Give your TV a new home from IKEA
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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4.0 stars
"Looks really good"
Pros: bright, not distorted
Cons: 480i @ 640 x 480 has underscan problems
Summary: WOW. I just bought the MITSUBISHI 3 LCD rear projection (front surfaced mirror, one light bounce) 19.9 inch depth, wide screen TV. Model WD-62528, 62 inch diagonal screen. 40.5H inch by 58.3W inch. Final assembly performed in Mexico. Pebbly black finish. I bought it on sale and took delivery on Monday, Labor Day, 2005. It seemed to weigh about 150 pounds as shipped. 133 pounds, unpacked weight, heavy on the left end (power supplies, input connections, logic boards ?). With the help of a muscular teenage grandson, and several other people we got it in place. Awesome picture. They immediately hooked up an RF connection for X-BOX and PLAY STATION. After several hours of light saber sword fights and John Madden football, they went to their home. The loved it and want to live at our house.
With a little peace and quiet, I started evaluating what I had just bought. The OWNER?S GUIDE covers four models: WD-52527/528 and WD-62528/528. The most annoying thing at the start is the SHOW-ROOM DEMO sequence. Pressing just about any remote key brings back the picture. The grandkids hated it during their football game and light saber fights. The demo text on the 3rd or 4th screen says to press "MENU, 0, QV, 0". Guess what, there in NO menu key. The Owner?s guide gives the same advice. There are two menu keys; TV MENU and DEVICE MENU. Thank goodness, "TV MENU, 0, QV, 0" kills the DEMO.
The set is positioned at eye level in our home. TV really does need a base or a wall unit. Obvious loss of brightness if on the floor without a base.
Several items have been noticed, but are not deal breakers.
· NO ear phone jack. Nice to have when your partner needs to sleep. I have to use my A/V amplifier to get an earphone jack, and the turn down the TV sound. Can NOT turn ON/OFF the closed captioning except with MUTE. There are times when a hearing impaired relative would like closed captioning ON and the rest of us want sounds, all at the same time. I had a cheap 19 inch that would let me do that. When the TV sound is MUTED, there is not a MUTE banner showing, closed caption text shows up. However if the VOLUME control is pressed for DOWN, the MUTE is immediate undone. If you had the sound way up before the mute, then you get blasted. A different TV that I have only UN-MUTES if the volume goes up or MUTE is pressed. Turning the volume down leaves the sound muted. Come on Mitsubishi, think these things through. This is supposed to be a high end TV. I?ll help the big "M" to set up a features list the way it should be. Just call me. Pressing the INFO button does show the state of MUTE, channel number, device currently connected, screen format, etc. A software change would take care of a lot of these items.
· The TV SOUND blanks OFF during a screen image FORMAT/size change. Who would ever think those features should be tied together? Not me. The sound does not blank when an external amplifier is used and the screen format is changed. Doesn?t an independent review take place during their design of new models?
· The 4:3 ratio display (standard analog TV, NTSC) screen cuts off about 10% of both the left and right sides of the picture. This is regular "over the air" TV. A Home Theater test/setup DVD shows a CIRCLE with very good geometry on the so called "480I narrow" format. Left and right sides of screen are truncated and a very annoying bright white vertical lines shows up on both the left and right hand edges. The black bars farther to the left and right do not bother me and are expected in the 4:3 mode. The heavy white lines remind me of when an old tube TV that had horizontal scan fold over or was misadjusted. There is no mode that lets you watch "over the air" TV with good geometry and no bright edge lines.
· I don?t have an HD signal yet. The cable box can be swapped out for an extra monthly charge to include HD channels. A line of sight attic TV antenna might get me the LOCAL TV stations that have made that conversion. HOA (home owner association) restrictions say I have to hide such antennas in the attic, no dish receivers or rooftop antennas may show. My DVD player has component; Y, Pb and Pr inputs. Just need good quality RCA cables. I don?t have any HDMI devices (yet).
I used the DIGITAL VIDEO ESSENTIALS DVD (NTSC); Barcode 47715-07122; http://VideoEssentials.com; JKP; John Kane Productions for evaluation. The screen I looped on is called "TITLE 12, CHAPTER 17; 1.33 Overscan Pattern, 720 x 486 pixel counts."
There are six FORMAT screens that I can go through with the DVD connected to INPUT 1. (2 is also on the back, 3 is on front for a Camera or game box with a video and audio out. I will list the Mitsubishi name and the percent of scan as seen on the screen using the test DVD. The SAFE TITLE box is defined at 10% in from all edges. The SAFE ACTION box is defined at 5% in from all edges. If a "T" appears in the % scanned list that means the TITLE BOX was all there, but some or all of the ACTION BOX was missing. If an "A" appears in the % scanned list that means the TITLE BOX and the ACTION BOX were both there. A "-" means some of some or all of the TITLE and ACTION boxes are missing. The numbers are: Left %, Right %, Top % and Bottom %.
· 480i STANDARD A, 03, 03, 05, 05, distorted circle.
· 480i EXPAND -, 04, 04, 16, 16, good circle, missing edges.
· 480i ZOOM -, 13, 13, 14, 14, distorted circle, missing edges.
· 480i STRETCH A, 04, 04, 05, 05, good circle, distorted edges.
· 480i STRETCH PLUS T, 04, 04, 08, 08, good circle, distorted edges.
· 480i NARROW A, 06, 06, 05, 05, good circle, bright banding on L/R edges.
The two stretch modes look really strange on channels like CNN, MSNBC, etc., that have the news scrolling across the bottom of the screen, edges run fast, center is normal. Must be seen to understand. Not a problem with movies.
Test DVD: This is the first TV I have ever had that let me set up the PLUGE correctly. The so called "SPIKE line", a narrow vertical line (W-B-W and B-W-B) full intensity jumps worked without any horizontal tearing. No image jumps when half of the screen is blinked from full white to full black at a fast rate.
What a picture. Such a deal. I hope all of this helps someone.
- 1 reply to this review
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I was wondering if you considered the fan to be noisey? I have to put the volume level up to 19+ to drowned out the fan noise. Also, have you had any problems with the audio and video sync? Sometimes mine is like watching an old Godzilla movie. The words and the mouth movements don't match up.
Thanks jackgill
