1. Weak tuner – Whereas many HDTV sets these days have a tuner that is strong enough to receive at least a couple local public television stations without the use of an antenna, I found I was unable to get any broadcast without one. Even with an antenna, I am able to pick up little (likely due to the fact that there are concrete block walls in the room where the TV is currently located. Still, this annoyed me some.

2. No ability to change aspect ratios. Would have liked the option to view DVD/Blu-ray media in a number of different aspect ratios, but this feature is not selectable (except from the menu encoded on some DVD’s themselves).

3. No timer! This would have been a small, yet convenient feature to include. As I’m a college student with a loft-style bed and the TV is mounted at the foot of the bed, this would have been a great feature for me. I’d like the ability to use the TV as an alarm in the morning (to have it already tuned to my local news or weather station), or alternatively, to fall asleep while it’s on and have it set to shut off. (There is, actually an energy-saving feature that will allow this, but I haven’t yet experimented with it, so… it may still be possible). Maybe this is a feature that could be added in a future update of the TV’s operating software?

4. No ability to change the region coding of the DVD drive. (But let’s get real… Are they really gonna publish this info? Of course not! Hopefully there is some way and someone will post it one day on videohelp.com). Sure would be sweet to watch PAL and other region-coded DVD’s on this rig.

A few positive notes:

1. Excellent picture quality. I haven’t yet bought any CGI Blu-ray movies (which would undoubtedly test the limits of what this TV is capable of in terms of both contrast and resolution), but I have viewed other Blu-ray discs and feel the picture is excellent. Blacks are very dark (although some contrast/brightness tweaking could still be done and I’m still playing around to optimize this).

2. As reported before, TV powers on and disc loads when a Blu-ray disc is inserted into the drive. This really is a nice feature.

3. Drive appears to operate smoothly.

4. Lightweight! I was surprised at how little this thing weighs! I mounted it easily to my wall with an articulating arm-style mount. The mount is rated far beyond what the television actually weighs, so I feel certain that it’s anchored in securely. (In case anyone’s interested, I went with the Peerless PP740 Paramount).

That’s it for now…

More to come as I spend more time with this thing.
Rating: 4 / 5

The construction seems very solid. The base is made of a solid metal so it doesn’t seem easily breakable like the other TV I have with the base made out of plastic. The TV swivels too…pretty cool feature.

The built-in blu-ray was big for my wife for aesthetic reasons. Since it just sits atop the dresser, it would have been difficult to put a DVD player anywhere else, so this TV does the job well for that. No complaints here. I was a little worried about how “blue” that streak was at the bottom of the TV. It isn’t bad at all…hardly noticeable. All you can see is a small blue shimmer. The pictures on this website make it look like its painted blue…looks much sleeker in real life.

There are plenty of inputs for anything you want to hook up to this bad-boy. There are also a good amount of options for customization. I love one feature of your “favorite channels.” It has 4 buttons, but also has 4 toggles for each of those buttons, so you can have a total of 16 favs. It’s also easy to toggle between picture brightness and picture aspect with just a click of the button.

I definitely recommend.
Rating: 5 / 5