Best Buy Lcd HDTV Blog

Makes any regular DVD look HD
We bought this TV at sams club and we got a 300 dollar in store gift card. We bought the TV for 1200, do the math...good deal!

Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised by how this tv makes our regular DVD's look HIGH DEF. For this, we're going to hold off on Blue-ray for awhile.

The TV is 120hz so the motion of the camera and subjects in the movie seem to move around different, but the quality is awsome.

I don't have a lot of Electronic jargon to throw at you but you need to know you won't be disappointed with this TV. The TV even has audio plug ins for 5.1 surround sound...I've only seen this on computers and receivers.

I'm not sure when the best time to buy a TV is since the price are always coming down. My advice is don't buy a TV with less than 120hz and 29,000:1 contrast ratio (depending on your budget). Because this is the cream of the crop right now...well you can get a contrast ratio better than that, but realistically, you shouldn't get anything lower than that.

Sears or most stores give you 60 days to keep your reciept for price matching. if you own a club membership, I highly recommend you look there first and ask about free giftcards with a large purchase like this.

You get what you pay for.....
This TV has a lot of grainy reception. Don't fall in love with the price (Wal-Mart) I have a HP 37" LC3760N and I think the world of it. If you are looking for a starter LCD TV start there.

Good basic television
I've hooked a blu-ray DVD player and an upconverting DVD/VCR combo player to this telly and it's working out just great. It does have issues with action from the old VCR's - confusion in the upconversion - but overall, this is a nice product. I've never had cable (too expensive) and haven't watched broadcast television (yuk!) in many years, so I cannot comment on that at all. The Philips gives a pleasing picture and fantastic color.

Too Good For TV?
I'm still playing around with this thing so there may be updates to come. I'm not a technophile and bought this monster mostly because of the upcoming digital transition - my plan is to watch mostly off-air hdtv signals, dvds, and some old video.

And this IS a monster, BTW. At almost 80 lbs it's close to the upper edge of my lifting range. Eventually it'll be permanently mounted to the wall, but meantime I'm holding it up while the female of the species meditates on furniture arrangement! I know I'm losing weight, but maybe disks as well...

The menus are NOT right-sized for a 47" tv; they're absurdly huge and unnecessarily obscuring. However the real problem, for non-cable me, is the slowness of the channel-changing. And it's not like you see channel 6.1 until channel 6.2 appears three seconds later - you see a completely blank screen, not even the channel numbers in the upper left-hand corner.

HDTV looks FANTASTIC on this set, though it took a couple of re-channel-formats - and turns of the antenna - to get all the hdtv stations. A fair bit of picture tweaking was required to get an image that doesn't look like shot-on-video: however I now have rich blacks AND stunning detail, despite what the review at NEC (which is of the 42" set) says. The internal speakers seem fine to ME - ok, my previous set was 20 years old...

Non-hdtv looks AWFUL. Judder, artifacts, pixillation - maybe that'd be true of any screen this size. I'm not criticizing Philips, necessarily. However if like me you plan to be watching a lot of old stuff into the indefinite future, I'd strongly recommend a smaller screen!!!

Not suitable for gaming or 1080p content
As I type these words, I am watching them on this very screen, and I thoroughly regret purchasing this TV.

I got fooled by the specs where they said:

* Flicker Free 1080p - It doesn't really give an acceptable, stable 1080p picture. The picture wobbles and squiggles periodically, making you hold your breath in between these occurrences, hoping it's gone away.

* "typical" 5ms response time - No. If you calibrate it with software or console-games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, the lag is in excess of 120ms. If you connect your PC, it gets worse. When is it 5ms? In the menus, perhaps?

So.. If good 1080p picture-quality, gaming or PC connectivity is what you're looking for, then this TV isn't for you.

Oh, and the "game-mode" on this TV gives you an INTERLACED picture that still lags far beyond 5ms. Hohum, 1080 PROGRESSIVE indeed. UselessPhilips 47PFL3603D 47-Inch Widescreen 1080p LCD HDTV.

I guess you got me this time, Philips. Got me good.

Makes any regular DVD look HD
We bought this TV at sams club and we got a 300 dollar in store gift card. We bought the TV for 1200, do the math...good deal!

Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised by how this tv makes our regular DVD's look HIGH DEF. For this, we're going to hold off on Blue-ray for awhile.

The TV is 120hz so the motion of the camera and subjects in the movie seem to move around different, but the quality is awsome.

I don't have a lot of Electronic jargon to throw at you but you need to know you won't be disappointed with this TV. The TV even has audio plug ins for 5.1 surround sound...I've only seen this on computers and receivers.

I'm not sure when the best time to buy a TV is since the price are always coming down. My advice is don't buy a TV with less than 120hz and 29,000:1 contrast ratio (depending on your budget). Because this is the cream of the crop right now...well you can get a contrast ratio better than that, but realistically, you shouldn't get anything lower than that.

Sears or most stores give you 60 days to keep your reciept for price matching. if you own a club membership, I highly recommend you look there first and ask about free giftcards with a large purchase like this.

You get what you pay for.....
This TV has a lot of grainy reception. Don't fall in love with the price (Wal-Mart) I have a HP 37" LC3760N and I think the world of it. If you are looking for a starter LCD TV start there.

Good basic television
I've hooked a blu-ray DVD player and an upconverting DVD/VCR combo player to this telly and it's working out just great. It does have issues with action from the old VCR's - confusion in the upconversion - but overall, this is a nice product. I've never had cable (too expensive) and haven't watched broadcast television (yuk!) in many years, so I cannot comment on that at all. The Philips gives a pleasing picture and fantastic color.

Too Good For TV?
I'm still playing around with this thing so there may be updates to come. I'm not a technophile and bought this monster mostly because of the upcoming digital transition - my plan is to watch mostly off-air hdtv signals, dvds, and some old video.

And this IS a monster, BTW. At almost 80 lbs it's close to the upper edge of my lifting range. Eventually it'll be permanently mounted to the wall, but meantime I'm holding it up while the female of the species meditates on furniture arrangement! I know I'm losing weight, but maybe disks as well...

The menus are NOT right-sized for a 47" tv; they're absurdly huge and unnecessarily obscuring. However the real problem, for non-cable me, is the slowness of the channel-changing. And it's not like you see channel 6.1 until channel 6.2 appears three seconds later - you see a completely blank screen, not even the channel numbers in the upper left-hand corner.

HDTV looks FANTASTIC on this set, though it took a couple of re-channel-formats - and turns of the antenna - to get all the hdtv stations. A fair bit of picture tweaking was required to get an image that doesn't look like shot-on-video: however I now have rich blacks AND stunning detail, despite what the review at NEC (which is of the 42" set) says. The internal speakers seem fine to ME - ok, my previous set was 20 years old...

Non-hdtv looks AWFUL. Judder, artifacts, pixillation - maybe that'd be true of any screen this size. I'm not criticizing Philips, necessarily. However if like me you plan to be watching a lot of old stuff into the indefinite future, I'd strongly recommend a smaller screen!!!

Not suitable for gaming or 1080p content
As I type these words, I am watching them on this very screen, and I thoroughly regret purchasing this TV.

I got fooled by the specs where they said:

* Flicker Free 1080p - It doesn't really give an acceptable, stable 1080p picture. The picture wobbles and squiggles periodically, making you hold your breath in between these occurrences, hoping it's gone away.

* "typical" 5ms response time - No. If you calibrate it with software or console-games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, the lag is in excess of 120ms. If you connect your PC, it gets worse. When is it 5ms? In the menus, perhaps?

So.. If good 1080p picture-quality, gaming or PC connectivity is what you're looking for, then this TV isn't for you.

Oh, and the "game-mode" on this TV gives you an INTERLACED picture that still lags far beyond 5ms. Hohum, 1080 PROGRESSIVE indeed. UselessPhilips 47PFL3603D 47-Inch Widescreen 1080p LCD HDTV.

I guess you got me this time, Philips. Got me good.

Nice Value
i bought this television about a month ago. i bought a refurbished from the manufacturer for a greatly reduced cost (B000NV7Q8K,400) but that's beside the point. the television is great for the cost even if you buy it new from Amazon -- a nice price as well. the first thing i'd do is go to AVS forums and search for this television to get the various setting codes for the picture. that'll save you a lot of time. next, get a surround sound system as the speakers on this television are barely adequate (i went with Onkyo and am happy). a universal remote is a must (Logitech Harmony is the way to go -- again, i bought a 659 refurbished here on Amazon for about -- great remote).

i sit about 11 - 12 feet away and we play the Wii from about 8 feet. both seem just right. i watched the NCAA tourney in HD last week and the Master's Golf tourney this week. i notice that the standard definition channels don't look very good. in fact, i think my old television upstairs looks much better on standard definition. so i am only watching HD programming on this LCD. if i had to watch a lot of standard definition programming then i probably wouldn't have bought this television and i might have given it 3 or 4 stars instead. on the other hand, the deal was too good to pass up and HD looks just terrific.

Good TV - Minor Problem on DVDs
Loved the TV at first, looks great. Found problem watching DVDs, picture format will Jump from Widescreen to standard and back, rather annoying. I tried to lock the TV into standard only so the picutre fills the entire screen, option not available. should have stuck with SAMSUNG.

Right TV choice
From the start we looked at only LCD TV's.
Then came the decision of brand, we really only considered the higher end brands, Sony, Samsong, and Philips. After checking and rechecking pitcher qaulity and specifications, and the price comparisions of these three, we felt the Philips would be our choice.
We started with the 40" size units, then the 46", and settled on the 52",
We would again make the same choices, very happy from the start of the deal to the present.

AWESOME TV
I have had this tv for about a month now and love it. It is a really good deal. I had to tinker about with the picture settings and found exactly the settings I wanted. This LCD does NOT have a glossy screen. That is GREAT for me because I have a window behind the television. Do yourself a favor and buy this.

The remote is a tad awkward, I suggest you get a Harmony Remote. I am also using an Onkyo system as my surround sound. Really sweet T.V.

Problem right out of the box
We bought this TV right before Christmas, 2007. It had a nice shiny, black look to it. The picture quality was awesome, but unfortunately the color kept fluctuating. The rich reds and flesh tones would fade to pale, pasty images a couple of times a minute. Phillips said the problem could not be the TV if the Menu screen did not fluctuate. The Menu screen displayed in only blues and greys and we never saw fluctuation in this screen.

In order to give the TV the benefit of the doubt, we switched from cable TV to DISH. We even replaced all the coax cable running from the satellite to the TV without success.

So we called Phillips again and were transferred to a Magnavox division who had a service company call us. This company told me to call an 800 number for another service company as they were 45 miles away in Fresno, California, and could not afford to come to my house based on what Phillips paid them for service. Apparently, the repair shops in Oakhurst where I live were not contracted with Phillips.

At this point we took the TV back to CostCo as it was within their 90 day return period. We bought a Sharp Aquos and the colors are fine.

Another problem we had with the Phillips was the limited viewing angle. We understand that LCD TV's are supposed to have 176 degree viewing angle, but unless you were pretty much in front of the TV, the image and the colors degraded pretty badly.

My husband never did like the remote. When you picked it up and pointed it at the TV, it was always backwards.

Honestly, if the TV had worked right out of the box, we would have loved it. The picture quality and the colors (when they weren't fluctating)seemed very natural. I liked the ease with which you could change from one format to another.

DVD player poor quality
Bought one from Target. Try every type of DVDs (retail store bought, region 1, yadda yadda, I'm not stupid), none worked.
After a few minutes of research online, it seems like these units are poorly made (the DVD portion anyway) Returned the next day. Did not bother trying another one, why waste my time and gas money.

good for the money
I bought this set because of a review by a "professional" on the net at an electronics review source. I now have had the set 6months. It has performed in every way that is promised. I have a small office/guest space & so it is wall-mounted, which was easy to do. The only problem I had was matching the mfg. code to the required one from the sattelite box so I need 2 remotes. One for on/offand volume and the sattelite remote for the rest. Well worth the small price.

Hearing Impaired? Don't buy if you need captions during DVD playback.
If you're hearing impaired and NEED to be able to view closed captions (CC) during DVD playback, keep looking. Though Magnavox insists this unit can do this, it cannot. It can, of course, play back subtitles if the DVD has them encoded, and it can display CC during television signal playback, but for some reason it cannot show captions (again, CC is a different animal than subtitles) that are encoded on a disc.

If, however, you don't have a hearing disability or do not need the captions during disc playback, it's not a bad set. The picture is good (but not great) during disc playback and the sound is good, with a very feature-laden remote. If it had caption playback ability, though, I'd probably not move it above 3 stars as the viewing angle is pretty direct. Overall, a decent set for a kitchen or dorm room.

DO NOT BUY THIS OR ANY MAGNAVOX TV!
I purchased this TV and the DVD player jammed within 30 days. Magnovox refused to give me my money back because it was past the 30-day window; they insisted I pay to mail it back to them. They sent me a second TV and the exact same thing happened 10 days later. Their response? Spend another to mail the second TV back to them. Their customer service line, with which I became intimately familiar, was atrocious. They couldn't have cared less. Never again Magnavox, or Philips, by the way, which owns the company. Never again.

Worked for a few months
Bought August 2nd, 2008. Dead December 23rd, 2008. Just stopped working. Doorstop or boat anchor. When it worked, it was great. But an HD set should last some years.

NO WAY WOULD I PURCHASE THIS AGAIN!
I purchased one in June 2008 .. had problems with it .. plug in .. play for a few days .. then no power .. unplug .. work for a while .. then start all over again. Returned to Walmart in July .. no problem with return since it was within the 30 day. They said they'd had no problems with returns so I got another one on their recommendation .. BIG MISTAKE. It is now four months later (we JUST threw out the packing box thinking we were FINALLY safe) and now again the same problem .. no power no matter how many times we we plug in or what we try. We give up .. 0 down the drain! The cost of shipping and the hassle of it all .. lesson learned! I'm going out today to buy another one for the kitchen .. just not a Phillips!

Great HD tv
I ordered this Phillips HDtv to replace a an sd tv in my puter room it is a great tv color, sound, and inputs for everything you might want to connect. I have a Directv HD receiver and and HD dvd player connected to the 2 hdmi inputs and an outdoor intenna connected to it also with analog and component connections to add more inputs if I needed. It is as of 2 months now been everything I could have wanted in a small HDtv. Of course Amazon had the best price and great shipping as always. You cannot go wrong purchasing this tv.

Great Little TV
The Philips 19PFL3403D/27 19-Inch LCD HDTV is a fine piece of equipment. Purchased as a gift, I was tempted to keep it for personal use. Good color, good sound, good viewability, tilt feature, multiple options for chanel selection, and multiple input capabilities all make this a nifty TV. Menu navigation is not as simple as it could be but still workable. The "Preferred Channels" selection capability and the "Favorites" listing capability are nice features too. As expected, digital reception is better than analog using antenna reception in a fringe area.

Good TV with a design flaw
I bought this Philips 19" LCD TV (the new model for 2008) and had the same odd problem as the other reviewer. Had it for a two weeks or so and then out of nowhere it wouldn't turn on. The little power light would flicker almost like it couldn't get over the first hump of a power draw. Anyway, I returned it without any problems and got a replacement (although this time with a two-year extended warranty covering everything - even damage I caused - for about from Walmart). That way if there is that power issue you again I'm covered past the receipt return period. That being said, I still would recommend this TV over any other 19" LCD. The specs are better than almost everyone else and it is a very good looking (body), well made TV that has an amazing 720p HD picture. Even with regular over-the-air (or over-the-cable via the QAM) digital channels without a cable box. Don't let the sporadic power issue you prevent you from buying this as even with that issue I still highly recommend this TV if you want a 19". Also keep in mind that this (and probably most) TV doesn't save your settings if you unplug it.

Incessant beeping noise
We loved this tv/dvd/radio player. It was easy to install, very stylous fitting well in our kitchen. The remote never worked great, but that was okay. Then about 1 year later all of a sudden a loud screeching beeping sound began. It sounded like the alarm clock...the only problem the only way to turn it off was to unplug the unit. After pressing every possible button a thousand times, it miraculously stopped, for a week, and then started again. And this time we could not turn it off. We are sad to say it but have removed this defective device and bought another less attractive system that works. No more Phillips products for us.

OK
THE PRODUCT LOOKED OK AND EVERYTHING WAS THERE. IT TOOK AWHILE TO SHIP BUT AS FAR AS THAT EVERYTHING WAS FINE.

One for two ain't bad...
I bought one of these a while back and installed it in the kitchen. It was perfect! Used it with no problems for ~year. When we sold the house, we left the unit behind and I purchased a second for our new house. After installation (oops) I realized that none of the buttons on the unit worked. The remote worked fine so we dealt with it. However, now the whole thing is on the fritz. I just called customer service and am hoping for satisfaction, but although I just installed it, it was purchased 8 months ago, so I'm probably out the $. If you buy this, test it first and test it fast!

UPDATE: Phillips sent me a brand new (upgraded) unit which works perfectly.

great purchase
Very happy with the under the cabinet tv/dvd/radio combo. I should have gone for the larger screen but chickened out! Works great with great picture (we have cable)

Nice combo, seems well-designed, works well
Just installed the ALJ700 today and have finished putting it through its paces. All-in-all, I'm very pleased. The LCD disply is crisp and clear (using cable), the DVD/CD player works flawlessly, and the FM tuner has good sensitivity. (Can't comment on the AM radio, since I never listen to AM.) Installation was very simple and the instructions were great. The mounting kit is very versatile, for almost any cabinet design, and all the needed accessories, brackets, etc., were provided. The key to success in this sort of all-in-one product is how the vaious components are integrated together. Philips has done a very good job in this regard. For example, the TV screen shows the disk and track IDs when a CD is playing, but turns itself off when it is folded up into the unit. The unit itself is very inconspicuous, which is a real plus. My only complaints are that the speakers are a bit small (with correspondily weak bass response) and there is a slight delay when pressing buttons (as previously noted) All-in-all, however, seems to be a very satisfactory product.