I have had this TV for about 2 weeks now and so far I am loving it. I use it mainly for TV and Netflix, and it's also great for DVD's, Blu-Ray's and video games. During the Holidays we used Pandora, tuned to the Christmas station, to add some holiday cheer.
What I love most about this TV is that you can use it right away without having to hook anything else up to it. The Wireless was fairly easy to setup and once it was done I was able to add the TV to my Netflix account (it gives you a code that you enter on the Netflix website) with no fuss.
If you have cable but don't want to rent another box than you can hook it right into the TV and get local channels with the built in tuner. I have FIOS and was able to pull local HD channels without a box as a test, but I ended up hooking my cable box to this TV anyway.
The Blu-Ray player works very well, though I recommend going into the menu and disabling BD-Live. If you let BD-Live try to connect it can make the disc take twice as long to load, and most of the content available is trivial at best.
My other Blu-Ray player is a PS3 which is easily the best player out there. With that in mind, the built-in Blu-Ray player does a good job with loading times and so far I have not had any playback errors. Also, if you watch DVD's, they are upscaled to 1080p and look great!
The only component I have hooked up to the TV is a Nintendo Wii. The Wii is not an HD gaming system, but it still looks great on this TV.
Now for my short list of minor things that could be better:
- You have to go to the Blu-Ray input in order to access Netflix and Pandora. If you have a disc in the drive, then you have to wait for the disc to start playing, stop the disc and then enter the 'connected' menu to access Netflix / Pandora. Slightly irksome, but you get used to it.
- The included stand for the TV is more complicated to install than necessary. I think it requires 12 screws, maybe more. My other TV's stand snapped right in.
- If you change the aspect ratio of the screen when switching between types of content, it will stick to that same ratio for everything unless changed back. Ex: I was watching a show in standard definition (SD) that was in letterbox format (bars above and below). I zoomed in so the image would fill the screen. When I went back to an HD channel, the screen was still zoomed. (On my other TV, switching back to HD will cause the screen to automatically adjust back to the correct aspect ratio).
- DVD's don't pick up where you left off if you turn the TV off or go to another input. Blu-Ray's will depend on the disc. Some are programmed to remember where you left off, but most are not.
- The one major downside to having an all-in-one device, for me anyway, is this: Let's say you and your significant other are watching a movie when they get a phone call. You decide to pause the movie and play a quick round of Mario Brothers on the Wii while they're away. If you do that, the movie will stop (since the Blu-Ray player is built in, it automatically shuts down when you go to another input) and since it does not remember where you left off, when you switch back to the movie you will be forced to start it all over again and skip ahead to where you left off.
- Lastly, the advanced menu options for picture, sound etc. are less robust than other sets I've owned/used. Not a big deal to average users, but advanced users should be warned.
As I said, these are minor issues and probably won't bother most people. Overall this is a great set. Picture quality is very good, audio is good, disc playback is very good (some other reviews mention the noisy disc drive, but honestly it's barely noticeable) and for me at least, it was pretty easy to setup.
I would recommend this to anyone that wants a medium sized HDTV. For me it's a great second TV for my smaller living room. My 46 inch TV would be way too big for the room, and this TV makes life easier by having the extras built-in. Great space saver!