Customer Reviews

Philips 32PFL5332D/37 32-inch 720p LCD HDTV

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It cost me around CAN$950 at BestBuy. After one month I am still very happy with my decision. Before the purchase, I spent long time in the store comparing this with Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and Westinghouse 32"s. The conclusion is that Philips delivers the most natural picture (thank for the LG panel). Sony is quite good in every aspect but pricy. Toshiba is generally okay except the picture looked really 2-D (fake), IMHO. 1080p from Sharp is nice, but I'm afraid it's an overkill for the 32" level (perhaps even for a 37"). Westinghouse offers a good price/performance ratio, but I would feel like buying extra protection after knowing the warranty service issues from the company.

When spending money on a TV, we look at two things - performance and warranty. As for performance, an LCD TV mainly depends on the panel and the image processor. Those "resolution", "response time", "contrast ratio", "viewing angle" etc are decided by the panel itself. There are other inborn feature by a panel but let's not get too technical. Nowadays technology on making 32" panels has become mature, so in most cases what makes one outstanding is the image processor. This is something you need to spend time in a store to feel. Both TVs from Philips & LG use the same LG made panel yet a difference can easily be seen, because Philips uses Pixel Plus.

An HDTV has high resolution capability, but currently only few signal source are in 1080. Digital signal from cable box, DVD player via component, or Wii etc normally has lower resolution than the HDTV. When display these on a 1366 x 768 HDTV, more noise arises. This is when Pixel Plus enters. From the demo you can see the Pixel Plus technology does cancel noise and enhance colour contrast yet successfully maintain the nature of the image. Every company has their unique way of doing this. I personally believe Pixel Plus is among the tops.

I picked the TV on sale at Best Buy, for the size and contrast ratio (3200-1)plus a DTV tuner its very good buy and I paid about $90 less than the price above at the time if this review. I use it mainly to play Xbox 360 games on but it also shows DVDs and other HD media very well. My only gripe is that the remote is very basic but does the job however I also own a Philips DVD player and the remotes conflict a little. A nice feature is the USB connection you can plug ina memory stick and view media off it or use it to update the TVs software.

So there I was. I had finally saved up to go get a LCD TV - but which one should I buy. I knew I was going for 32" to 37" because any bigger would be too big for my livingroom. I also knew that Samsung makes the best LCD TV but at a premium. On the shelf infront of me stood a 32" Phillips.
Phillips used to be the market leader in TV's so I decided to go for it.
I HAVE NOT BEEN DISAPPOINTED! The picture is nice and crisp (Supports up to 1080), sure there is some issues with shades of black - but that is the case for all LCD's. If you want bang for your buck - this is the way to go! Put it to you this way - the boys have already seen it and SUPERBOWL is at my place!!!!

This TV was good for the price until it started having major problems seven weeks after I purchased it. The picture started jumping up and down on the screen, blinking as it did this. Then, after several minutes of flashing, the screen would go blank. The customer service experience has been TERRIBLE, which is why I took the time to write this review--to warn people before they buy this TV. The person who was supposed to fix this TV under full warranty tried to charge me for labor, which was supposed to be covered. After that happened, Phillips claimed there was no one else in my area who could fix the TV. So, when the TV wasn't repaired correctly the first time, I had to take it back to the same person who tried to steal money from me. Do not buy this TV! Of the few reviews I read, another person had almost the exact same problem with their TV. The broken television combined with a poor customer service experience is why I have rated this TV one star.

I have owned the TV now for a total of 5 months, unfortunately, the last three months the TV has been in repair (which is covered by the warranty). The customer service is poor, which makes the problem only worse. My TV was working fine, until one day, the screen went blank. Once this happened, a series of backordered parts for repair, incompetency, etc. prevailed, and I still do not have a functioning TV. Perhaps, the most frustrating aspect of this entire ordeal is that I bought a Phillips TV b/c I was under the impression it was better quality and thus reliable. I was mistaken. Please know that I am writing this review while I am on hold with customer service, now for the 13th week. Avoid this product at all costs! If you don't believe me, just look up this TV and model series in google, and see all of the frustration forums.

Ended up buying at Best Buy.

It was between Sharp and Phillips. Had both at home and compared. Phillips brighter and clearer picture. Sharp had better black. Phillips auto format (16:9 vs 4:3 aspect ratio) made viewing different channels infinitely better. Its does it automatically. Looked at others in the store priced up to 1000. Still this was the best. Why worry about the remote ? I have a digital command remote suplied by cable company. Had program pre-sets - just punch in code. Wala ! it worked no problemo. Even if you don't get it for this price, anything under $800 would be a good deal IMHO.

I have had this TV for some time (two years or so) and have not had a problem until a few days ago when I purchased my first Blu-Ray DVD player. Up until this point, my standard DVD player and cable box worked splendidly with the TV but when I hooked up the Blu Ray in the same manner, I got no picture and no sound. I later found out that the player was capable of 1080P output where my TV is not. Fortunately, the Blu-Ray will work with component video cables, but I found this quite interesting since I did not know this when I bought the TV.

I bought this TV back in September 2007 for $699+tax at Best Buy. At first, I did read about Philips TVs having dead screen problems. But that was in previous models and Philips had apparently corrected whatever issue was involved with this generation. In addition, the picture quality is great, just a shade below Sony's flagship 32 incher while far above LG and such. Sharp and Samsung both are about the same quality except they each has their own red/blue push issues, but that is strictly a preference concern.

1080p is definitely overkill for 32 inch TV. A naked eye can't even detect the difference in between 720p and 1080p down at this level. In fact, difference between 720p and 1080p only becomes visible for TVs 42 inches and up. So why pay the extra for 32 inch TVs boasting 1080p resolution? Of course, unless you are doubling your TV as your computer monitor.

The TV itself has a wealth of connectivity options, from 2 HDMI connections (even though a few other 32 inchers have 3 HDMIs), to 2 components in the back, 1 component on the side, S-video, and an USB port that can be used with flash memory devices for everything from MP3 playback to firmware upgrade. Fortunately I had no dead pixels on this TV (and still don't, to this day).

Its automatic search function was not able to pick up any over-the-air HD broadcasts, which is actually not surprising since I live in the middle of nowhere. Setting up the TV image display involved choosing a series of pictures, according to whether I liked the image on the right or the left side of the screen. This way the TV can start automatically choose what image settings to use according to user preferences. I do have a little gripe about this feature because while the TV does choose the image settings for the viewer, it certainly isn't helpful if the factory preset image settings are not any good. For example, when playing "Unleashed", a movie that's generally fairly dark, images generally had a yellow hue regardless of the preset options. I had to manually go in to the color temperature setting and mess around with blue in order to get a more natural dark.

Other factory preset image options include their color temperature settings such as "warm, cool, vivid, normal". The problem there is that while there's an obvious difference in warm, cool, normal, its claim that vivid "pushes your TV's capability to maximum to get the absolute best picture quality" is pretty inaccurate. What it does is crank up the brightness, sharpness, and basically most settings, in order to try to achieve a more vibrant picture. It in fact looks horrible because when all settings are pushed to very high, some of them do not complement each other well.

All in all, great TV if you can still find new ones.

Some misc. notes:

You should avoid purchasing "refurbished" TVs.
I'm not an extreme user, so my TV is on for maybe 4 hours a day, if that.
This TV does have somewhat of an uneven start-up time, meaning that the time in between when the TV is turned on until the image appears on screen somewhat varies, although generally no longer than 5 secs.
This TV's remote is pretty flimsy.

I looked at ALL the brands at all the local electronic stores and took alot of time before deciding on this one. I honestly believe that it is equal to or better than all the more expensive brands out there. As a matter of fact, my brother-in-law bought my mother-in-law, who lives next door, a new Sony 32" LCD shortly after we got our Philips, and the Philips definitely outperforms the Sony in picture quality, and I might add that I'm a fan of Sony products. I'd say it is on par with the much more expensive Samsung. This one is for our bedroom, our next LCD TV will be for the living room and WILL be a larger Philips.
What I like: two HDMI inputs, a USB input for updating software AND observing your favorite pics, a light, easy to use remote, nice style, great sound, and of course, fantastic HD picture.
Dislikes: I could only afford to buy one of these at a time.

I researched this tv for my wife and ordered it for her. She is very pleased with it. I installed it and after following prompts on the screen, it said it had found 11 digital channels and 12 analog channels. It gets channels we didn't know existed, using the antenna. I had never heard of decimal channels, like 9.4, Create. Now, after hooking up to directv,without subscribing to HD, the reception is exceptional, without the HD, and when we want to get the HD local channels, she switches over to the antenna. Satelite doesn't bring in any of the decimal channels.

Now, I would like to buy a 26" Phillips LCD HDTV for my den. Whew I ordered tv they were not available.