Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
After Firmware Upgrade - A Fine Small LCD TV for the Price, June 11, 2009
After my previous 13 inch Sharp LCD TV died recently, I was in the market for a new small LCD TV for the kitchen. After shopping around I purchased the Philips 19PFL3504D/F7 19 inch LCD HDTV from a B&M Target store; this is the same TV available here either from Amazon itself or sold through Amazon by target.com/ITC. IMHO this set competes with other 19 inch sets such as the Toshiba 19AV600U 19-Inch 720p Portable LCD HDTV, Black and Samsung LN19B360 19-Inch 720p LCD HDTV, Black, which cost $45 to $80 more than the price I paid for the Philips. (Due to reliability / customer service concerns I did not consider any of the numerous no-name or store brand TVs available.)
First things first, at present the Philips requires a firmware upgrade (available at the Philips website) to eliminate an annoying high-pitched hum that occurs when the TV is powered off. If you have a computer and a USB flash drive this is an easy fix. Hopefully this will not be required on future shipment of the TV.
Setup of the Philips was very straightforward, and includes a guided setup which displays several test images and has the user select their brightness / sharpness / color preferences. This appears to be a faster way to get a decent picture than having to manually guess what backlight / sharpness / brightness / color / tint settings are needed. Of course these manual adjustments are available if needed. After 20 minutes to initially scan analog / digital channels, the TV was ready to go. The QAM tuner was able to pick up all of the digital cable channels (SD and HD) present; due to the distance from broadcast towers I could not check OTA performance. Unwanted channels can be "skipped" via the Setup menu.
The HD picture was excellent, with a bright picture, saturated colors, and good contrast. The SD picture was obviously a step down, but analog and digital SD channels were reasonably good. There are several options to present SD content stretched to fill the screen, but I preferred to stay in Normal mode and leave black bars on the side for SD content. The sound of the unit is fine, even though I was surprised to see that the speakers are located on the bottom of the TV (the pictures on Amazon make it look like these are front facing speakers). I had no issue getting adequate volume out of the speakers, and the sound quality is good considering the small size of this TV.
The Philips tilts forward a bit and tilts backwards a bit more, which is useful if viewing the TV from above or slightly below. The horizontal viewing angles are very good, no real degradation of the image when standing to the left or right of the TV. Viewing from above is OK up to about 45 degrees. Viewing from way below can become a problem, so if mounting this TV high up (say on a wall mount) make sure you can tilt it down towards the viewer. (Note: most TVs I looked at locally exhibit the same issue when viewing from below - some at a much smaller angle than the Philips.)
The Philips includes 2 HDMI inputs, component input, S-video / composite input, and VGA input. There is both a digital audio jack (coax) and headphone jack. Other standard features include sleep timer, parental controls, and sound equalizer. The two features I wish this TV had was a channel label feature (particularly useful to label the myriad digital channels this TV now picks up) and some type of Favorites feature to quickly tune to certain channels; the Toshiba mentioned above has these features at a higher price. I also have some concern over the long term reliability of this TV, as older 19 inch Philips models have some reliability complaints on here. I'll update this review if needed (hopefully not).
In summary, after using this set for a while I would say that this is a fine TV for the price, particularly if you are able to get the unit on sale. It is missing a few features from higher priced Toshiba and Samsung offerings, but has fine picture and sound at a price competitive with the no-name brands.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great TV, but i'll never buy another Philips product., September 26, 2009
I'll keep this short and sweet.
This TV is really great. It's worth every penny. If it works.
After having mine for about 8 months, I started having issues very suddenly. There was no power surge, no thunder storm, no dropping it or kicking it or anything of the sort. It just started not turning on. I called tech support and they told me how to fix it: hold down the power button for 15 seconds. Worked great...the first time. After that, I spent 20 minutes figuring out that I had to unplug the power cord for at least 20 seconds and then plug it back in before it would turn on again. I called Philips tech support again, and they told me they would send me a "new or refurbished" replacement. 8 days later, I received it, and opened it to find a horribly beat up, scratched and wobbly replacement. I immediately called Philips again and told them that it was absurd for them to send me a beat up replacement for my nearly-mint-condition TV (aside from THEIR manufacturing error with the power supply). I was told I would have to just live with it because Philips considered "cosmetic issues" unworthy of consideration, begging environmental conservation as their excuse. Why they can't just sell these crappy refurbished models to knowing consumers is beyond me.
Long story short, after 8 months of treating my property with care and consideration, Philips gave me the shaft and despite the issue being their own fault as a manufacturer, repaid my patronage with a shrug of apathy.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Good news Phillips TV, October 6, 2009
I was looking fo a small, quality TV for my workshop. I also wanted one that would double as a computer monitor. This TV does both just fine. In my area, rabbit ears do not do very well, so I am using an outside antenna and I get a very good picture. The built in speakers are just that, speakers.
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