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 46SL417U 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.)