Once upon a time, HDTVs were really, really expensive. Glancing at Sound & Vision’s early set reviews while writing the HDTV segment of “5 for 5” (click to read this article online), I was reminded that in the late 1990s some big-screen projection TVs cost $10,000 or more. Ten grand! That kind of loot will buy you a new Hyundai or some classes at a swanky private university. It took a few years for HDTV prices to get in step with the real world, but they’re finally settling down. And unlike those early days, when high-def programming was scarce, today there’s plenty to watch on broadcast TV, cable, and satellite channels.
The rich colors and menancing shadows in Resident Evil made it a good test DVD for these bargain-priced rear-projection HDTVs.
If you’re in the market for a new digital TV, the best deals are rear-projection HDTV monitors with 42- to 47-inch (diagonal) screens. The average price is about $1,600, but if you shop around you’ll find them selling for as low as $1,300. To see what you can get at that bargain basement price, we rounded up a trio of TVs: Panasonic’s PT-47WX53 ($1,500), Philips’s 46PP9302 ($1,600), and Toshiba’s 46H83 ($1,700). Each one of these widescreen sets needs to be hooked up to an outboard high-def tuner to display HDTV signals, which will cost you about $400 more unless you’re using an HDTV cable box. But once you make the HDTV connection, I’m sure you’ll agree that the upgrade was worth it, especially when there’s great stuff like football to watch. So let’s dim the lights and take a look.
Panasonic PT-47WX53
Panasonic has a good track record of delivering price-busting HDTVs, and its PT-47WX53 is no exception. This attractive set has a compact cabinet and a silver-framed screen that seems to “float” above a narrow bottom section draped in dark-gray mesh. A group of control buttons and an A/V input are clearly visible directly below the screen, but they don’t distract from the TV’s clean look. The cabinet’s side panel tapers in at a steep angle, but there’s still room on top for a compact center-channel speaker. Unfortunately, when I sat on my couch, the set’s screen was below eye level, giving me more of a balcony view than a head-on presentation.
Connection options include two sets of wideband component-video inputs and a copy-protected Digital Visual Interface (DVI) jack for hooking up an HDTV tuner or DVD player. Neither high-def input accepts 720p (progressive-scan) HDTV signals, so you’ll need to set your tuner or receiver to deliver all programs in the 1080i (interlaced) format. But that’s not a problem since the vast majority of program providers use 1080i.
The PT-47WX53’s remote control has a fully backlit keypad, and it fit comfortably in my hand. You toggle through the TV’s inputs by pushing a button labeled TV/ Video. The Aspect (ratio) button lets you switch between display settings, which include 4:3 (this displays standard programs flanked by vertical gray bars), Full (for HDTV and anamorphic widescreen DVDs), Zoom (evenly expands 4:3 pictures), and Just (horizontally stretches 4:3 pictures).
The Panasonic offers plenty of setup options, including a nine-point convergence control and a setting to turn scan-velocity modulation (SVM) processing on or off. Although SVM, which emphasizes the transitions between dark and light parts of an image, can make analog broadcast channels and VHS tapes look sharper, you’ll get a more natural-looking picture by switching it off for high-resolution sources like DVD and HDTV. While you can modify each of the TV’s three picture presets and save your changes, you can’t store a custom picture setting for each of the TV’s inputs.
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PANASONIC PT-47WX53
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 43 3/4 x 48 3/4 x 24 3/4 inches |
The Panasonic also proved to be a standout performer with HDTV. Watching the Steelers play the 49ers, I could clearly see the texture of the stadium’s green turf. And when the camera swiveled to capture Pittsburgh’s Plaxico Burress making a 19-yard dash on a pass from Tommy Maddox, the widescreen image looked solid, with no visible breakup of the grid lines covering the field. I was amazed by how much on-field action could be conveyed in a single image on the Panasonic’s 47-inch screen, which is on the small side for a projection set.
Considering that you can buy it for less than $1,500, the Panasonic’s performance was impressive overall, but its line doubling of standard video programs was slightly noisy, and its “beamy” screen made the image darken when I moved more than a foot or two from dead center. You can avoid the first problem, at least for DVD movies, by using a progressive-scan player. Unfortunately, the only way around the beaming is to sit directly in front of the TV.
Panasonic’s PT-47WX53 might be small in stature, but its display is big and crisp enough to deliver lifelike HDTV images. This set needs some coaxing to perform at its best, but with a few careful tweaks it can look great. If you do a lot of solo TV watching and like to sit front and center, this Panasonic is an HDTV bargain that I can absolutely recommend.
PDF: In the LabPDF: Features Checklist
Philips 46PP9302
Philips is known for its flashy plasma and LCD TVs, but it also makes plenty of traditional tube-based models. One look at the 46PP9302’s all-silver finish and slim, tapered cabinet, and it’s obvious that the high-tech aura of the company’s flat-panel TVs has rubbed off on this set, the lowest priced Philips HDTV. Its height is perfect for a console model, and I liked its monolithic façade, which is broken only by a strip of control buttons directly below the screen. The A/V input on the side of the cabinet can be easily reached for camcorder hookups.
HDTV connections on the back panel include a set of component-video jacks that accept both 480p and 1080i signals and a VGA-style RGB input. Most new high-def satellite receivers feature a DVI output, so I would have preferred a DVI jack. I was also surprised that the set’s second component-video input handles only standard 480i signals, which means you can’t use it with a progressive-scan DVD player.
The remote control has a partially backlit keypad, and a flip-up door on the bottom half conceals additional buttons, including the ones for toggling between the TVs inputs and changing its display formats. The options include 4:3 and 16:9, plus a number of zoom and stretch modes. And if you hate black bars, selecting the Auto mode automatically eliminates them through a combination of zoom and stretch. But these display modes are active only for standard (480i) signals, however, so if you’re using a progressive-scan DVD player, make sure it has aspect ratio control to correctly display both standard and widescreen images.
A 35-point manual adjustment really lets you get in and fine-tune the convergence of the set’s red, green, and blue tubes. There are five picture presets as well as a Personal picture mode that you can customize for each of the TV’s inputs. One adjustment, Eye Fidelity, gives you Interlaced and Progressive options for upconverting standard signals. Both of these appeared to bump programs up to 480p resolution, but I’d go with Progressive since the Interlaced mode introduced some jitter. And since neither mode provided 2:3 pulldown for film-based programs, some scenes in the movies that I watched had jagged stairstep artifacts on diagonal lines.
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PHILIPS 46PP9302
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 44 1/2 x 52 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches |
High-def Monday Night Football looked crisp, although a bit softer overall than on the other two sets. Even so, I could clearly see the mesh texture of the players’ uniforms in closeups. Switching over to an HDTV cooking program on PBS, I could see the pebbled texture of an eggshell in a closeup shot. High-def football and cooking shows airing at the same time? I guess there’s finally something on for pretty much everyone when it comes to HDTV.
Philips’s 46PP9302 is a very cool-looking HDTV that offers good performance at a really reasonable price. If you’re looking to go high-def without the high prices, it’s a fine option.
PDF: In the Lab
PDF: Features Checklist
Toshiba 46H83
Toshiba is no stranger to smaller-screen projection TVs — in addition to its 46-inch models, the company offers a 42-inch set. But extra inches count for a lot with HDTV, so spending a bit more for the 46H83 makes sense in my book. A tabletop model that needs to be placed on a low table or cabinet, the Toshiba has a clean look with a dark-gray cabinet and black-mesh bottom section. A flip-up door below the screen hides control buttons and a front A/V input. Even though the Toshiba is the slimmest set of the three by an inch and a half, there’s still plenty of room on the cabinet’s top surface for a center speaker.
Video hookup options include two sets of wideband component-video inputs and a copy-protected DVI jack. All of these accept standard 480i/480p and both 720p and 1080i HDTV signals, so you won’t have to mess around with output formats on your HDTV tuner/receiver.
Toshiba’s remote control has a fully backlit keypad with large, clearly labeled buttons. This is one remote you won’t have trouble using in a dark room! To switch inputs, you press the TV/Video button, and a menu appears onscreen that lets you key in the number of the input you’re looking for — a quick, two-step process. You use a similar method to select from the set’s five display modes, which include 4:3, 16:9, and three Theater Wide settings that either stretch or zoom in on the picture to fill the screen with standard-format programs.
Press the TouchFocus button on the Toshiba’s front panel, and it automatically converges its three tubes, but you’ll get better results by going straight to the nine-point manual convergence control. The set has three picture presets plus a Preference setting that can store your picture adjustments for each of the TV’s inputs. Looking through the manual, I couldn’t find a way to manually defeat the TV’s scan-velocity modulation processing, but I got around this by selecting the Movie picture preset, which turns off SVM (the set will automatically default to the Preference setting the next time you next make picture adjustments, but SVM remains off).
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TOSHIBA 46H83
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 43 3/8 x 40 1/2 x 21 7/8 inches |
The Toshiba’s solid performance carried over to HDTV as well. During Monday Night Football, the colors of the player’s uniforms looked vibrant, and the picture had good shadow detail and punchy contrast. In closeups I could clearly see fine points like dirt and scrapes on Niners’ safety Tony Parrish’s skin. When I skipped back to the high-def cooking show during a commercial, the picture held up equally well in shots of heirloom tomatoes, which displayed a seemingly infinite variety of rich red, yellow, and orange hues. Another plus for the Toshiba was its uniform brightness over a wide viewing angle — I had to move way off to one end of the couch before I detected any falloff in the picture brightness.
Toshiba’s 46H83 offers many of the benefits you’ll find in the company’s more expensive HDTVs, including an attractive design, excellent color rendition, and a wide range of video connection options. And its picture looks good right out of the box without a lot of fussy tweaking, although a few careful adjustments will make it look even better. So if a low-priced HDTV is high on your wish list, Toshiba’s budget big screen is worth serious consideration.
Once a rich person’s plaything, rear-projection HDTVs today are finally priced so many people can afford them. Not every program on TV is in high-definition, but the list is constantly growing. So if you’re waiting on the sidelines until absolutely everything gets produced in high-def — including weight-loss infomercials, Flipper reruns, and those freaky shows on your local community-access channel — I can tell you that you’re missing out. It doesn’t matter if you like to watch movies, sports, or cooking shows — they’ll all look great on a widescreen HDTV.
PDF: In the Lab
PDF: Features Checklist