Electronics

After reading a few conflicting spec reports, the Phillips 42 does in fact have a 5ms seek time. Some sites you will see have it listed at 8ms but this is incorrect. The 5ms is amazing when watching sports or playing games. There are roughly no ‘trails’ or inconsistent images.

The trim around the TV does not glow or light up as some earlier reports suggested (before the release)

Software like the 3D engine and HD Natural Motion is very stable and looks great when watching HD content. Infact it takes a bit to get used to it, being that image panning is very very smooth.

Software like Dynamic Contrast and Active Control were kind of useless to me because when these features are active you can actually see the screen adjusting. It seemed annoying to me and at first and I thought there was something wrong with the set. However they are easily defeated (turned off) and it worked fine after the adjustment was made.

The software also gives you a setup assistant feature which quickly walks through the setting up of the color. It shows you different split screens and asks your opinion on which looks better. After a few of these are answered the TV automatically adjusts itself according to your choices. I think this is a nice feature for those who do not like to ‘tweak settings’ over and over again. The picture was close to perfect in my opinion after running the setup assistant.

If you are not planning on mounting the set to a wall the stand is very cool. It allows you to ’swivel’ the TV up to about 30 in either direction. My TV is located in the middle of the room however my couch is off to the right side. So having the ability to rotate the TV so that I am looking at it in direct line of site is very handy especially when playing games!

Fit and finish of the Phillips is superb and as the marketing swill says, it really does look great in any room. My wife was concerned that it was too big for our space however once it was set up she really enjoyed the sleek and subtle design features.

The Remote is pretty basic and cannot be programmed for other devices. I also found that off axis operation (when not pointing directly at the TV) causes inconsistent results. My sense is the remote does not send out a high enough powered IR signal because the issue goes away when I use my logitech universal remote.

As far as power consumption goes, all I can attest to is the fact that it does not get very hot which leads me to believe the power levels are clean however it is hard to tell without proper test equipment. There is a ‘powersaver’ mode which drastically ramps down the contrast and is only really good in a very dark room. I rarely use this as I prefer my color settings. Even the lower contrast one I created for ‘movie mode’ still performs better then the preset powersave mode.

Overall quality of the sound is pretty good and in my opinion completely adequate for most situations and/or users. I used the TV for over 2 weeks before setting up my surround sound system and never felt I was missing out. The speakers are not terribly loud so if you are someone who is looking for that full movie experience with explosions so real the cops are called, well, then you will definitely want to invest in a 5.1 or 7.1 surround system. The built-in subwoofers are rear firing so you may want to be careful about judging the resonance in the next room if the rooms share a wall or if you share a wall with a neighbor. The subs don’t have too much power so in most cases it should be fine but should be considered.

Amount of Inputs are great. It has 3 HDMI, 2 component and 2 composite. It even has a USB port so you can plug in portable media and display photos and things however I have not used this feature. The only thing I wish is if it had a Digital or Optical sound in but I am sure Phillips felt if you needed that kind of quality you would use it with a Surround System.

Overall a great TV and solid buy for the money. Hope this helped. Good luck!
Customer Review: great TV for a good price
great TV with very good resolution (must have blu-ray player, blu-ray disk, correct HDMI cable) 1080p; price was reasonable.

Tags: hdtv, lcd review, cheap lcd, hdtv review, lcd