Philips 37PF7320A 37-Inch Widescreen LCD HDtv
Best of Breed
I'm a just-retired Broadcast Chief Engineer, and am very hard to please when it comes to video quality. After much deliberation, and after settling on the Sharp, I had occasion to see a Philips LCD in direct comparison with 8 other brands (not Sony). No contest, the Philips had the best image. Philips-LG has a tremendous LCD technology right now with their S-IPS LCD. The colors are deeper, blacks better, view angle and sharpness better. To my eyes, the lineup from best to worst is: Sony, Philips-LG, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, RCA, Syntax, Polaroid, ILO. To Sharp's favor, they have a very nice- smooth look. The surprize- Sanyo. Sony is in a class of it's own, with a price-tag to match. Even as a former Sony fan, I can't justify it.<br /><br />So, onto the Philips 37PF7320A. This TV can produce stunning imagry. I am feeding it with the OPPO 971 DVD player- HDMI connection. I have Dish Net sat service. What you immediately learn is that most all of our current sources of video are sub-standard. This is revealed in 10 minutes with the Philips. Although it does better with MPG2 sat signals that most others, compression artifacts will become very evident on all of the lesser channels in the sat line-up. Realize that HBO pays for top quality MP2 coding rate on the sat services. It looks pretty darn good. Look at Worldlink or other bottom rate coding channels- and you'd better be 20 feet away from the set.<br /><br />DVD's fed with HDMI or Component look GREAT. As long as you feed it 480P, It looks like the film it probably came from. The \\"Pixel Plus\\" feature on the Philips does what it says. I was able to see very small sweat beads on faces in close-up shots. You will need to adjust most of the video settings to get it \\"dialed-in\\". The menuing system is just average. I'll be sending several suggestions to the firmware guys at Philips for small tweaks. I've already updated the firmware on the TV via the USB flashdrive. Excellent feature.<br /><br />If you want to see what the TV can do, play some 1360x800 pixel images off a Flashdrive. It's jaw-dropping. As soon as mainstream sat service is 720P, you'll probably have a 100% increase in couch-potato mode time with the Philips. It's light, has modern design, good internal audio, decent remote, fine PDF CD manual,<br />Plenty-o-inputs, triple TV tuners and Superb picture. To boot, Circuit City has it for $1499 delivered (with a free 15\\" chineese LCD TV thrown in). Right now, it's the 37\\" to buy.y some 1360x800 pixel images off a Flashdrive. It's jaw-dropping. As soon as mainstream sat service is 720P, you'll probably have a 100% increase in couch-potato mode time with the Philips. It's light, has modern design, good internal audio, decent remote, fine PDF CD manual,   Plenty-o-inputs, triple TV tuners and Superb picture. To boot, Circuit City has it for $1499 delivered (with a free 15\\" chineese LCD TV thrown in). Right now, it's the 37\\" to buy.