Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips 42PFL7422D/37 42-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

The picture quality of this LCD is GREAT. Bought it at a great price
Used it with HD DVD and quality is outstanding.
The color adjustment is easy and also more advanced if you want to adjust with more detail.
Tested with different movies and contrast really adjusts to blacks and grey.
Sound quality is good, but could be better.

The on and off issue is true, but it doesnt bother me at all
The USB port is good for pictures, but it only allows viewing of certain formats.

3 HDMI ports really useful

If you want a good LCD for price try this one.

PROS:

- great resolution
- 1:1 image while displaying through a pc (although you need a dvi to hdmi converter)
- built in tuner, allows me to watch cable tv on it without a box
- usb port,very convenient for upgrading firmware.
- 3 hdmi ports useful for connecting multiple hd devices
- good SD picture quality with overscan options
- color ( after calibration, defaults are dreadful)

CONS:
- average black levels, good with dynamic contrast on but too much color shift and distracting feature.
- speakers are muddy and unclear but you can fiddle with the EQ to address that, not a perfect fix. Most people have a home theater.
- cannot completely turn this unit off, goes into standby
- poor viewing angles, off center black shifts to light grey along with other colors. Have to be facing the set directly to see true color response. Again most of the time you watch straight on.
- one color temp is set universally for all inputs, that is you can change contrast, brightness and tint, but all will share color temperature.
-color temp drifts when you adjust contrast and brightness

Comments:

This tv overall really shines when you calibrate the color temperature. I have used a hardware puck from Gretagmacbeth to measure the white point on this tv and use the custom settings to bring it to 6500K which really applies to any source you plug to the tv. I use a custom temp for xbox 360 and cable and both look great. If you are like me and not satisfied with the Normal , Warm , Cool presets, either being too blue or too green ( warm ). Try my settings and see if they help you get a nice neutral calibrated response. Be careful adjusting brightness and contrast as they affect the color temp and cause it to drift.

Color Temp:

Custom

R-WP 105
G-WP 84
B-WP 66
R-BL 5
G-BL 5


Dim /lights off settings

Contrast 57
Brightness 62
Color 50
Tint 0
Sharpness 0

(all processing such as pixel perfect, dynamic contrast, are off )

I have been watching the LCD HDTV market for some time. My 25 year old TV died and forced me to find a new unit.

This unit is a great buy for the price. It is easy to assemble. Manual is clear. Picture both for non HDTV and HDTV is excellent. There is an easy assistant to help with picture adjustment and you can manually adjust contract, brightness, etc. or let the TV decide.

There are a large number of set up options and inputs and outputs, in the back for permanent and on the side for computer, video camera, etc.

I used the analog out feature to put into my analogue receiver and speakers and the sound is good. I would imagine that with surround sound it would be great.

At present I haven't found any cons.

Philips is a good company and had donated medical technology to hospials in the third world so not only is the TV good, but you can feel good buying it.

This is the second HDTV we purchased. The first one was the Philips 42 inch 768p LCD. The 768p set had terrible response time, and anything that moved quickly looked pixelated. We returned the first one, and came home with this one. Wow. What an amazing TV. I've seen all of my friend's set, and the only one that even comes close is the Sony Bravia (which costs 750 dollar more for an equal product). If you put this LCD next to a Vizio, you'd think that the Vizio wasn't even an HD set. I couldn't be more pleased with this TV.

I bought this at Costco because it was cheaper and because of their warrenty extension to 2 years. I had it out of the box and was watching it in 30 minutes using my digital cable tv box. The colors are so rich and vibrant and the speakers on the set are ok. I'll be hooking my home theater tomorrow so that doesn't really matter to me. Even the pictures with regular cable are awesome. I'm having an HDTV box set up this Saturday. It's difficult to believe that the picture could get any better.
I was considering a 720p Vizio 42" but after comparing this set and the Vizio side by side this one just looked so much better. Even the Vizio 1080p set didn't look as good as this set. I went to several different stores and the result was the same. This Philips set won out and it was worth a couple of hundred dollars more to get a set I'll be happy with.