Philips 42PF7320A 42 in. HDTV Plasma Television

My family hovered around the HD/flat screen discussions for the past two years, doing a lot of looking, but never pulling the trigger. At the end of last year, we decided to give it a whirl. We looked at hundreds on Ebay, but were a little concerned about returns and dead pixels etc. from a far away seller. We went to BJs, and got this model for $1799 plus tax after a $100 rebate. Comes with stand, speakers, cables...everything but a wall mount. Reasonably simple to hook up...took a while...but it was worth it. Stunning HD picture clarity on DVD's and HD TV signal. Regular programming looks a lot better than on a regular TV, but you can really feel the difference in native fomats.

Gripes...the PIP is not well documented and hard to get to work with two input signals. In fact, it is very awkward to get the thing to default to anything other than a TV input. We use the HDMI cable from an HD cable box, but cannot seem to make it default to that or to use separate inputs for the PIP. I have ordered a dual channel DVR box and will see if that does the trick. All in all, nice enough, and cheap enough, that we went and bought another one for the bedroom. It also gets suprisingly hot, but I understand that to be a normal Plasma issue.

Along with cheap in comparison to its peers, the stereo is pretty good, the quality of the case and components is excellent.

Strengths: Beautiful true HDTV picture, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, plenty of inputs, awesome value.

Weaknesses: Setup is not easy, remote is a little flimsy, manual is not intuitive, and sound quality of speakers is not the best.

Summary: Bought this at BJ's Wholesale Club for $1899.99. I did a lot of research and found the picture quality to be comparable to models priced twice as high. Set-up and documentation is not intuitive. I consider myself an expert on audio/video system set-ups and it still took me almost an hour to hook everything up. Sound from the TV itself is not the best, but you should have it hooked up to a home theater system anyway, so the point is moot. I have both my DVR cable box and DVD player hooked up to the HDMI inputs and it could not be simpler.

Overall, an excellent Plasma HDTV at even double the price.