Philips 42PF7320A 42-Inch Widescreen Plasma HDTV
Great buy for the price !!
I bought this TV a month ago at Circuit City for $1799. 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. <br /> <br />A couple of things to note: <br />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. <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br />3. Auto-formatting of picture: Again I have found that this works just fine. Sometimes it takes a couple of secs todetermine 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. <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br />Setup was breezy. No hassles. Had it up and running in minutes using the included table stand till I had it wall-mounted. <br /> <br />Overall an excellent buy. You get more than what you pay for. <br />