Insignia™ - 42" Class - Plasma - 720p - 600Hz - HDTV - Multi

I purchased this TV on March 14, 2011 to replace a Sanyo 42" Plasma I had bought from Walmart for $448. Two vertical red lines appeared in the middle of the screen at the two week mark, so I took it back and decided I'd look around a bit more. I eventually made my way to Best Buy and I saw this for $429.99. I once worked for Best Buy so I knew that Insignia generally buys Samsung parts and assembles them under the Insignia name. I have not been disappointed in my purchase as of yet. The colours are sharp and vivid. The blacks are excellent, though not as good as the Sanyo's, but excellent nonetheless. Though I hardly ever use the touch sensitive buttons on the body, I think they are a nice touch (pun intended). There are several colour settings and they can be adjusted to any preference. I hook my laptop in through the HDMI port and the 720p movies I watch (Netflix included) are just as great as the HD cable signal (I find that the gaming mode works best with my Toshiba laptop. I had a sound system that went to my old desktop that I wanted to use and since this comes with the 3.5mm jack I had no problem doing so. It, of course, has connections for component cables. It has excellent viewing angles. I can stand a step away from being parallel to the TV and still see the picture. I haven't had any problems with screen burn, but it does have a feature to correct that issue if it arises. I only have a few complaints. One would be that the dimmer mode is a touch too sensitive. It fights itself when the lights are off; going up a little with the bright scenes and dimming in darker scenes. The feature can be disabled, but I have found that after a while I barely notice it. Another complaint really isn't a complaint, but I wish that the TV swivelled. The last complaint isn't Insignia's fault, but my Cox Cable remote doesn't programme to the TV fully. So I have to keep the TV's remote handy to switch inputs. Overall, I would suggest that anyone looking for a basic, good quality TV to buy this one. My friend bought a 37" Dynex LCD (which, though a BBY brand, doesn't use Samsung parts) for the same price as I paid for this one. I tried to talk her into returning the 37" and getting the 42", but she didn't want one that big. Go figure.

I picked up this TV to replace an 8 year old tube model in order to save some space in the bedroom. I mounted this TV to the wall (which was much easier than I thought) and it looks terrific and works great. This was a much better value than the Samsung I paid $2,200 for about 3 years ago. I can not tell the difference when watching TV or movies. I highly recommend this TV to anyone looking for a great deal. I can't believe people are still paying $1,000 or more for a TV when they can go this route. Thanks Best Buy!

I bought it for the price, but I have been very pleased with it. I put it in my bedroom & watch it every evening. Since noone broadcasts 1080p in this area yet. 720p is just fine!!!! I use the surround sound feature that is built in & My XBOX 360 sounds great on it. & so do movies.

Had it for about a week and had to add on to the many reviewers who said this was a very good TV. I got it on sale at Best Buy for $399, and I consider that the best deal of anything I've bought this year. I just need a good TV to watch football and play my DVD's . If you're in that arena, I would say just grab it. If you need more bells and whistles, then I couldn't really say, I have only got a $59 DVD player plugged and that all I need. But I give it a Big thumbs up!!!!

I picked up 3 if these - one for each bedroom - and got them for $399 each. Incredible value for the money - these plasmas render a very consistent picture with warm, accurate colors. I recommend them highly. FYI - this model is actually a Samsung with Insignia branding.

You're basically getting a Frankenstein TV when you buy the Best Buy brands. This particular model is a Samsung motherboard and shell with an LG screen, assembled in Mexico, I believe. The picture is much better than you would expect, built in speakers are solid, assembly is easy, and interface is clean and simple. You're getting a TV that was probably right around the $950.00 area two years ago, but now LED TVs, 3D TVs, and integrated Internet support are the big trends now, meaning you can get the bare essentials in a quality package for pretty darn cheap. This Insignia is where it begins and ends in terms of value. I'll break down the finer points: - Black Levels: You're not getting deep, rich blacks. This is a budget TV, but you're still getting satisfactory contrast. You'll find that stock settings are a bit too dark for older generation games, but just fine for anything current generation. You'll be adjusting your bright levels a touch while playing games like SH3. Adjusting your brightness will give you a vague hazy filter, but it's barely noticeable at all. Most of the time you can do your brightness adjustment within the game itself. Left alone, the stock settings will make light sources seem bright and anything outside of those light sources look dark. Duh, right? But all in all, you're getting a pretty sweet contrast ratio out of a budget TV, so there's not much to complain about. All in all, it's pretty good. - Refresh Rate and Lag: This particular model boasts a wild 600hz refresh rate, but this spec is more like a marketing gimmick as most of your console gaming and movie viewing will be done at 60hz. There's no ghosting, no color bleed, and with Game mode enabled and some adjustments on your console (setting your preference to automatically adjust for your screen's native resolution, which is 1024x724, I believe), you'll be playing 99% lag free. I say 99% because most of my gaming was done on an ordinary standard definition TV for many years, and I did happen to notice that moving to HD presented an imperceptible amount of lag. My aiming was thrown off in L4D, but with some use and adjusting the settings I've mentioned above, it was completely gone. And no ghosting or blurriness during football games or races either! - Picture Quality: You're gaming in 720p, which is a massive leap above standard definition. Some people may bemoan the absence of 1080p support, but that kind of resolution isn't necessary on an HDTV smaller than 52 inches. The picture looks phenomenal at times. At the end of MW2 when you're driving the raft in pursuit of Shepherd, the desert vistas and water look arresting. The default color schemes work well when environments are well lit and the colors on screen contrast sharply with each other. As far as the three presets are concerned (readily accessible with the press of a button on your remote): -Movie gives the screen a green kind of filter, making every movie resemble the Matrix. You'll be using this preset the least as it tends to make skin and ordinary colors for every day objects look unrealistic. -Dynamic makes the screen a bit brighter, increasing the dynamic contrast ratio between colors. You'll lose a bit of your darker tones with this preset enabled, but it looks great despite this. -Standard is the stock preset that will make your screen look duller compared to the other two presets. This preset is handy for power saving and watching late night movies in the dark, as the Dynamic preset can make your eyes hurt if watching over an extended period of time with the lights off. - Presentation: Aside from the Insignia logo beneath the screen, this model looks very slick. The stand itself and the shell are both high gloss black, which does surprisingly well hiding fingerprints considering the finish, however, dust is very visible if you neglect to clean the unit. The buttons on the bottom right of the display are touch sensitive. The power button has a red LED beside it to indicate when the TV is off. This makes it easier to find the button in the dark. Aside from that, you'll rarely be using the faceplate buttons anyway, so there's not much to say here. There's no sliding your finger beneath the unit or out of sight searching for buttons, they're all neatly arranged on the front, bottom right. - Weight and ease of setup: The TV itself is much, much lighter than flat screen TVs I've had to manhandle in the past. Our Hitachi upstairs is at least 30lbs heavier. You can easily grab this unit by the sides and move it on your own. Housewives who need to move the unit aside to clean won't have any trouble here. The screen and back panel combined are about three and a half inches deep at the very back center, and around one and a half inches deep on the sides of the screen. Included is a plastic stand that inserts into the back of the unit and fastens with four phillips head screws. The stand angles the TV just slightly upward when in place, not downward like most do. This makes it great for displaying on minimal entertainment centers when sitting less than five feet off the ground. Unfortunately, I have not tried to wall mount this model yet, but the enclosed instructions make this look like a fairly basic task. The stand itself, though plastic, seems sturdy enough as it's relatively thick and won't flex with any amount of force it may receive with moving or during daily use. - Ports: Two HDMI ports means you can hook up both your 360 and PS3 without any fiddling around in the back. You've also got two sets of composite ports on the back, one of which as an AV designation next to the yellow port. I run all of my old school consoles through a switcher then into this set of composite ports. Old school games will be in widescreen and slightly wider looking than usual, and most won't fill up the entire screen but leave a faint, roughly .8 inch black rectangle around the picture. If this doesn't bother you, then you're set in this area. Also, the back has an optical audio out, and a quarter inch stereo port that you'll be using to run out into your stereo receiver with an adapter. I use an old surround sound Sony receiver running into a Bose sub, 2 Klipsch 15s, and 2 Sony 3s for surround sound, and the limitation of this particular port hasn't affected the quality of sound a bit. It is a bit of a detractor not having a full size stereo input or composite out for audio, but the adapter method works just fine ((Red and White composite output through a quarter inch jack (looks like the jack you'd see on a pair of headphones) is the adapter I use, which you can find at Radioshack for $4.59)), if you're going to use an external audio output. The built in speakers on this TV aren't bad at all, but they're not going to sound great when you're listening to explosions and gunfire when you've got the volume cranked. I've tested these speakers and while the sound is surprisingly full sounding at lower volumes, cranked you'll be listening that canned, tinny warble you'd expect to hear out of tiny speakers. - At this price range (I believe it's under $400.00 now) there's no reason for you not to pick one up if you're in the market for a cheap HDTV. As the centerpiece in your living room it's not going to impress your neighbors who have LED TVs, but in the bedroom, guest room, kid's room, or if you're around college age and you're broke, this Insignia does the job much, much better than what the price might have you believing. I picked it up last year on Black Friday for about $700.00, and as my first foray into HD, I couldn't be any happier with this purchase. Haven't had any problems, even with the frequent use it's been getting this past year, and even if I do, the Best Buy brand HDTVs come with a 2 year warranty. Put it next to the LG and Samsung competitors in this price range and you'll be surprised to see that this Insignia offers better picture, richer blacks, and a lighter weight. It's not going to look incredible when you're walking around and looking at the HDTVs that are twice its price, but at this size and at the price, it's a huge bargain and you're getting a quality device.

I purchased this on sale on Christmas Eve for $399 and have used it for about six months now. It's a great choice for anyone needing an inexpensive, but quality television. First of all, this is a rebranded Samsung. I don't mean it looks similar to the Samsung model or it has a lot of the same features as the Samsung model, but it is literally the exact same television, but with an Insignia logo on it and a price tag of about $100 less, depending on local sales. Set up is pretty straight forward. Not easier or harder than any other TV of its class, really. The biggest thing I was worried about was image burn. I used to own a 50" 720P Samsung plasma that I bought back in 2007. That model suffered quite badly from image retention. I couldn't watch CNN for more than a couple of minutes before the lines from the ticker at the bottom of the screen were burned in. I've done things that typically leave strong image retention, such as playing video games for hours on end, and have never had a single problem with this television. The picture quality is quite good, on par with any other 42" 720P set. There is a bit of glare present, but then I have it sitting right across from a window, so that's pretty much to be expected. I've never had a TV with with an anti-glare coating, so I can't comment on if it that would help or not The sound is what you would expect from the built in speakers of a $400 model - not so great. Few people will be using the built in speakers though, so I imagine it's not a big deal for most. Two of the most common negative things that I see in these reviews are the lack of a DVI input and the fact that it only has 2 HDMI inputs. For the first issue, you can get a simple HDMI to DVI (or VGA, whichever you need) cable for about $5. This cable has an HDMI port on one end and a DVI port on the other. Hook the DVI end to your computer, the HDMI end to your TV, problem solved. For the second issue, you can pick up a simple HDMI switch for about $10-15. I have a basic 3 port switch, which means I now have 4 HDMI ports (the switch itself takes up one). So there you go, two of the most common issues solved for about $20. Also, some reviewers have commented that they believe it's really a 1080P set since the display sometimes tells them that they're viewing a 1080P source. Technically that's true: the TV is telling you the resolution of the source it is receiving. It is *not* however, outputting a 1080P picture. If you put on a blu-ray disc, it'll tell you 1080P because that's the resolution of the disc, but the television then downscales it to 720P. This television can never display a 1080P picture without a magical way to physically cram more pixels onto the screen. Overall it's a great set for someone shopping on a budget. You get the same picture quality as a much higher priced television, with the trade off of not as many bells and whistles, although that can be rectified to an extent with a couple of cheap cables purchased separately.

First let me tell you by saying this tv is very similar to the Samsung 42" plasma Model: PN42C450 that Best Buy sells for $539.99.. I actually returned this plasma to get the Samsung one since it had VGA input and 3x hdmi. which Insignia did not have and only had 2x HDMI inputs. Samsung also sells the PN42C430 which has the same exact features as this Insignia, but Best Buy does not sell this model. I really don't know if Samsung build these Insignias but I do know Insignia uses there parts, If you look inside you can see the Samsung logo. Honestly change the logo and the menu on the Insignia and you would not be able to tell the difference. Picture quality were about the same to me. The thing i like about the Samsung besides the extra inputs was the ability to tweak a lot of the settings. The Insignia is very limited when it came to tweaking the settings. For example you are not able to change the cell light(backlight) of the Insignia at all but with the Samsung you can, giving me a brighter picture. SD channels looks great on this tv compare to my 32" LCD. There were no loud buzzing at all that I could hear. 720P looked the same as 1080P to me, so that honestly isn't something to worry about so don't spend $200 more to get 1080P because it's just not worth it unless you have a huge tv.. I never expected to get a plasma since I do A LOT of gaming but I did not get any IR or burn-ins at all. They do have a thing you can turn on called "Pixel Shifting" which works great and I was not able to notice the imagine moving, this prevents burn-ins. Playing video games on this is sooooo much better than a LCD. Get the Samsung one for $40 more but if you can't find any then you won't go wrong with this Insignia, Trust me. PS: The typical frame rate used in North America is 60 frames per second (60Hz) meaning that a TV would display 60 individual still images every second. Sub-field drive is the method used to flash the individual image elements (dots) on a plasma panel. For each frame displayed on the TV the Sub-field drive flashes the dots 10 times or more, meaning that the dots are flashing 600 times per second (600Hz) or more. (Example: 60 frames per second x 10 sub-fields = 600 flashes per second). Please don't review this if you don't actually know what you are talking about or have the product.