HP PL4260N

Summary: Intro
This HP plasma’s stunning contrast ratio, attractive price-point, and ease of integration into a quality home theater make me thrilled w/ my purchase. Though it does have speakers, it does not have any of the high $ options like cable card, hard drive, or memory stick access. However, since my installation requires none of these, it has delivered an outstanding experience.
Design
The simple HP matte-black plastic bezel is accented by a few industry-standard stickers near the bottom. Basic control buttons are on the left side of the unit, so they don’t distract from the sleek design. With the great and simple to use remote, why would you want to use those buttons anyway? The dimensions w/ stand are speakers are 28.9” x 53.5” x12.3”. However, recognize that if you don’t use the stand or speakers, you have much smaller footprint. That’s what allowed me to fit it into my current entertainment center (a huge savings as compared to buying or having built another entertainment center!).

The unit comes w/ a simple black stand pre-installed. The optional speakers seem to easily screw on and when installed, are seamless into the system (i.e. you can’t easily tell they’re separate units).

I sat down and went through the manual regarding the remote control options today. I was happy to find easy to use functions to adjust the picture, sound, and cc levels to my liking. There are an impressive number of adjustments to tweak the system to perform just as you desire for your specific architecture.
Features
The unit has a native resolution of 1,024x768. It easily handles all my inputs, such as HDMI, component, and rf. I look forward to the day when HP designs its plasma tv as it does the micro-display unit; I would have loved to be able to slide the cables under and plug them into a covered front area. For now, lifting the relatively light unit to make cable adjustments was no big deal. I also look forward to the day the micro-displays ability to select input options visually comes to the plasma units.

I used the integrated over the air tuner to sample some local digital and HD channels. I was thrilled to see the stunning picture quality examples, but wound up giving up on OTA and scheduling TWC to come out and set up a digital cable DVR for me.

I was pleased w/ the units out of the box 14:9 aspect ratio. I was surprised that the 4:3 shows I watched didn’t appear stretched when I watched them. It appeared to match whatever the channel’s native properties and adjust them to look great in 14:9. When I flicked through the aspect ratio controls, I was pleased to find two zoom levels and options to fit every taste.

The picture adjustments include both those that are easy to understand and select for the amateur user as well as more specific settings that can be made by more experienced users.

The fact that the unit only has one HDMI input concerned me until I realized that the best experience is reached when you use your HDMI receiver to make input selections and use the TV only as a monitor. For now, I only have on HDMI anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t spend the high $ to get add’l HDMI inputs I wouldn’t use.
Performance
The 10,000 contrast ratio and the vivid pictures I saw on local retailers were enough to convince me to purchase the HP. Once installed, I was rewarded w/ all the reasons to buy plasma – great price points as compared to LCD, small form factor, and excellent range of brightness you can tune to your needs.

Perhaps I will spend the $ on getting the picture tuned at a later date. For now, I’m thrilled w/ making the simple tweaks to make it a beautiful picture in my home theater.