Customer Rating: 
Summary: great buy
Comment: Very happy with tv. Incredible picture. Researched the noise thing and rolled the dice, my unit's fan can't be heard.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great picture but with some caveats
Comment: I recently purchased this set and here are my initial observations
THE PROS
HD Picture Quality
This set has stunning HD picture quality. I find myself sometimes looking at programs I wouldn't otherwise be interested in just to see all the amazing details. Like other high def sets, especially large ones, non HD programming definitely tends to look worse than an analog TV. Fortunately, the remote allows you to instantly switch to smaller formats if you find the pixelation too annoying. Depending on your room, you may also be able to sit further away from the screen but this loses some of the immersive quality for which you presumably bought such a large screen.
Size
Kudos to Mitsubishi for achieving such picture quality on such a large screen while maintaining a depth of less than 16". I am able to fit this TV nicely inside my entertainment center just as if I had bought a much more expensive flat screen plasma or LCD.
Three HDMI Slots
This is a plus over sets with only two although, of course, I would like to see 4 or five slots. Why HDMI ? HDMI gives you the highest quality so choosing perpherals with HDMI output makes sense if you want to take advantage of this set's picture quality. Why so many ? Well, ideally you would have one for:
1)cable or satellite box
2)DVD player
3)HTPC
4)Camera Dock with HD output (e.g. the Kodak Z812)
5)Camcorder Dock with HD output (e.g. Sanyo HD1000)
I also like the fact that you can hide unused inputs and customize their names.
Value
I believe this is a transitional period in the high def TV market so spending a lot of money doesn't make sense as next year you will get it for 1/3 or 1/2. However, sacrificing picture quality to keep it cheap also doesn't make any sense as does waiting another five years for the market to mature. This set provides a good quality to price ratio with a decent set of features right now.
THE CONS
Motion Blur
Significant pixelation during moving scenes. Given the spectacular HD images when the picture is relatively static, it is especially jarring. I will confess I haven't yet taken the time to research this,especially to see if it is any worse or better than other DLP sets of comparable size.
There could be many factors involved: the inherent magnification resulting from viewing such a large screen from a relatively small distance, the fact that my cable box only puts out 1080i, the content itself. I will need to investigate further and if I find anything, I will add more comments.
Cooling
Others have talked about a whine. Some have said they don't hear it. I can say there is definitely fan noise. This thing has a lamp comparable to a searchlight and thus needs some heavy duty cooling. Most likely the reason for the varying comments is the fact that the fan is temperature controlled. The hotter the lamp gets, the faster the fan goes. At higher speeds I can see how this might be perceived as a whine. At lower speeds it's just a hum. Also, typically, in my case at least, the noise is masked by other things. For example, my HDR's drive seems to always be spinning and, of course, the TV sound itself typically masks the noise. I probably wouldn't have noticed it except for other reviewer's comments sensitizing me to it. However, it's currently cold here so the fan is running at its low speed, I will have to wait for summer to see if it really becomes a whine and also to see if I have the problems with the unit shutting down due to temperature.
Sound
The sound from this TV is pretty bad. Looks like it was an afterthought.
(Note: at a minimum, be sure you go in and crank up the bass and treble settings. This offers at least a small improvement). Additionally, to minimize the front real estate dedicated to speakers, they are only given a slot through which to radiate the sound. The common wisdom is that you'll be hooking it up to AV system so it doesn't matter. I disagree. A home theater system is great when you're watching a movie or other "big screen" show but just watching the evening news with surround sound and a subwoofer is, at least for me, sensory overload. Also, yoking the set to an AV system for all TV watching is an inconvenience. You either need to select multiple devices in sequence to turn them on and adjust volume, have multiple remotes or use a fancy remote like the Logitech Harmony. Even with the Harmony (which I got for free from Vann's with this set), powering on/off multiple devices is not practical given that they use the same code to power themselves on and off. If you don't have the remote pointed just right (or the battery is low), one will turn on. When you press the on button again, the first will turn off and the second on.
At the very least, they should provide a switched outlet and an audio out that tracks the volume control like my old Sony XBR did. If they did that, at least you could buy some powered speakers and put them under the TV as a permanent replacement and they would be completely integrated with the set. Unfortunately, the Mitsubishi's audio output does not track the volume setting and there's no switched outlet so I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
Vertical Bowing on Left Side
I have learned that, without a trained eye at least, you will probably not see bowing or other forms of geometric distortion on one of these large sets unless you are displaying something with a high contrast horizontal or vertical line. You can check for horizontal bowing,at the bottom of the screen in a store at least, by asking the store sales person to put on a news program that has a ticker at the bottom. Based on this I discovered that the Samsung 6176S, which I almost bought, had significant distortion at the bottom. There was nothing in the store to reveal vertical distortion so I only discovered it when I got home and displayed the channel guide from my cable box. I got more experience with it when I hooked up my Mac Mini. The screen with the Mac mini is gorgeous but there is a slight bow on the left side of the screen only.
CONCLUSIONS
One might ask why I bought this TV given all the cons. The simplistic answer was that, for the choices currently available on the market, the pros outweighed the cons. My top priorities were the three pros: Excellent HD picture, slim cabinet, good value.
One of my principal reasons for upgrading to an HD set was to use it as part of an HTPC where I could access the internet, view all my photos and videos etc. I also wanted a big screen to get a true immersive experience and finally, wanted it to fit nicely inside my entertainment system cabinet to help streamline and remove clutter from my room (my previous proj TV stuck out 6"). With the exception of the slight vertical bow at the left, this set does a great job at all of these.
If money were not an issue, I could have gotten this terrific quality and size without any of the bad points by buying a top of the line LCD but that was not an option. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think this is a good time to spend a lot of money on one of these TV's. Instead, I believe I will be happy with this for the next four or five years. After that I should be able to buy a comparable LCD TV with all the good points and none of the bad, and probably for less than what I paid for this set.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: TV was delivered damaged. Amazon and Eagle delivery were great in taking the product back and refunding my money fast. However, this was a blessing in disguise as I ended up purchasing the Samsung HLT-6187 and wow!!! So do yourself a favor and spend the extra couple of hundred bucks for the Samsung (no color wheel to burn out!)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great TV!
Comment: This is a great looking set with a fabulous picture. There is NO whine that some people have whined about..... I can't wait to get HD added to my satellite.
The only problem was getting it here. I ordered the combo with the base, which also fits the set perfectly and interlocks the two together. Amazon uses a 'white glove' service called Eagle. They don't deliver to my area so they subbed it out to another carrier. None of the companies had my correct telephone number. After sitting for a week in Atlanta, the base finally made the 90 mile trek to my town but they had the wrong phone # so they couldn't get a hold of me and back it went. After multiple phone calls and emails to all three companies. the TV was delivered 3 days later but no 'white glove'. Only one man showed up and he couldn't move it in and inspect it. Back it went.... The next day the delivery finally happened.
Be careful with the white glove treatment. They are supposed to unpack and remove all packaging, but the warrantee requires you to package the tv in the original packaging to return it. Rock and hard place problem! The packaging is BIG!!!
Summary: We are happy with the tv and the deal we got. Not at all happy with the delivery and the lack of response from ANY of our emails or telephone calls. I don't know that we would do this again with a major appliance.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Comment: Nice big screen, bright picture. Haven't even seen HD on it yet (still waiting for the cable guy) but standard DVD's look awesome so I can only imagine how good the HD will be. No complaints really. For the money, you really can't find a better deal. If you're a picky, CES loving, gotta have the best of everything, specifications-humping weirdo, then I don't know, but I own a sony vega 50" HD LCD projection and they look about the same. The sony might be a little sharper but it's also 15 inches smaller on diag. For the average to moderately "in the know" television person, this TV is more than just fine. I have my own little theater now. Everyone's happy.
Summary: great buy
Comment: Very happy with tv. Incredible picture. Researched the noise thing and rolled the dice, my unit's fan can't be heard.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great picture but with some caveats
Comment: I recently purchased this set and here are my initial observations
THE PROS
HD Picture Quality
This set has stunning HD picture quality. I find myself sometimes looking at programs I wouldn't otherwise be interested in just to see all the amazing details. Like other high def sets, especially large ones, non HD programming definitely tends to look worse than an analog TV. Fortunately, the remote allows you to instantly switch to smaller formats if you find the pixelation too annoying. Depending on your room, you may also be able to sit further away from the screen but this loses some of the immersive quality for which you presumably bought such a large screen.
Size
Kudos to Mitsubishi for achieving such picture quality on such a large screen while maintaining a depth of less than 16". I am able to fit this TV nicely inside my entertainment center just as if I had bought a much more expensive flat screen plasma or LCD.
Three HDMI Slots
This is a plus over sets with only two although, of course, I would like to see 4 or five slots. Why HDMI ? HDMI gives you the highest quality so choosing perpherals with HDMI output makes sense if you want to take advantage of this set's picture quality. Why so many ? Well, ideally you would have one for:
1)cable or satellite box
2)DVD player
3)HTPC
4)Camera Dock with HD output (e.g. the Kodak Z812)
5)Camcorder Dock with HD output (e.g. Sanyo HD1000)
I also like the fact that you can hide unused inputs and customize their names.
Value
I believe this is a transitional period in the high def TV market so spending a lot of money doesn't make sense as next year you will get it for 1/3 or 1/2. However, sacrificing picture quality to keep it cheap also doesn't make any sense as does waiting another five years for the market to mature. This set provides a good quality to price ratio with a decent set of features right now.
THE CONS
Motion Blur
Significant pixelation during moving scenes. Given the spectacular HD images when the picture is relatively static, it is especially jarring. I will confess I haven't yet taken the time to research this,especially to see if it is any worse or better than other DLP sets of comparable size.
There could be many factors involved: the inherent magnification resulting from viewing such a large screen from a relatively small distance, the fact that my cable box only puts out 1080i, the content itself. I will need to investigate further and if I find anything, I will add more comments.
Cooling
Others have talked about a whine. Some have said they don't hear it. I can say there is definitely fan noise. This thing has a lamp comparable to a searchlight and thus needs some heavy duty cooling. Most likely the reason for the varying comments is the fact that the fan is temperature controlled. The hotter the lamp gets, the faster the fan goes. At higher speeds I can see how this might be perceived as a whine. At lower speeds it's just a hum. Also, typically, in my case at least, the noise is masked by other things. For example, my HDR's drive seems to always be spinning and, of course, the TV sound itself typically masks the noise. I probably wouldn't have noticed it except for other reviewer's comments sensitizing me to it. However, it's currently cold here so the fan is running at its low speed, I will have to wait for summer to see if it really becomes a whine and also to see if I have the problems with the unit shutting down due to temperature.
Sound
The sound from this TV is pretty bad. Looks like it was an afterthought.
(Note: at a minimum, be sure you go in and crank up the bass and treble settings. This offers at least a small improvement). Additionally, to minimize the front real estate dedicated to speakers, they are only given a slot through which to radiate the sound. The common wisdom is that you'll be hooking it up to AV system so it doesn't matter. I disagree. A home theater system is great when you're watching a movie or other "big screen" show but just watching the evening news with surround sound and a subwoofer is, at least for me, sensory overload. Also, yoking the set to an AV system for all TV watching is an inconvenience. You either need to select multiple devices in sequence to turn them on and adjust volume, have multiple remotes or use a fancy remote like the Logitech Harmony. Even with the Harmony (which I got for free from Vann's with this set), powering on/off multiple devices is not practical given that they use the same code to power themselves on and off. If you don't have the remote pointed just right (or the battery is low), one will turn on. When you press the on button again, the first will turn off and the second on.
At the very least, they should provide a switched outlet and an audio out that tracks the volume control like my old Sony XBR did. If they did that, at least you could buy some powered speakers and put them under the TV as a permanent replacement and they would be completely integrated with the set. Unfortunately, the Mitsubishi's audio output does not track the volume setting and there's no switched outlet so I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
Vertical Bowing on Left Side
I have learned that, without a trained eye at least, you will probably not see bowing or other forms of geometric distortion on one of these large sets unless you are displaying something with a high contrast horizontal or vertical line. You can check for horizontal bowing,at the bottom of the screen in a store at least, by asking the store sales person to put on a news program that has a ticker at the bottom. Based on this I discovered that the Samsung 6176S, which I almost bought, had significant distortion at the bottom. There was nothing in the store to reveal vertical distortion so I only discovered it when I got home and displayed the channel guide from my cable box. I got more experience with it when I hooked up my Mac Mini. The screen with the Mac mini is gorgeous but there is a slight bow on the left side of the screen only.
CONCLUSIONS
One might ask why I bought this TV given all the cons. The simplistic answer was that, for the choices currently available on the market, the pros outweighed the cons. My top priorities were the three pros: Excellent HD picture, slim cabinet, good value.
One of my principal reasons for upgrading to an HD set was to use it as part of an HTPC where I could access the internet, view all my photos and videos etc. I also wanted a big screen to get a true immersive experience and finally, wanted it to fit nicely inside my entertainment system cabinet to help streamline and remove clutter from my room (my previous proj TV stuck out 6"). With the exception of the slight vertical bow at the left, this set does a great job at all of these.
If money were not an issue, I could have gotten this terrific quality and size without any of the bad points by buying a top of the line LCD but that was not an option. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think this is a good time to spend a lot of money on one of these TV's. Instead, I believe I will be happy with this for the next four or five years. After that I should be able to buy a comparable LCD TV with all the good points and none of the bad, and probably for less than what I paid for this set.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: TV was delivered damaged. Amazon and Eagle delivery were great in taking the product back and refunding my money fast. However, this was a blessing in disguise as I ended up purchasing the Samsung HLT-6187 and wow!!! So do yourself a favor and spend the extra couple of hundred bucks for the Samsung (no color wheel to burn out!)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great TV!
Comment: This is a great looking set with a fabulous picture. There is NO whine that some people have whined about..... I can't wait to get HD added to my satellite.
The only problem was getting it here. I ordered the combo with the base, which also fits the set perfectly and interlocks the two together. Amazon uses a 'white glove' service called Eagle. They don't deliver to my area so they subbed it out to another carrier. None of the companies had my correct telephone number. After sitting for a week in Atlanta, the base finally made the 90 mile trek to my town but they had the wrong phone # so they couldn't get a hold of me and back it went. After multiple phone calls and emails to all three companies. the TV was delivered 3 days later but no 'white glove'. Only one man showed up and he couldn't move it in and inspect it. Back it went.... The next day the delivery finally happened.
Be careful with the white glove treatment. They are supposed to unpack and remove all packaging, but the warrantee requires you to package the tv in the original packaging to return it. Rock and hard place problem! The packaging is BIG!!!
Summary: We are happy with the tv and the deal we got. Not at all happy with the delivery and the lack of response from ANY of our emails or telephone calls. I don't know that we would do this again with a major appliance.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Comment: Nice big screen, bright picture. Haven't even seen HD on it yet (still waiting for the cable guy) but standard DVD's look awesome so I can only imagine how good the HD will be. No complaints really. For the money, you really can't find a better deal. If you're a picky, CES loving, gotta have the best of everything, specifications-humping weirdo, then I don't know, but I own a sony vega 50" HD LCD projection and they look about the same. The sony might be a little sharper but it's also 15 inches smaller on diag. For the average to moderately "in the know" television person, this TV is more than just fine. I have my own little theater now. Everyone's happy.