Philips 37 inch a Great Buy

This is a great buy I have had this TV for two weeks now. First rate
picture good contast and deep colours, true blacks and gives your DVDs a good display.
I do not yet have Blu-ray player (coming soon) but your standard DVDs look
great and better than on a standard TV very good detail and great on fast
moving action. The sound is fair but you really need an A/V amplifier to get the best effects.
The freeview looks fine, but you do need a good outdoor aerial.
Also the price is best I have seen on the net.

Very Impressed

The Sony KDL 20S3030 came today and was so easy to set up. This is my first personal experience with LCD television. The Sony is a replacement for an old CRT tv that lived in the kitchen. The 20 inch size is perfect. I am very impressed with this Sony's ability to pick up digital channels so well as I am in a notoriously bad digital reception area.
In fact the picture is SO good it now makes my Panasonic CRT in the sitting room a poor second, even with Satellite reception. My only and very little niggle is that the back of this lovely white TV is, in fact, black. Sound on this unit is very good.

Full marks to Amazon also for efficiently processing my order and keeping me informed of dispatches, etc. And the price was £100 cheaper than what I could buy this TV for locally.

Great Buy

Just received my LE37A616A, and it's very impressive.

Pros - Fantastic Picture, Truly Amazing.
- Looks good on or off
- Plenty of connection options

Cons - Lack of bass on sound, it sounds a bit flat. I intend to invest in a surround sound system to correct this.

I would give 4 and a half stars if I could!

Misleading tech specs

Before buying this TV on Amazon, I checked it out in my local electricals superstore where one was on display in the middle of a selection of its main competitors in the same price range, all showing the same (non-HD) demo. This had the clearest picture, the richest colours and, to my eyes, looked best as a box. It was difficult to guage the sound quality in those circumstances, though.

The TV was well packed in its easy-to-open box (a couple of easy-release catches on each end meant that the box just slipped over the top, leaving the TV itself easy to lift out and carry to its position.

Two items of the technical specs disappointed me a little, but not enough to warrant a major complaint: this model is stated to include a PC input, but this is meant to be via one of its two HDMI sockets - not what I was expecting (especially as this PC does not have an HDMI or DVI output).

I was also a little surprised to find that unlike the 18 year-old Toshiba this TV is replacing, it does not feature proper audio out connectors - I would imagine that most potential purchasers would want to feed the audio through a dedicated sound system (as I do) and the headphone jack simply isn't up to the job. Along with a couple more HDMI inputs, this is perhaps something Toshiba needs to address in any future upgrade of this otherwise excellent series of TVs!

Great for the money...but not great!

Okay...I'm not good at these long reviews...so just the facts:

1. Audio - Great quality and fully customizable graphic EQ 120hz-12k
2. Looks - Great looking TV
3. Setup and connectivity - Easy to setup, great connections options
4. Video - Video quality not great overall but blacks not too bad for an LCD in this price range...fortunately there are advanced
settings and you can 'tweak' most of the fuzz and blur away but do not expect a crisp picture, especially via scart.

Bottom line - A pretty good TV, probably excellent for the money, but I
would save that extra 200-300 can get something a level up. Or at least go for the plasma version (LG42PG3000) which goes for about the same money these days.

Not worth it when there are better TVs out there.

The 37" size of the Series 5 TVs reportedly use a lower quality panel for the TV.

Compared to my Panasonic, HD quality doesn't look anywhere near as good. The HD image isn't crisp on 1080p trailers I've downloaded from the Apple website and on the Playstation store.

Games such as Resistance have terrible motion smearing and this soft, jaggy and smeary appearance. It just does not look crisp at all. This TV also suffers from Blu Ray judder problems.

The out of the box settings are terrible too. I used a HD cable by the way. However, I was impressed with how good Gran Turismo 5 looked - on par with my Panasonic, but that probably was down to the fact it was a 1080p game.

But at least connected via a PC through VGA looks great. Sound quality is decent.

I've already returned a different Samsung TV due to the overall poor image quality, and I've done the same with this TV.

Do not buy unless you will use it solely for PC usage, or if you like playing GT5 Prologue.

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.

Real Value

Excellent performance. Super picture. Wide range of sound settings. And the best price I found anywhere.

Good price/performance

Sorry, didn't buy from Amazon this time! Note that 5000, 5010, and 5020 are really same product (I asked LG). Looked at this with other 37 inch 1080p TVs in several shops and it always seemed at least as good as anything in its price class and indeed better than some costing rather more. The tuner side works well, our Wharfedale box (about a year old) would drop signal on the non-BBC multiplexes to the extent that on a bad day it was unwatchable, the LG doesn't lose signal at all so far. I should add we are definitely in a poor signal area, we can only get Freeview at all because we're on a hill, the transmitter is almost 50 miles away (obviously we have a serious antenna). If you're picky the picture isn't perfect but it's certainly good for a TV in this price class, the EPG is good with only one minor niggle, the controller is good and includes a quick view, and the sound is about all you could expect from a standard moderately priced TV - if you want tremendous sound especially bass you need to add a sound system and that applies to almost all TVs. We also get a really good result with a low cost DVD player, looking forward to getting an upscaling player and using one of the three HMDIs. Oh - and channel change is not always as quick as one might wish but that will generally apply if you are changing to a channel on a different multiplex. It would be awfully mean not to give this 5 stars.

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.