Philips 19PFL5422D 19-Inch LCD HDTV

Definately a quality television, July 26, 2007

By 

David T. Vasquez (Gainesville, FL, USA) –

  

*Edit*
Two years in, the television is working as well as it did out of box.
*Edit*

The Philips 19PFL5422D HDTV is a great buy. The 1440×900 pixel resolution is superb. The picture quality is sharp; it displays analog 480i NTSC signals pretty well, and HD signals are even better. The casing is slim and elegantly designed.

The QAM tuner picks up digital signals from your cable line very well. NTSC is flawless. I don’t have a pair of ditial rabbit ears, so I haven’t checked out the ATSC tuner.

Televisions below 32″ are mostly found in 8ms response times, and this is no different. While that may be fast, and certainly acceptable, on interlaced signals the line doubling can cause a slight blur. It’s honestly barely noticeable (I’m the only one who seems to notice it), but that’s normal.

When hooked to the PLAYSTATION 3 via HDMI, it’ll support 1080p, and the games looks great. Even the Wii’s 480p looks good. and even though the television has a greater horizontal pixel resolution, the scaling from 16:9 to 16:10 is near perfect.

The 800:1 contrast ratio may not sound great, especially with most 23″ and above sporting >1000:1, but again, that’s pretty normal for 19″. Most of the televesions I compared at this size were either the same ratio or less. 300cd/m2 brightness rating is also low, and in a brightly lit room, it does look a little washed out.

There is some slight backlight leakage along the top and bottom, but this is minor. Mine arrived without any dead pixels. The set supports VGA pc connection, but does not supply its own cable. I recommend using the HDMI connection and buy a HDMI>DVI adapter.

The sound is better than I was expecting. The speakers are small and located below the television @ 5 watts apiece. The speakers can get pretty loud without degrading and with decent bass for such a low profile set up. But you’ll probably want to set up external speakers for the full theatre quality sound experience.

The base is made of glass. Yes, glass. I don’t know who thought of that, but it would seem that a metal base would fare better. It is pretty stable and can withstand a decend amount of force. It also screws into the television’s stem. It just makes the television that much more stylish.

All in all, this is a great television. I gave it 4/5 because of the blur only I can see, slight backlight leak, and lack of second component input. But If I could use half stars, I’d give it 4.5/5 as these are minor and mostly unnoticed.

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 Comments (8)

High quality at a decent price, December 9, 2007

By 

David Smith “–dj” (Burlingame, CA) –

  

I picked this TV up at Best Buy a few days back. It was the only one that didn’t have a box with damage. Paid $450 plus taxes. I spent a good hour or two fiddling with all the TVs in the same shelf that were from 19″ to 26″ HD sets. There were 26″ of unknown brand that were the same price, slightly more or less, but all had either terrible sound or video, and the majority were of a lesser resolution than this TV.
It does have slight leakage from the backlights but only videophiles like myself will notice, and honestly its hardly noticeable.
I really like the automatic picture sizing feature, it does a great job resizing the screen with different video sources automatically and stretching them in ways that don’t make the picture look bad or way off-scale. Some of the time I still resort to setting the mode manually but for the most part I live it alone.
The ATSC tuner works really good, switching between channels doesn’t take very long compared to other sets. This thing really shines with true HD channels, even with the lousy cable system I have available to me, I was watching some mindblowing video about the birth of the solar system and it was absolutely amazing.
The TV is stylish and looks great. I used to have a 32″ flat CRT TV which blew up after a voltage spike, and with the difference in picture quality and availability of digital stations I don’t miss that big heavy bulky piece of furniture at all.
If you’re looking for a TV thats great to watch and doesn’t dominate your living area, or a TV for a bedroom/kitchen, this is a great choice.

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Above Avarage, January 4, 2008

By 

Catherine A. Balzer –

  

Rather Then bogging you down with conversational points I’ll try and list the facts of this HDTV.

Video: The Video is excellent, Although with a 8ms you can see a slight blur while gaming. I noticed this while playing on a low def PS2 game. The only other complaint is the slight white hue around the screen. It’s a bit distracting but nothing too serious.

Audio: The speakers with the set are generally good, for the size they’re a bit above average. I hooked up some external speakers and that problem was easily solved.

Design: The TV looks great, hands down. But i did have some trouble with the Connection Ports facing downward, it can be a hassle to plug in your DVD player for the first time. But this is nothing too terrible.

Overall:

In retrospect I’m very happy with this purchase, It’s worth the price. And overall an amazing HDTV.

Pros: Great video,Decent Sound,Good Design,Easy Install.
Cons: White backlight Hue, Awkward placement of connections, Slight Blur.

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