Summary: Bought this TV for $300 after rebate during a Black Friday sale at a large office supply retailer, and it hasn't disappointed for the price. The only minor quibbles are the power lamp on the front, which is far too bright, especially at night. It glows a brilliant blue color like an aircraft beacon when off, illuminating my bedroom as if it's daytime. I have to place something in front of it to block it out.
The other minor problem is the volume control OSD (on-screen display), when you raise or lower the volume, stays on the screen for about 15 seconds or so, distracting from the program you're watching. I don't know why this happens, and I haven't seen it on any other brand or model of TV, but it is annoying. The indicator should disappear within a second of you releasing the volume up/down button.
When taken out of the box, the brightness and contrast are pre-set too high, and I found with some tweaking, that tbe best settings are around 90% for both brightness and contrast, and about 48% for saturation. There is no information in the owner's manual for what Black Level does, and reducing it from the pre-set 100% only makes the picture look much worse.
I also noticed that you must view the TV at a fairly narrow vertical angle, as the picture appears greenish when you are more than about 40° off angle. There is some washout in dark areas or during a dark scene, but most LCD TV's suffer from this to some extent. You can improve this somewhat by adjusting the brightness and contrast up or down 1 - 2% from your optimium settings.
The stand included is quite adequate, however, if you are so inclined, this unit is also VESA mount capable. The TV tilts and rotates on the included stand, making it somewhat more versatile if you need to adjust the viewing angle.
Sound quality is excellent for a set this size, and I was quite surprised at the amount of low-end bass available if you tweak the audio settings. It also has an SRS setting, although when activated, makes the speech inaudible on a normal TV program if it's in stereo. I haven't tried it on a DVD at this point, and it may sound much better in that mode.
It has a full range of inputs for just about any product you may have, and the jack panel on the back is hidden behind a removable plastic panel, a very nice touch. It keeps everything out of the way and makes it asthetically more pleasing when looking at the back or side of the set.
You can also connect it to your computer with the included cable, but the native resolution is limited to 800x600, which on this size screen will make the images look huge, so using it as a monitor isn't the best use for this set, rather stick with using it as a TV for your bedroom or dorm. For some odd reason, although the cable is included to hook it up to your PC, there is no component video cable included, which you will need to take advantage of the best quality from your DVD player.
The included remote is adequate, but I would have preferred that the large 4-way arrow buttons would control the volume and channel selection, rather than the menu. Since volume and channel are the things you use most, this is a glaring oversight. The volume and channel are controlled by much smaller buttons on the top left of the remote, not in a spot that's easy to access when holding the remote in your right hand as most people do. I went out and bought a universal remote that is programmable, as Norcent is not in the list of most (if any) pre-programmed universal remotes. That solved the problem for me, although it took me a little while to manually enter/learn all the commands.
Overall, this set is a great value for the price, well below other competitive models and I expect it will last for years with the 60,000 Hr. lamp life. Highly recommended.
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