Toshiba 19AV500U Works on my cable without a box!

I ordered this TV to take advantage of the HDTV channels available over Comcast Cable in the San Francisco Bay area, without having to rent Comcast's pricey cable box. It fills the bill perfectly.

Using the default settings, the picture is sharp and contrasty. There's plenty of sound volume. The screen hardly reflects light at all, which is nice since we have a lot of windows. The Natural picture size setting chooses the proper picture width all the time. (I've never figured out why some people view everything in full width, even if it adds 50 pounds to all the people on the screen.)

I got a scare when first hooking it up. I ordered it only after a Comcast agent verified that with the built-in QAM tuner it would receive HDTV just by plugging the cable signal into the antenna/cable coax jack. But when first turned on, it only received analog signals. Calling Comcast back, I was told that I would need a $7/month cable box. Fortunately this turned out to be baloney. While my wife was channel-flipping, she started getting HDTV stations too, and now it shows every analog and digital channel, even on my non-digital cable service plan. My wife claims full credit for "fixing" it. I suspect it took a while to lock into some aspect of the cable service. Who knows.

So here's two recommendations: Double check everything Comcast tells you. And buy this TV.

(Oh - and also see the reviews for the 19AV500U - it's the identical model in black.)