great buy for the money on this hd tv, August 29, 2005

By 

Thomas John Bradway (nc) – See all my reviews

  

Bought this tv for 00 compared to a panasonic hd for 00 at the time. looked at circuit city to see how they compared but signal was not good in store. other philips models at best buy looked pretty good so i decided to give it a try. Was going to get the pany ED model for 00 but when i saw the philips for 400 more could not pass it up.

got it home and wow!!! discovery HD had a coral reef show that will knock your socks off . Wife even said this was best thing we ever bought. great color plenty bright plenty of inputs even USB slide shows of jpgs’ and plays mp3′s off of thumb drive.

speakers even sound good enough for every day use but no fancy surround modes. TV even looks good on regular cable and stretches pics to fill screen automatically if you want.

was kind of scared to get the phillips as most reviews on net go for pioneer or panasonic but for the price you will be happy.

some sites show this tv as black frame with silver speakers but mine came in all silver.

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Great buy for the price !!, June 5, 2006

I bought this TV a month ago at Circuit City for 99. I am extremly pleased with it so far. The picture quality is excellent for DVD with progressive scan and the picture quality for standard def TV is also pretty good. I have hooked it up to HDTV via DISH Network Satellite and the picture quality is amazing. Discovery Channel simply blows you away. NBA games on TNTHD are also great. I compared it side by side with other makes in the store like Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung etc. I did not find any big difference in picture quality. Then again in the stores the big problem is they don’t adjust the picture on all the sets for optimum picture. As a result the best TV may look really bad. The price difference in any case was not worth it for me. I was looking for something good but inexpensive for the bedroom. I have the TV wall mounted in my bedroom and it looks great. So far I am very pleased with it.

A couple of things to note:

1. Volume Control Bar: Many people have complained in their reviews here that it does not display a volume control bar. This is actually a setting. Your TV is configured for minimal screen information. If you change this setting you will see the volume control bar. You will also see a channel indicator at the top left corner. When the TV is set to minimal screen info mode the channel indicator disappears and so also the volume control bar.

2. Built-in Speakers: Again a lot of people have complained that the built in speakers are bad. I don’t think I agree with this. The speakers are decent. Although I have hooked up my TV with a home theater system, majority of the time when I am watching regular TV I just use the built in speakers and they work just fine. I have not observed any vibration or any distortion at higher volumes. I only use the home theater when I am watching movies or DVDs.

3. Auto-formatting of picture: Again I have found that this works just fine. Sometimes it takes a couple of secs to determine the optimal format before resizing the picture. You can always change the format if you don’t like what you see. I set it to “Auto-Format” majority of the time and it works just fine.

TV has a lot of inputs including 2 HDMI inputs which are best for HDTV viewing, component video for progressive scan DVD, S-Video as well as standard composite video inputs. Also has USB port for connecting external devices like a USB drive or digital camera to view images on the TV. I have not tried this yet. The other feature I have not tried is the PIP (Picture in Picture). I have to admit the manual is very basic. Then again there was a DVD or CD that came with the TV and I haven’t checked that out yet. May be it has advanced setup instructions.

Setup was breezy. No hassles. Had it up and running in minutes using the included table stand till I had it wall-mounted.

Overall an excellent buy. You get more than what you pay for.

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So far, so good, November 27, 2005

By 

T. Cochran – See all my reviews

  

Not the top of the line like Pioneer or Panasonic, but this is a really solid plasma HDTV. The Pioneer or Panasonic can cost 0 – 00 more, so I don’t think you can justify the added expense. The picture quality on this is really good. I have a couple HD channels, but still mostly digital cable and analog. The picture look sharp.

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