11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Phillips 32pf7320a from costco
Date of Review: Apr 11, 2006
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended for digital cable subscribers - out of the box functionality and great picture quality. No risk of burn-in.
I completely agree with nearly every comment made by kubotabx2200. Great job on the review kubota! I will add just a few additional comments from my own experience.
I picked up the 32" version of this set from costco for $1299 in April, 2006.
My wife liked this picture and the Sharp Aquos among the LCD's. Although online information was scant (very few reviews on CNET and little from consumer reports) I went with the Phillips, relying on my wife's legendary eye and Costco's legendary customer satisfaction guarantee.
After unboxing and hooking it up, I compared the picture side by side with Panasonic's TH-50PM50U 50" 8th generation plasma (bought it for $3299 at Costco 60 days ago and really love it). LCD and plasma are not directly comparable but the Phillips looked very good indeed, even considering the huge difference in size. The Panasonic is probably going back to Costco, and I can stop worrying about plasma burn-in. No sign of a problem, but the threat just made me uneasy.
Big advantage to the Phillips is that they have provided a DCR ready TV tuner, with digital cable, this is absolutely the way to go. The picture looks stunning and setup is just hooking up one wire. I haven't tried the Cable Card yet, and don't expect to need it since I'm not paying for any of the scrambled premium channels.
Second big advantage to the Phillips is that the picture scaling automatically manages to fill the 16x9 screen. I had given up on getting HD channels to zoom to full screen, using the Panasonic with a Moxi DVR from Adelphia. Sometimes I would get full screen but most HD channels were coming in with pillars, and no option to stretch the aspect available. I thought that this was just the way the local network HD channels were being broadcast in Orange County but the Phillips handled this right out of the box from the same signal. Kudos to Phillips.
