Akai PT4250A

Price:

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Great HD & DVD picture for price1147791851

Pros:

Good size & weight

Cons:

non HD picture not as good

Looked at Plasmas & LCD's -this Akai has much better contrast and blacks and half the price. It's a rear projection CRT-no bulbs to change like DLP's. If you have the room, it's not bad looking either. Only 21" deep and 89 lbs is not bad compared to large 200lb. direct view CRTs. TV should be at eye level or slightly above and 10 -15' from viewer with low or no lights on for best picture. I put it on a sturdy coffee tabe. Akai was known in past for high quality audio components like reel to reel, may now be made by Samsung. Color saturation & balance was excellent out of box. 4 picture modes are available, I found Custom & Standard best to tweak picture with, I found cutting down on sharpness & contrast got a nicer, smoother picture. Hooked up to Charter HD cable box with monster DVI cables & DVD with component cables- gets excellent HDTV & DVD picture, from side angles as well. Hoping for more HD channels to become available as analog (non HD) picture quality is lousy when in DVI input mode as it has to be in "stretch mode" on cable box to fill the whole screen. These 480 or lower broadcasts show 4:3 black bars on side which worries me for burn in problems. I heard that the first 100 hrs of use are most critical to avoid burn in on RPCRTs. Using the TV as the tuner rather than cable box and using its "panorama" option fixes this better though and significantly improves an analog- source picture to "good." Watching sports or anything else in HD is awesome though as monitor displays 1080 input from most of those. Picture seems to get even better as the TV warms up. Very good remote as well. It's S-Video input is essential for decent VCR use. Kmart is clearing these out now for $810 and a very reasonable extra 2 yr protection plan for 50$. For about $900 total with taxes, combined with my surround sound system ( built in sound from TV is very good, by the way), I have a pretty decent theater in my basement!