Projection-TV Reviews

I looked at many TV's and read many reviews before buying this TV and think the picture quality of this one is among the best. Another important and uncommon feature of this television is that splits into two pieces for easier moving. These 57" rear projection televisions are huge, and if you ever plan on moving them, this feature is important. It's not always possible to get the T.V.s that don't split into some apartments. I was orginally getting a Sony, but the delivery guys couldn't get it into my apartment.

I've had it for a few weeks and am very satisfied so far.

This TV is a strong solid performer. It's Consumer Report Magazine's #1 ranked projection TV. It has all the up to date features a HDTV needs ... it has the DVI option for HDTV, has Component Inputs for your DVD player, has S-Video for your satellite or similar, has several standard A/V inputs for your VCR or game system, etc.,. It has everything you need for your basic entertainment system. Additionally the picture quality is one of the best for a projection system. But be weary of that concept, this TV is huge...57", and with this amount of size, the picture quality on "smaller" objects is not going to be super crisp or sharp using even a satellite digital feed. But that holds true on all TVs this big...I think. So for example when watching basketball and you get the half court view the players are not real super sharp ... you can't really see those little details like face features, etc.,. You know it's KOBE but you can't pick up the eyes, etc.,. But for "regular" shows that usually don't have such small images, it's wonderful. Toshiba has made the remote and TV use very easy and user friendly. You can easily access video 1,2,3,4 etc.,. for the various electronic components you have. So all good. BUT ... one drawback was the amount of time it took for delivery from Amazon. It took a month although the initial advertised estimate was 1 to 2 weeks. I notice now, though, it says 1 to 2 days, but I notice it's coming from J&R not Amazon and the shipping jumped like $200 so maybe that isn't an issue now. Bottom Line: An overall high quality, full featured, 57" HDTV.

I have had this tv for about 2 weeks. I was leary after reading some people having problems with this model, but I said what the heck and got one anyway. To say this is a great tv would be an understatement. The picture is the best I have seen compared to other models in this price range. My 8 & 12 yr old can run the different features on the remote. (still teaching my wife). I do not regret getting this model one bit.

Where do I start! I bought this T.V. in december of 2003 for a family christmas present and it lasted 2 weeks before I lost the picture. I called the store and they replaced the t.v. which I thought was very nice but the screen had numerous scratches right out of the box. The manager saw them and said he would fax the order to get it fixed. A month later, a repairperson came to my house but he had the part to fix the picture and not the scratches. He had no knowledge of the scratches but he would place the order to get it fixed.
April rolled around and I lost the picture again on the new tv. I was a little discouraged considering this was not some 100.00 t.v. from Walmart, I paid a lot money for a television that was just not lasting, this was two t.v.'s in four months. I called Phillip's, thankfully I still had a warranty, but I found out they had closed there repair centers. They had a local repair shop come get the t.v. and I asked the Phillips rep. if they got the new screen yet. Now comes the battle!!!
Phillips said they would repair the t.v. but not the screen because they said they never recieved the order. The screens were only on warranty for 30 days and it was 3 months later. I explained to the phillips repair rep. that the store I bought it from faxed the order the same day. She told me that they closed their centers, here in florida, around that time so they do not have that information. Somehow this is my fault and I was told to call there customer service line. I called the number and I was told it was not their problem. I asked to speak to a supervisor, they refused to do it, then I asked for the number to Phillips headquarters which I found out does not exist but I could write a letter to them(still have not heard back from them) keep in mind this is the CUSTOMER SERVICE line. The customer service is based out of the carribean somewhere, I paid a couple thousand dollars for a t.v., had 2 different t.v.'s that could not last 5 months and Phillip's refused to help me.
The end result was I got the t.v. back a month and a half later,turns out it was a manufactures defect, the screen was fixed by the store that I bought the t.v. from because they could not get to Phillips either. It was the most frustrating time I have ever had and now I am going to purchase the extended warranty as I do not trust this t.v.
It is a great t.v. when it works, but I also have a Toshiba big screen that is not HDTV and in four years time I have never had a problem. So in closing I should caution"BUYER BEWARE"

I had the unique (yet torturous) pleasure of accompianing my friend to Best Buy where he purchased this tv about a year ago. I have used it countless times since then, and in my opinion it is the finest non-plasma television I have seen.

The screen is absolutely humungous--you don't know 60 inches until you've seen it in person! The tiny picture here does not do justice to this behemoth.

I hope to purchase this television for myself later this year, and I know I will enjoy it as much as I did the first time I saw it in the store. I just hope it will fit through my door!

I saw the same TV at Best Buy and was happy when I came to Amazon and could buy it for over $600 less. When people come over they think that it is a $5,000 HD-Ready TV.

We are very happy with the size and the value! It is very fun watching DVD's on and the picture looks great!

Update on 7-15-04: Lowered to one star. Still do not have a remote. They told us they closed the entire month for June for inventory so they are not playing catch up. We might have it by the end of July we're told but they would not guarantee anything.

Update on 6-19-04: We still do not have a working remote control, so we have been unable to use the features of this tv. The customer service absolutely is terrible. They made us mail the broken remote in and now we have heard nothing, and it's been weeks. I wish we had our money back. I have to say the picture on the tv is great. I just can't set up our components until we have the remote.

I ordered this 2 weeks ago off Amazon. As usual, I'm very satisfied with Amazon's performance/price. The tv was delivered on schedule and professionally. Huge box! They took the box away after delivery. The TV picture looks great on the default settings. Just connected my cable with an S video and turned it on. Unfortunately, the Apex remote (have to use theirs) does not work. I assume it's the remote and not the receiver on the tv. Emailed Apex, said a 48 hour response. Never heard from them. Called them twice, on hold 15 to 20 minutes each time, told to send them a receipt and they "might" replace the broken remote. Still waiting on the remote. Disappointing and no one here in town to buy one from. Otherwise, the tv pic and sound is great. Can't wait for a remote!

(...) I watched the TV in the store and it was somewhat grainy, but the salesman said that the in-store model should have been adjusted more, and that the TV really did have a good picture. They had an 47' Panasonic and a few other models with smaller pictures for around the same price (+/- $200), and he said to stick with this one. Every sales person I have spoken with has said that the Apex TV's are pretty good, but that apex DVD and VCR's aren't so hot. However, they all said that their TV's have been improving lately, especially since they started doing business in the US. Basically, Apex's sales design is to deliver more quantity, while still emphasizing quality, but doing away with a lot of the options that only audiophiles really need. For instance, this TV does not have the plug that allows you plug your home theatre into a computer (PC) based setup from what I am told. However, it hooked up perfectly fine to my surround sound setup.
Now onto the good stuff. The TV arrived, we let it warm up a bit, and then turned it on. I was going to set the cable up, but decided to go straight to DVD as I just bought a new Toshiba progressive scan player (4900 model). I put in Top Gun, and the picture was horrible! I thought to myself, what did I just buy??? Well it turns out the TV requires some adjusting. First you need to set the convergence, which requires you to be sitting in front of the TV, at the level you would normally view the TV at. Do not do this standing up (more on this later...)! It will throw the convergence off and the picture won't be so great when you're sitting down. So I performed this easy adjustment (you just use the remote buttons, nothing really technical). Then I decided to try out Finding Nemo, the animated Disney movie. Nemo has a lot of color complex scenes, with quick movement and I figured this would be a good test of the TV. Well, Nemo looked horrible still! The orange fish appeared to lack a clear border, almost as if the pixels were not where they should be. Well turns out, I initially did the convergence standing up, and when I sat down and readjusted, it was off by a good bit. So I redid that, and the picture improved considerably. However, the colors were off, and the clarity wasn't there yet. Turns out you need to set the TV to use the DVD player's progressive scan function. So I did that, and the picture got better again. Still, wasn't totally thrilled with the color and clarity, but then I turned on another option on the TV that sets it to theatre mode, and the picture looked incredible! Not a pixel out of place! Fish were swimming around the reef and the colors were awesome. I put in Gladiator and watched some of the fight scenes, and they are crisp, clear, and impressive.
Yesterday we watched the Super Bowl with about 25 people coming over, and I swear the TV got even better over the course of those few hours. Everyone there thought we had the HDTV broadcast of the game on, but we had the standard digital cable. How's that for reviews. My buddy has a Mitsubishi and said this TV looked better than his (to be fair, his is about two years old, the new Mitsubishi's are better than the Apex models, but also about twice as much). However, I am going to get the HDTV cable box, it's only a one time $10 fee from my cable company, and that will improve picture clarity even more. I'm looking forward to it!
All in all, I am extremely pleased with this TV. A few things to keep in mind: If you are checking this out in the stores are not impressed, ask the TV salesperson to tune it up, many times from being moved around they don't display the best picture. Also, the stores lighting will wash out the colors. Bring a good DVD to test out the TV's, preferably something with vibrant colors and lots of action to see how the progressive scan works.
Check to see that there is a local Apex certified TV service area around you in case something does go wrong with the TV. You can do this from the apex digital website. In my case, $100 for the 4-year warranty was the way to go. They will come out, pick up the TV, and repair it. When you get it home, make sure to adjust the settings, there is a few presets that you can just set with one click of the remote. Then, you can fine tune it off of the basic presets if you desire. I found the "movie" preset needed some color added, but looked great with that one adjustment.
The TV does feature a number of screen formats. The standard wide screen is great for movies, but many TV programs are not in widescreen just yet. So, this TV offers a few different options. Once stretches the TV picture to fit the screen, but makes some objects appear out of round. However, there is another stretch function that alleviates this problem, and everything appears in normal size again. There is also the standard 4:3:4 aspect ratio, which will place black bars on the side of the picture and display the screen as you would normally see it on a standard TV.
But you will definitely need a progressive scan dvd player, which all dvd players now on the market are. However, if you have an older model, you'll need to upgrade to even watch a dvd on this tv (or any other large screen dvd player). The one drawback to this tv is that when you see a persons face taking up the entire screen you can see the pixels and it appears "digitalized" sometimes. Its nothing horrible, and it certainly does not ruin the experience, its just one of those things that the more expensive TV's seem to take care of. I have also been asked about the reflective screen and window glare. I have the tv in front of the windows, so thats not a problem for me, but this screen isnt quite as reflective as some of the other models. I would say its semi-reflective. I am going to turn the tv around to face the windows and see if its still viewable (more on that next week)
All in all, I am very satisfied with this TV. It has all the necessary options for your typical homeowner, and the picture is very good. For the price, I don't think you could go wrong. My thoughts are that plasma's are going to come down in price, so if I have this for 3 years and turn around and sell it, I will have paid a small price for the satisfaction this TV is going to provide. Looking forward to going home and watching some more movies and I don't normally watch movies a second time!

It was finally time for me to buy a new TV. After deciding to go with a big screen TV, I found this Apex 55 inch widescreen tv on amazon.com for $1099.99. The price almost seemed to be too good. I was pretty hesitant about it because of the brand name. I thought about it for about a month, then went ahead and ordered it. Although amazon.com says it usually ships in 24 hours, it took almost a week to ship out. During this time I was almost regretting ordering this tv. The thing was, is that I wanted a tv that was that was going to last me a while. I'm not planing on getting HDTV cable service right now, and I didnt want to watch everything in stretch mode. On the other hand I didnt want to watch it in the standered 4:3 mode because I've read that the black bars can burn into the screen permanently. Before the tv was delivered I was thinking I made a bad choice and thought I should have probably ordered a standard big screen TV.

So almost a week later the delivery company calls me to set up a delivery time. The gave me a two hour window for delivery. On that day they showed up within at that time frame and unloaded the TV out of the truck. They removed all the boxing and my first reaction was, "wow!" It was huge! They moved it into my living room and I hooked it all up. Regular TV looked pretty good. The TV has a few different ways to watch tv. I have mine set on wide zoom. What that does is it cuts a little bit of the picture off of the top and bottem, and zooms in on the picture a bit. That way it fits the whole screen and looks awesome! Later that day I put in the DVD Finding Nemo(as another reviewer did). I have a Toshiba progressive scan DVD player, and the movie was absolutly amazing. I've never seen a TV that looked so clear!

So now its been about four days that I've had this TV, and I couldnt be more happier. Its big, the picture is very clear, and the sound is good. I still havent figured out the PIP yet, I'm still working on that. If I had to be extremely nitpicky the only thing thats kind of annoying is that changing stations are not instant, there is a brief pause while changing stations. But like I said, thats being real nitpicky. If your considering getting this TV, do it. Its way less expensive that almost every other widescreen TV, but looks as good, if not better.

If only it was football season....

If you have any questions about this TV please feel free to email me at: lifeandhowtoliveit@yahoo.com

Had no problems with this unit until i HAD a problem.I bought mine 1/16/02 & have been pleased with the performance till early in December when the screen went black and liquid started spilling out the bottom !!!! It has been setting in my living room for 6 weeks now ( black screen, liquid dripping etc).
Atechnician came by about a month ago, charged me $63 & said he could fix it but could not warranty his work.
Long story short; I've been getting the runaround for over a month now since it became apparent that the unit needs to be replaced. Looks like i'll have to rely on small claims court to get Toshiba to honor the warranty. BEWARE

I chose the Toshiba 43H71 projection TV after researching and viewing competing brands at local stores and on the Internet. The Toshiba offered the best combination of features, picture quality, size, and price. Although I was apprehensive about having a TV of this size shipped from a distance, it arrived in perfect condition. The delivery person removed the packing material and placed it in my family room with no problems.

The TV has a very sharp picture with almost invisible scan lines. The picture brightness will decrease somewhat as you increase your viewing angle away from center, but the picture quality does not suffer. Since I could not locate a TV stand for this unit, I purchased a Sony model for a 43" TV which is a very good fit. Hitachi also makes stands which should fit as well. This raises the TV approximately 14 inches, which helps with the viewing angle, as well as storage for a VCR and DVD.

Some pixalation was noticed when viewing digital satellite signals and Playstation 2 games. This may be a function of the larger, higher quality picture making any signal flaws more visible than my old 32" set. One slight problem has been observed for which I am seeking warranty service. The set will momentarily turn off and then back on again, with no input from the user. This only happens less than once per day, and hopefully is not an indication of future problems.

Overall, I would highly recommend this TV. As a first-time projection TV owner, I am very pleased with the picture quality and features of this model.

bought on amazon.com received new condition phenominal tv! Incredible resolution, and very smooth transaction.

Worked OK for about two months then the picture folded up and completely vanished. Philips refered us to a local shop which came promptly, unfortunately a defective part would take about 4 weeks to get. After four weeks, it was expected in another two weeks. Then another week. Then another week. After the shop e-mailed Philips and got no response they gave up checking, I started calling Philips. That was a month ago. Each week Philips tells me the part will arrive next week (well, there was one time that the part was arriving that day, but then the next day it wasn't there, so it would be another week).

So Philips somehow keeps manufacturing and selling this model, but they don't have the part to fix my defective set--after almost four months. How do they do it?

For an item that costs thousands, manufacturers should provide better support than this. There won't be any Philips products in my future.

I would love to give this tv a five. I am no expert but it is very nice. my father has a 61" sony and this one has a way better picture. my problem is that it arrived with a crack in the screen and i have written two emails to amazon and have not received a response. the tv "in general" is a good bargin. if my problem ever gets fixed I would defiently recommend it to anyone.

We bought this HD Tv in March and couldn't be happier with it. We've now added HD cable to the house! The sports programs we've watched have been amazing. The picture quality is excellent. The only problem is with the remote for where Philips put the "AV" switch - under this concealed area that's a pain to open at times. Other than that, we'd buy this tv again in an instant. We bought it at $1800 with no delivery and no sales tax. After more research, we could not find a better deal anywhere - internet or local stores.

i purchased the toshiba 65h81 because the picture is the clearest of any tv's i have seen in this price range. if you hook up a progressive-scan dvd player, you won't belive the clarity of the picture. it is better than being at the movies. i recommend saving private ryan to truely see how great a picture this tv delivers. add the toshiba dst3000 for high definiton quality picture, true 1081i. it is unbelievable. the only drawback is that sports on this tv isn't the best, unless it is on hdnet or hd hbo, which cannot be beat.

This is by far the best TV out there. I shopped for several months and even watched others peoples wide screen TV's, like Sony's $5000.00 HD 50 something wide TV and the picture quality was very poor( I'm a very big fan of sony products but not this time) You can't beat the price on this TV. The only draw back is you need a pretty big room for this bad boy.

I did a lot of research before buying this TV. I was bent on buying a Mitsubishi 65" 16:9 until I went to a local Fry's Electronics and had them place the TVs next to each other. The Toshiba had crisper picture with well lit corners and minimal distortions (try watching movie credits roll up to look for distortions in the CRTs, mirrors, etc.)

This TV does not have the bleeding edge stuff like FireWire video, unified A/V control system (e.g., IR transcoding), DLPs, etc, but don't lose focus of why your buying a large screen TV...the large picture. The picture quality is on par with the best of them.

Also, I went out and bought a progressive scan DVD player and compared the picture quality against my old 480p model. The deinterlacing works so well on the Toshiba that I'm having a hard time justifying the purchase. Read this article for more info on 480p and 480i DVD players ...

Bottome line: big bang for the money. Everything you need without having to fund bleeding edge stuff that may never become mainstream. Enjoy.

My Panasonic PT-51HX41 broke in just over 2 years. It is $500 to fix and the repairman says that the problem with the amplifiers and resisters on Panasonic TVs are common. Why no recall? Avoid big screen panasonics!!!!

Only but a buy a big screen panasonic if you like throwing your money away. After the warranty expires, tv breaks, on mine dp board went out. Repair cost $1000.00. Customer service [bad], quality worse. Listen to someone who knows buy another brand.....any brand but Panasonic. Oh yeah, if you do buy one, forget about their "independent authorized repair centers" they are a bunch of twerps also

I shopped around for months and I found this TV to be the best bang for the buck. You can't go wrong with this one. It had a sharper picture than the Toshiba and the Sony TV's in the same price range. You really won't be dissapointed.

broke down after 11 months. been waiting over 6 weeks for repair. apex customer service is a joke.

I received my tv on time. It had a nice picture for 2 months and the convergence went out. If you read one of the other reviews, my tv is just like Jons from Los Angeles. The colors are out of whack and distorted and you can never get ahold of Apex because the phone is busy. So I called a repair center and they are coming out here to fix it for free because I have a 1 year warranty. I recommend to stay away from this product.

I think I remember paying $900 + something for this television and thinking it was a great deal for such a large screen. I still feel that way... despite the problems that I have encountered.

Problem #1 - Occasionally, after pressing the power 'ON' button on (either on the unit or the remote) the green light on the front of the TV comes on, but I never get a picture. After pressing the button to turn the television back 'OFF', the little green light on the front just blinks but doesn't turn off and I still have no picture. The first time this occurred it really freaked me out, especially since it was only about 2 weeks old at the time it first happened.

Solution - Unplug the television from the wall, and plug back in. Hit the power button on the remote. Television usually performs fine for a week or so after doing this.

Problem #2 - At random times, the volume goes up a little, or down a little... even though no one is touching the remote control. Very strange, I admit.

Solution - Not known. Deal with it.

Problem #3 - Sometimes the television changes channels on its own, while no one is touching the remote. This occurs very rarely, but I have seen it happen with my own eyes.

Solution - Change the channel back to the one you were originally watching.

Despite these problems, I love this TV. The picture is bright and clear, it has lots of inputs in the back for components, and the sound is actually quite clear with decent bass. Besides, how else would a money-conscious person like myself be able to afford such a HUGE television? Other televisions of the same size cost much more than I paid. The only person that I know who paid less for a similar-sized television bought a damaged Zenith with a huge crack in the screen!

It's no secret that you often get what you pay for, and I believe that I certainly did. But right now I would rather invest the extra $1000 in an IRA, or use it to take a vacation and get away from the TV for a while.

I purchased this TV from Best Buy...mistake number one. It broke after only 2 years. The quality of the picture is nice and clear. But I would not recommend the purchase of this TV.

I am very happy with this purchase. The picture is fantastic, the sound is great, and the remote is pretty easy to use. It has six inputs, including 2 colorstream, which come in handy. Sports, movies, and video games really bring out the best in this TV, especially when the surround sound is on. I have only had it for four months. I am giving it four stars just in case it breaks down.
Otherwise, top-notch all the way

I just purchased this TV, and after a lot of homework, I think it's the best deal for an HDTV. You get every major feature that's offerd for a set in this price range. My parents and sister both have Toshiba TV's and never had a problem with them. The picture quality, at least in my opinion, is the best. I compared it side by side with Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung. The only brand that produced a better picture was Pioneer, but for a lot more money. Hope this was helpful....

Don't waste your time or money on this one. I ordered this set from Amazon back in Auguest of 2003 and have just now gotten Apex to refund my money. During the 7 months that I've owned the TV, it's been in the shop for 6 1/2 months. The repair shop told me that they replaced 'just about every board there is in the set' and just can't get it to work. They also conveyed their frustration in getting APEX parts which can take a month or two to get sometimes. Overall a terrible experience, with APEX customer service giving me the run-around ever single time I called them. Wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Stay FAR AWAY from APEX.

I SELL TV'S, APPLIANCES, ETC. IN A DEPT STORE.
WE SELL THIS SET FOR $999.99 REGULARLY, $699.99 SALE.
THEY SELL AT BOTH PRICES.
HALF THE SETS ARE RETURNED (DEFECTIVE, BAD PICTURE, NOT WHAT CUSTOMER THOUGHT THEY WERE GETTING).
WE DO SELL EXTENDED WARRANTIES (2 YEAR IN HOME $80 TO 5 YEARS $250). I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS SET TO ANYONE BUT IF SOMEONE WANTS IT, I DO STRONGLY RECCOMMEND GETTING AN EXTENDED WARRANTY.
PERSONNALLY, AT WHAT WE SELL IT FOR, I TELL PEOPLE TO INVEST THE MONEY ON A BETTER SET (HIGH DEF).
AS FOR APEX, THIS SET IS LISTED AS *DIGITAL* BUT DIGITAL DOES NOT MEAN HIGH-DEFINITION!!!
ON THIS SET, DIGITAL REFERS TO HOW A DVD CAN BE CONECTED TO IT. (READ THE FINE PRINT).
AS FOR THE PEOPLE WHO BUY LARGE ITEMS ON-LINE: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.... YOU GET YOUR ITEM, BUT NO SUPPORT, NO ONE TO ASK QUESTIONS, NO ONE TO HELP.
I HAD SOMEONE BUY A SET FROM QVC THEN CALL ME FOR HELP ON DOING CONVERGENCE... MY ANSWER WAS TO CALL QVC.
MOST SALESPEOPLE ARE COMMISSION. DON'T TAKE THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND GIVE THEM THE SHAFT.

a guy in the bay area won this TV from a local car dealer and was selling it for cheap partially as a result of poor reviews on here.

THANKS Y'ALL THIS TV IS AWESOME and I GOT IT IN THE BOX DELIVERED TO MY HOUSE for ...!!!!!!!!!!!

The first thing i did was pick up an apex progressive scan DVD off of amazon, very affordable.

The progressive scan makes a difference and is worth it.
This TV is a great value. We replaced a very good quality sony trinitron 27" TV and are very happy. We mostly watch DVD's and very little TV.

The picture quality on this baby is impressive. It is also the same depth as my old sony and fit well and looks great in our tv room.

In case this matters to you - this is the loudest TV in the world.

The volume goes up to 100. The loudest we have gone is 30. Anything beyond that might cause hearing damage. We usually listen to movies at about 12-15. Think Spinal Tap.

The TV has done that popping thing once where it makes a popping sound and the screen goes blank for a minute. Luckily I had heard that this is normal for rear projection to do, or we may have paniced - don't worry if this happens.

about all the knocks on amazon about it being hard to use - what isn't hard to use? as a tcehnical person i'm always amazed at how hard to use and poorly documented a kids toy can be. particularly if you are putting it together christmas morning and have been up late drinking nog with mrs clause.

gave it a 4 and not a 5 because the universal remote and the documentation are weak.

but those are minor issues
...
you can't go wrong.