» Toshiba 42HP83P 42-Inch TheaterWide HD-Ready Plasma Flat-Panel TV

Toshiba 42HP83P 42-Inch TheaterWide HD-Ready Plasma Flat-Panel TV Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great while it worked
Comment: Luckily I bought this unit from Sears as a 'floor' model. Reason I'm lucky is that Sears 'burned in' the unit for me for several months, and when I bought it they gave me a good price and the 1 yr warranty as a new unit would get. It broke within 10 months after purchase and Sears is going to replace it with a comparable unit. Anyway, here's what I saw up until it broke and how it broke:

1) Picture: FANTASTIC! Just like the other reviews, the picture of the 42HP83 is unsurpassed! Vivid, accurate colors, Outstanding contrast, and very important as the room this unit is in has 8 windows, very bright. When running DVI from my DISH HD receiver the picture is unbelievable, and the component input isn't bad either (it takes a great deal of scrutiny to see the difference, but it's there)

2) Sound: Sorry I can't get into this much as I disabled the amp/speakers that are built into the unit in lieu of my HK surround system.

3) Controls: Once you get the hang of 'em, menus are good but you'll have to practice how to use the buttons

4) Inputs: More than you'll probably need, but then again, I was using my AV receiver to handle much of the switching, except for the DVI input.

5) Maintenance (general): We live in a very dusty area so the back picks up a bunch of 'dust bunnies' that you need to clean off periodically

Now to the demise of the unit:

About 9 months into my ownership of the 42HP83, the screen came up normally in the morning, only to start pixelating after a few minutes. Almost like the pixles were overwriting each other, causing ultimately a black screen with a string of pixels across the center. Originally it stayed like this for about 5 minutes and then the picture reappeared with some pixelation, and ultimately stabilized a few minutes later. Within almost a month, that wait time was up to 25 minutes. Sears service came out 4 times and was unable to fix the problem. NOTE: as people have pointed out here, service folks in general are NOT knowledgable when it comes to these units and after replacing three circuit boards with no effect, apparently they've given up and are going to replace the unit with a comparable one.

One interesting piece of info: Had I purchased this unit NEW it would have failed about 6 months after warranty expired!!!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Purchase I've Made...
Comment: Before my purchase I spent a lot of time looking at various option with TVs. I work for a major home electronics dealer and I had some special access to testing information and narrowed it down to this model a Sony variations and a Samsung model.

This TV won, hands down.

The picture is beautiful, especially in DVD or HD, likewise the sound quality is excellent, slight distortion, but with proper calibration it's easily solved.

Several reviews have mentioned the sound being "off" and "not syncing correctly" I experienced this slightly in the short film "Star" by BWM Films, otherwise I have had no problems the picture and sound match perfectly.

The level of detail and sharpness are by far the best I experienced in Plasma. The color quality and brightness levels are amazing, even if turned down below 25%. The blacks are very black and the whites are brilliant white.

The sharpness is equal if not better then many XBR models. I am very pleased and will continue purchasing Toshiba's for years.

Make sure you properly calibrate the model (either professionally or with an Avia disc...) and make sure you let the TV warm up to room temperature before you turn it on. Likewise read you manual, a lot of mistake and abuse can come about with improper knowledge of how to run a machine like this.

This Toshiba is like a European sports car, you treat it right and it'll treat you right.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS PLASMA
Comment: I have bought this TV in June. It has not worked for 15 days properly. Picture comes up for 30 min and it goes off and the screen is just with white lines all over, and the TV gets so hot we shut down for few min (when it works). It works once a day. Picture quality is not good. Repair guys took 2 months to figure out what the problem is. After 4-8 new parts in it, it worked for 20 days again back to the same problem. Customer Service of Toshiba "New Technology and New Problems". No HELP AT ALL FROM THEM. Do not take my word. I am putting the Phone Number of the Repair center: 770-451-5057 and my case #: 281270. PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS TV.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Started off beautifully, but after 1 month....
Comment: Bought this TV at BestBuy. We loved the features, picture quality and the overall design of the TV. Everything was great until about day #29 when the screen was all white when we turned it on. After several tries we got it to work. After 3 days of phone tag we fiunally get to talk to our sales person, manager of the department, and he tells us we are 2 days over the 30 days and he won't do anything for us. Long story short we point out that it was 30 days from the day it was delivered and they agreed to take care of it. After another week we finally get a repair man out and he says we need a new circuit board. So now 4 days later, we can barely get the tv on now and no word on when we are going to get the part. By the way it is discontinued. Buy another TV! I wish we would have bought the Panasonic and will if we end up having to replace this one. Also, it is BS that you have to buy a warranty, but I will buy one to just to protect my $5000 investment.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Just what I wanted
Comment: It took a long time for me to decide which TV to get- plasma or otherwise. I knew I wanted HD, so I looked at DLP (Digital Light Processing), Rear Projection, Tubes, LCD, and Plasma. LCD sets had too much motion artifacting, DLP's had too much of a screen door effect, tubes were too big and bulky, and Rear-Projection had too little of a viewing angle. The final decisions came down to DLP (with the newer chip, the Samsung HL-P5085W was a stand out) and Plasma.

I originally was under the impression that Plasma TV's could not display true High-Def, and I suppose that if High-Def were calculated at 1080i or 1080p, that might be true. Nonetheless, the picture quality on the Toshiba 42HP83P is amazing. I am pretty aware of some of the tricks that stores use to make their displays look good (i.e., turning the contrast all the way up, etc.) so I shopped aware. I looked at high-end Plasmas, and low end plasmas, but in the end, the Toshiba blew most of even the more expensive displays away. In addition, it does an excellent job of stretching the 4:3 analog picture to 16:9, without making the people look odd.

I went out shopping for a few things: clarity of the picture, reasonably enough inputs, good conversion, DVI inputs, Picture on Picture that could combine both analog and digital signals, as well as direct video input (no pressing of the same button on the remote to pick the video source that you want to use). Additionally, I have Time Warner Cable, and most of my friends (ok, all of them) that have a HDTV, have to switch to Component/DVI input to watch HD, and then back to S-Video/RCA/Coax, to watch a non-HD channel in a stretched-screen mode. Not so with the Toshiba. It literally gives me everything that I wanted in a TV, and unless you are considering spending $9,000 or more on a TV (and even if you are), it's one stellar performer.

There have to be drawbacks, right? Of course. Plasma display's suffer burn-in, a trait that does not make an appearance with LCD's. Consequently, I am very careful as to what is one the TV. This plasma puts out a lot of heat- so if you are upgrading to plasma from a CRT tube and expect the same electricity bills, you're in for a small shock; the bill won't kill you, but you'll start to see the need for turning the thing off, even if you're just leaving the house for a while. In an ideal world, the Toshiba would have two DVI inputs, but I can deal. I could also get a DVI switchbox, but I haven't seen the need yet.

All in all, this TV WILL shine for you, and comes highly recommended from a person with very discerning taste.

UPDATE: (August 29,2005)

Like other people have noted, this TV WILL fail on you. I started experiencing the pixelated start-up, and within weeks the picture actually needed a "25 minute warm up time" in order to see a clear picture. Even after the warm up time, the screen would get pixelated depending on the scene being viewed (it didn't seem to like very dark, or very bright scenes). Thankfully I bought the service plan from Best Buy, and I now have a credit to get a brand new TV. Bottom line- I liked the TV very much- but I like the service plan much better. Yes, Best Buy is overpriced, but their service plan (although it was a 2 1/2 month hassle) saved me $3500. I would strongly recommend (after having the TV for exactly one year) AGAINST buying this TV. Yes, I'm a flip flopper. I'm also the guy that will save you an expensive and frustrating heartache.

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