A great TV for a great price!

+ Sleek design
+ Value for money
+ Easy to assemble the stand
+ Good sound quality
+ Great picture quality
+ Easy to navigate menus/switch inputs etc.
+ Digital & Analogue tuner inbuilt
+ Supports upto 1080p input

- Sound settings needs fiddling with for it to sound 'right' (I suggest the 'Cinema' setting from the Audio menu.)
- I found the auto brightness/contrast pretty annoying - this can be turned off by changing 'Fresh Contrast' to off in the Picture -> Advanced options, however this will reset if you change the AV Mode.

5/5

sony kdl 263000u

Bought this tv as an additional tv for conservatory. Fantastic picture and even better sound quality at a great price. ive seen some comments about buying s and t series over the u series but i find it hard to believe the difference is that much greater. Superb for watching sport.
Great service by amazon oredered Thursday night received at 9:00am Saturday morning.

top class

I have used a Samsung series 5 40" 1080p tv which is superb but this has little tricks that make it a better TV overall.
I have loyalty to Sony after years of adoring my stunning 100hz Trinitron, so i tried this big 46" and boy what a great call.
HD gameplay is amazing stuff - i mean XBOX360 (and PS3 too) titles such as Assassin's Creed, PRG4 etc look like a very high-end PC with this - trust me, i know PCs and i can't believe how good these titles look in 1080p. It's so much better than 480p as to be a totally different experience.
But when it comes to a mixture of SD sources, it is harder for a TV engine to sort things out. Some are great in HD but tear a SD signal to shreds......Well this Bravia absolutley excels here. Firstly, the Theatre Mode is a one-stop shop for excellent viewing of films - no gimmicks here; it really works wonders.
Also, set up is easy and just works well - different sources are easily adjusted. The auto-adjusting settings (with light-meter on front) are very good at tweaking settings when you draw the curtains/ switch off lights etc - nice touch
Sound is fine but mine goes through 5.1 anyway.
A top-class piece of kit - steal of the century at £850

Couldn't be more pleased, and that is comparing it to the very highly-regarded Samsung!

Hope this helps

Info on Amazon website doesnt match toshiba website ???

on amazon it says this telly has 2X30W audio whereas on toshiba website it claims to only be 20W in total! also dynamic contrast ratio info on amazon is different from toshiba website info. am confused.

Great value HD Ready TV

I was looking to buy my first LCD TV, and after a lot of research I initially wanted a Sony Bravia as they are undoubtedly the leaders in terms of picture and build quality. Unfortunately Sony only make one considerably expensive 37" model (in a toe-curling mid-1990's silver colour), so I gave it a miss.

However my second choice - the Toshiba - delivers great quality HD-ready pictures at an extremely attractive price point. Not quite as good as the Sony Bravia, but for well under £500 with free delivery who's arguing?


PROS:

Unbeatable price. Probably the best value-for-money vs. screen size TV out there at the moment. Just don't tell anyone!

Great SD picture quality, very little pixellation unless the channel is broadcasting an old programme like repeats of Bargain Hunt. But why the hell are you watching repeats of Bargain Hunt anyway? There's even a feature that smooths out jagged lines when playing regular DVDs. Jazz club. Nice.

Excellent HD-ready picture, crystal clear. Not full HD, but who gives a monkeys? When Blu-Ray technology becomes more widespread (i.e. doesn't cost £50000000 for a player and £20 for a single bloody disc) I might consider full HD.

Automatic backlight adjust that turns down the backlight when the screen is mostly dark (e.g. night scenes, credits, entire Evil Dead movies). I personally have this feature turned off, but it might be of interest to some people. Vampires, for example.

The screen is clearly visible from just about any angle, no"muting" of the picture when you view it from the side.


CONS:

The remote is appalling. And I mean, absolutely Milli Vanilli awful. You have to be directly in front of the TV with the remote pointing exactly at the receiver for it to work. And there is a 1-second delay before the channel changes or a menu screen comes up. Really annoying, although when I get Sky+ hooked up I won't have to use the bloody thing ever again.

Inbuilt Freeview browser is also really slow, annoying but again won't be an issue once I have Sky+ installed and I can watch repeats of Bargain Hunt instantly.

The gloss black finish is a dust magnet. I'd prefer a matte black finish like Batman's nipples, but that's only a minor gripe (or fantasy, depending on how you see it).

The factory picture and sound settings are laughable - pretty much everything is set to 100%. Ideally you should sit down for 30 mins and adjust everything to a normal level so everyone's faces aren't glowing bright red. I swore Jeremy Clarkson was about to have a heart attack, but then I realised it was just my factory settings. And the"bass boost" feature only needs to be on 5-15% otherwise your speakers will get raped by bearded guys shouting"THIS IS SPARTA!" if you turn the volume up beyond halfway.


SUMMARY:

This TV takes a little bit of fiddling with to get right, but once you've figured out your optimum settings it's a fantastic TV at a bargain price. Yeah!!

excellent tv cant fault

I have had the tv for 2 weeks now and i am still amazed how much better it is than my last 32"lcd tv.My last tv was a cheap lcd and the philips puts it to shame.I use the philips mostly for my xbox360 through hdmi and the picture is amazing even the freeview gets an excellent picture with very little distortion.The photos above dont do it justice it is a very nice high gloss black surround sleek and elegant.All i can say is for the price i would recommend the philips 42PFL5603D, but thats just my opinion.

Great LCD, perfect for your PS3 and PC

This LCD screen is truly fantastic displaying rich vibrant images and perfect for your PS3 and Blu-ray movies. It displays my PS3 at 1080p no problems which to be honest I wasn't expecting, and I have my PC input displaying at 1400x900. The speaker could be better but I have my powerful Logitech X-230 Multimedia Speaker System - 32 Watt (Total) (2.1) linked up to the headphone output so its perfect. Looks great and is incredibly quiet, which is great as this is situated in my room! Haven't tried the Freeview or TV but I'm sure judging by my experience with this LCD it will be great.
Over all a great LCD and I'd highly recommend.

great value

i bought this tv after serching for best price and no one offers it as cheap as amazon it was bought for my bedroom and looks good and sounds good too great for the price

Top Banana!

When my old Philips Matchline TV finally gave up, I was secretly overjoyed because now I could justify buying a snazzy, new LCD TV.

Although I prefer Philips products, I thought I would shop around this time because we're talking about a difference of at least £400 between the cheaper models and this Philips 37". So I spent days weighing the pro's and con's of this make and that, whether to get HD Ready (cheaper!), Full HD, 32", 37", 42", blah, blah, blah.

After reading endless reviews, I rebelled and just bought what I fancied in the first place - this Philips 37" LCD with Freeview and Ambilight. You can find quite a few technical reviews on the web and ultimately, all they really tell you is that no TV is perfect and all have their flaws. So trust me - just arm yourself with a few simple requirements and then go shopping!

Here's mine:

* Full HD (It's a lot of money so it needs to be a bit future-proof)
* High contrast ratio (At least 20000:1)
* Wide viewing angle (otherwise you have to sit directly in front of it)
* Good quality make (so that you can take some things for granted)
* Stylish (some LCD's are really ugly!)
* Affordable

When the TV arrived, only one side of the Ambilight worked, so I had Amazon send a replacement. They also arranged for pickup of the faulty one - all free of charge. I was just a bit unlucky here. It could happen anywhere to anyone. Full marks to Amazon for making the exchange process easy.

The replacement is however, perfect. The picture and sound are wonderful and the Ambilight gives the whole thing an extra dimension. My TV sits upon a corner floor stand and isn't wall mounted, but the Ambilight is still very effective. I just need to lighten the colour of the wall behind the set to enjoy the more subtle colour changes.

Operating the TV is really simple. There are quite a few settings that you can fiddle with, but there's also a question-based setup utility that will reset the picture if you mess things up. It shows you a series of photo's/movies in a vertically split-screen format, and you just say whether you prefer the left or the right side. Great feature!

One of the features I couldn't initially decide on was whether to buy the 37" or 42" as there's not a lot of money between them. But my lounge isn't really that large (about 20' x 14') and this 37" is more than big enough. It's large without being too intrusive. Personally, I dislike the massive screens that are being pushed by retailers that dominate your room. You'll get a sharper picture from the smaller LCD's. The smaller screen also has a better contrast ratio (44000:1) which is all important on an LCD, otherwise the picture tends to be a bit dark.

The Philips 37" LCD Ambilight more than fulfills my expectations. I love it and can recommend it to anyone.

Great LCD TV with an awesome picture

I didn't purchase this TV through Amazon and don't use all of the functions, but I will review all that I know about this TV.

First of all the styling is great. My wife told me from me the start that my new TV wasn't to be a black monster. She preferred the styling of the Sony X series. The TV looks great on the wall especially when the room is dark. The dark red frame to the TV is one hell of a dust magnet though. It also has the trademark Samsung shiny screen where most other makes opt for a matte screen. The idea is that the shiny screen helps produce deeper blacks. My front room is very bright by day with large windows both sides of the TV so reflections are a small annoyance, mostly on dark images.

I don't use the freeview slot for the TV, but I know you can only use the PiP feature with the incoming TV signal + one other signal, which is one of my gripes. I would like PiP with HDMI + A/V or RGB inputs.

The picture quality via blu-ray/PS3 is outstanding and probably one of the best I looked at. Even upscaled DVDs have a great picture with very little posterising or grainy edges. My friends always come to my place to play PS3 as they all think the graphics through this screen is by far the most superior (including the Sony Bravia X series, although to be honest I couldn't see that much difference).

The 100Hz specification works very well, although I have it set to either low or medium as the high setting makes things look like they're in fast forward. Action scenes are not blurred at all and have a very natural look to them, making movies look like they're shot in real time, similar to the way that documentaries are shot. This makes the picture look more"real" and life like which I absolutely love, and really miss when watching other TVs.

The set has bundles of tweaks and settings for the ultra enthusiast, although I didn't change much as the factory settings were fairly close to what I wanted. The menu system is very intuitive and easy to get to grips with from the off. The remote is tidy with a useful back-light (shame the set controls on the actual TV don't have a back-light, meaning you can't actually see them even in moderate light).

Sound quality is fine although other reviews you might read will tend not to rate the sound quality too much from it's downward pointing speakers. I use my surround system for movies and PS3 and screen speakers for watching cable.

Price-wise this TV was less than the Bravia X 40 inch which has more or less the same specifications. OK the styling is better in my view (and my wife's!), but for less cash you get the same spec and a 46 inch screen... which was the deal clincher for me.

Pro's:
Unbelievable picture quality makes movies much more involving
Hi-def graphics are breath taking
Modest eye pleasing styling
Plenty of useful inputs including USB to view jpegs
On screen menus very easy to use and tweak
Nice tidy remote with backlight
Sound quality is respectable at modest volumes
Price

Con's
Shiny screen could be an annoyance to some
Dust catching frame
No back-light for set box controls
Only PiP when using TV signal input

The con's just about lost it 1 star, the shiny screen could put some people off, where the other con's are small gripes more than anything. If you find it works in your room, then this is probably one of the best full HD 46 inch LCDs on the market at the moment for the price.

I'm very happy with my purchase (after about 1 month of use) so far and don't see other LCDs in the stores and think"hmm, I wished I'd got that one instead". A great buy.

Very Pleased

Had this T.V. for about six weeks now, and I must say I am extremely pleased with it. After a bit of experimenting I set it to"ECO" mode, in order to obtain the picture quality I liked most. Freeview is supurb as is DVD playback via hdmi link. Can't fault it. Highly recommended.

PHILLIPS 37pfl5522

This set offers a lovely clean image free from blurring and digital artefacts, especially from DVD'S via HDMI (720p setting is best) and is a doddle to set up and use. I tweaked the screen using a THX test signal (contained on a lot of DVDS) to get the optimium settings for contrast etc - there are lots of settings to tweak the image although I have tried various combinations and found the best results were achieved through the above method).
SD broadcasts definately benefit from a decent arial feed and freeview digital TV images are far better than those of analogue broadcasts, with a sharper, more vibrant picture (although not quite as good as DVD images in my experience). The pixel plus 2 HD is permanently on so I am unable to offer any suggestion as to whether it is a bonus or hinderance to the image displayed. The set is easily wall mounted as well as having a robust, removable stand and build quality is excellent.
For anyone who has an ariel socket on the wall or who needs to connect an external device i would recommend upgrading the arial leads/scarts etc, using something like QED's ttv ariel lead, P21 scart, HDMI-P Lead - These kind of things make a substantial difference to the quality of the image, surprisingly so.

This is an excellent TV, outstanding value and heartily recommended.

Perfection

Just received this on the 29th August as promised by Amazon.
Perfect delivery and the tv is brand new and is a gem.
It looks very classy and the picture quality is outstanding.
Anyone Pondering over this should stop pondering and just order it.
Much much cheaper than the shops.