juried image-quality tests raised a huge red flag, nothing in the results made this HDTV particularly compelling, either. It scored pretty much straight down the middle, earning average ratings of Good for contrast, color tones, and handling of motion and detail. Judges generally liked the way it handled our recorded high-def video clips, but a few found its DVD and Blu-ray videos a tad oversaturated, and they remarked on the loss of detail in a test clip from the Blu-ray version of The Dark Knight. And while it aced our motion benchmarks, we saw considerable stuttering in our diagonal-panning test.

The SL417U Series is very energy efficient: In our tests, the 46-inch model consumed 63.6 watts per hour when turned on, and registered no noticeable consumption when powered down, earning a green score of 87 percent, which we rate as Very Good.

With a shiny black bezel and pedestal, the set’s design is fairly typical, although the top edge of the bezel is significantly wider than that of most current sets. For some reason Toshiba placed a turquoise blue Energy Star sticker on the lower-left corner of the bezel, and it’s a bit distracting there.

Ports sit along two sides of a recessed area in the back, facing either down or sideways, a design intended to facilitate cable management for wall-mounted panels. However, the arrangement can also make it difficult to line up and insert a thick cable, especially with the downward-facing ports, which include coax (for cable or antenna), ethernet, digital audio out, PC (RGB) video and audio inputs (the latter can double as a component-video or DVI-audio input), and an HDMI port.

The side-facing lineup, from the top, includes two USB ports; one component-video input (requiring use of an included adapter cable); two shared audio/composite-video inputs, which also use provided adapter cables (you choose the appropriate AV source–component audio, composite AV, or DVI audio via one of the HDMI ports–in the set’s software menu); an analog stereo-audio output; and three HDMI ports.

Obviously the use of adapter cables for component and composite hookups can be confusing, especially since you also have to take the extra step of specifying the input type through the HDTV’s software menu, but it is a way to help minimize cable clutter if you want to mount the set on a wall. Toshiba provides a helpful printed manual, along with a small but useful quick-setup sheet showing how to connect the various cables.

A fairly standard first-time wizard guides you through the usual setup routine in which you specify language, time zone and Daylight Savings Time status, location (home versus store), and the video source for the coax cable (cable TV versus antenna), after which the channel-scanning process starts.

The first-time wizard does not address image quality or network setup, however. For those items, you must go into the on-screen menu using the remote–a long, snazzy-looking curved affair on which most of the buttons are set into a shiny black surface slapped on top of a silvery base that sticks out at the bottom. Unfortunately, the remote suffers from several usability issues: Some buttons, including the color-coded context-sensitive buttons (a fixture on most advanced remotes), are way too tiny; the remote has no backlight; and the button for changing inputs isn’t conveniently located.

The remote can control up to three additional devices via buttons labeled Cable/Satellite, DVD/BD (Blu-ray), and Auxiliary. By default, the first two buttons are programmed to control, respectively, a Toshiba satellite dish and a Toshiba Blu-ray Disc player, while the last button is set to control an Onkyo home theater audio system. You can reprogram all of the buttons to control other devices.

Toshiba’s menu system is well organized and easy to follow, with five top-level categories (Network, Media Player, Wallpaper, Timer, and Settings). The largest menu item, Settings, contains submenus for Picture, Sound, Applications, and Preferences (a catchall that leads to parental controls, the aforementioned shared port settings, setup for Netflix and Vudu, channel-browser editing, and so forth).

The Picture menu provides a fair number of user controls for image quality, starting with seven presets: sports, standard, two movie settings, game, PC, and something called AutoView, which is supposed to adjust brightness, contrast, and the like based on content and ambient-lighting conditions. Toshiba’s on-screen menus don’t provide any explanations for these controls and other settings (how the two movie settings differ, for example), but the HDTV does do something that may be even more helpful: It moves the menu item to the bottom of the screen and lets you see what the setting does to the image.

Beyond basic image controls, Toshiba provides two additional submenus for more fine-tuning. Under Advanced, you get a slew of options including an edge enhancer, dynamic contrast adjustment, a couple of settings for improving black tones, a couple of controls to address motion artifacts, noise adjustment, backlighting controls (including one based on ambient-light conditions), and color-adjustment controls.

The Expert settings, meanwhile, include a test pattern (which some owners might prefer to use instead of TV video when making other adjustments), a fairly sophisticated set of controls for white balance (including the ability to copy your final settings to all inputs), and color-temperature controls. You’ll notice, however, that many picture controls are grayed out for certain inputs or if certain presets are in use.

The set’s audio controls are fairly basic, although they do give you a volume leveler that addresses the problem of some content (ads, for example) playing at much higher volume than other content. The 46SL417U has no specific control for simulated surround sound, and although the manual says that two other controls labeled Voice Enhancement and Dynamic Bass Boost accomplish the same effect, I was generally unimpressed by the audio that the set’s integrated 10-watt stereo speakers produced. The sound just didn’t seem loud or immersive, even when turned up to full volume.

Network setup is fairly easy. In addition to its ethernet port, the SL417U Series has built-in support for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks. (A wired connection is best, but if that’s not possible, I strongly recommend 5GHz Wi-Fi for use with Web services since the more heavily used 2.4GHz band suffers from limited bandwidth; in my tests of this HDTV, YouTube videos were pretty much unplayable over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi.)

The SL417U’s support for Web media isn’t the most extensive I’ve seen, but it does hit the high points, with support for Blockbuster, Cinema Now, Netflix, Pandora, Vudu (HD movies on demand), YouTube, and other assorted services via the ubiquitous Yahoo Widgets. Additionally, the set lets you play music, view videos, and watch still images, stored either on a USB flash drive or on a DLNA server on your home network. File-format support for music and video is pretty good; interestingly, the set supports more formats for playback from a DLNA server than from a USB thumb drive (for example, you can play a Windows Media video from a server but not a thumb drive). As for still images, the HDTV supports only .jpg files, but you can set up a slideshow with background music.

Overall, the Toshiba SL417U Series shapes up as a decent midrange set, with a midrange price, good (but not great) image quality, and satisfactory (but not outstanding) Web and media-player features. It’s the kind of HDTV you may want to snap up if you encounter a good sale; otherwise, you’ll want to look closely at competitors that might offer superior image quality, better design, or more features at a similar price.

At a time when most HDTVs are piling on features, the Toshiba SL412U Series takes a contrarian approach. This LED-backlit lcd tv doesn’t support 3D, does not connect to the Internet, provides mediocre audio, and offers only a basic set of connectors. But it does deliver pretty good image quality at a low energy cost–and although prices on larger sets are coming down in general, the SL412U Series’s price is still fairly inexpensive for its screen class.

In our juried image-quality tests, the SL412U Series’s 120Hz, 1080p display earned generally good if not superlative scores, collecting the highest marks for brightness and contrast. But judges were less generous in other categories, most notably its handling of color and skin tones. Several judges noted oversaturation of colors on some test clips, with one judge complaining that people tended to look sunburned.

We also saw a few motion-related artifacts. For example, in an aerial shot panning over city skyscrapers in The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, judges observed slight shimmering and even blinking effects on tall buildings with straight lines. However, the problems were not severe, and the set’s overall image-quality rating squeaked into the Very Good range. The SL412U Series is quite economical from an energy-consumption standpoint, too: In our tests the 55-inch model drew 75.6 watts per hour when turned on and no noticeable amount of energy when powered down, numbers that we rate as Very Good.

Audio quality was another story. Equipped with two puny integrated 7-watt speakers and no simulated surround-sound technology, the set produced somewhat anemic sound. You could barely hear the sound of the candle being lit in the opening titles of Phantom of the Opera on Blu-ray, for example, and the music in general sounded a tad tinny. At least the set provides an optical digital-audio-out port, so you can bypass its sound system in favor of a home-theater audio setup.

That audio-out port is one of a mere handful of connectors grouped together on the back of the set, most of them facing outward–a definite plus that makes connecting cables easier (although it can make wall mounting trickier). The collection includes two HDMI ports, PC video and audio inputs, one component-video and one composite-video hookup, one set each of analog audio inputs and outputs (for stereo sound), the aforementioned digital audio output, and a coax port for a cable or antenna connection. Additionally, you get two side-facing ports: a third HDMI input and a USB input for use in media playback and software upgrades.

The SL412U Series design is fairly nondescript, with the usual shiny black bezel and pedestal. For some reason, though, Toshiba put a distracting, bright turquoise blue Energy Star sticker on the lower-left corner of the front bezel.

The printed setup instructions are among the worst I’ve seen. They’re on a fold-out pamphlet, with one side in English and the other in French; both versions are in such a tiny font that it hurt my eyes to try to read them. You’re much better off going online to download a PDF of the full owner manual (not provided in print).

The fairly typical first-time wizard asks you to configure your language, time zone, setup location (home or store), and video source for cable/antenna hookups. The on-screen menus are also typical: You get five video presets (sports, standard, movie, PC, and a customizable preferences option) plus a separate toggle for game mode that’s supposed to speed up the set’s response to controllers; a full complement of aspect-ratio settings; channel-lineup editing; sleep-timer functions; and parental controls. The advanced image-control settings offer access to motion compensation, static gamma, dynamic contrast, color temperature, noise reduction, and other features, but you don’t get any on-screen explanations as to what those controls do, so you have to consult the manual.

You can view .jpg stills and play MP3 audio files from a USB drive in the Media Player, but it does not support video playback. You can set up a slideshow from images in a folder, however, and use background music.

Also minimalist in its approach is the remote, which is a bit shorter than other HDTV remotes and lacks a backlight or color-coded context-sensitive buttons. But while most of its buttons are reasonably sized and clearly labeled, they’re also the mushy, rubbery kind that doesn’t provide great tactile feedback. At least the remote offers limited support for HDMI-connected devices that are compatible with Regza-Link, Toshiba’s brand of CEC technology.

For people who aren’t interested in a connected TV, or who aren’t fussy about audio quality (or a great remote), the Toshiba SL412U Series delivers decent image quality on a roomy, ecofriendly screen–and it’s certainly easier on the wallet than more-polished, full-featured competitors are.