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Rating: 
Summary: bad strange horizontal line flickering
Review: I am currently on my 2nd of these sets, and it is going to be returned shortly into the new year. My first one had strange problems with corner discoloration similar to what occurs when you get a speaker too near a picture tube. This problem would occur after the set had been on for a little while, but got quite annoying. Turning off the set and back on again would degauss the screen, and temporarily fix the problem for a short time. Then the corners would get discolored again. Seemed to be random about which corner did it, too.
Then watching a few different movies on the set I noticed a strange set of blue, red, and green horizontal lines flickering across the screen. This was through the s-video input from my computer, but would also occur during regular television. It seemed to happen consistently on the same scenes in different movies, and was highly annoying overall.
Which is a shame because the set is really nice overall. The design is great, the remote nice, the features full, and a great picture when there arent distracting lines across the video, and greatly discolored corners...
I usually buy sony for televisions, and thought that I could trust philips to produce good electronics, but I am sorely disappointed here after having 2 of these sets.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Bargain for HD Broadcasts
Review: I am new to the world of HDTV. I am using this Philips TV accessing content by way of my cable provider in the NYC area. I mention this because I was a little disappointed when I started viewing shows on this Philips set. Adjusting the controls provided with the TV went some ways toward producing a fair picture with standard definition broadcasts. The first HD channels I saw were noticably better but nothing that stood out. I surmised that this was the result of a low priced unit. You get what you pay for.
That is, until I turned on the Discovery HD channel. As a recent famous philosopher might say..."Whoa!" The picture was crisp with vibrant colors. It displayed an almost life-like picture. This is what I was expecting. A big, noticeiable difference between digital cable and HDTV. I now use the Discovery HD channel to baseline my HD picture settings on the set.
I have since come across other true HD programming. They all looked excellent when viewed on this Philips TV. Progressive scanned DVD players take advantage of the Philips ability to display content at 480p as well as 1080i. The result is an excellent picture when viewing DVD's and using component cables.
The sound is only average when using the set's built-in speakers, though that was not unexpected. I expect a home theater setup to be much better.
To finish my point: The Philips 30PW8402 television is an excellent bargain when viewing true HD programming. The quality of standard definition broadcasts has been average at best. Keep in mind that all of this is also determined by the quality of the source material (is it true HD?) and signal from your content provider, which seems to vary greatly.
Rating: 
Summary: Horizontal line flickering, color patches all true
Review: I bought this TV (not on amazon, though -- I don't buy things that cost over $100 on the Internet), used it for two weeks, and have just returned it (and that is why). All the problems that P. Davis has written below is true. First, the horizontal line flickering. To me it was not too disturbing, unless I was looking at a blank screen. Okay. But the color patches that appear against a bright background after a minute or two of watching was unbearable. I was watching my favorite movie and at one scene where 40% of the screen was bright white, that part was becoming yellower and yellower until I began thinking about the money I had spent, and it really hurt. I tried unplugging the TV for 20 minutes to degauss it (with ALL the appliances put away from it) FIVE times as they suggested at the support website, but it was only temporary and they would reappear right away.
Now comes the second part. I called the phoner number on the manual to ask for a repair. The representatives were nice, and really tried to be helpful. However, the local service store here in Ann Arbor they told me of said they don't do in-home repairs (for Philips TV's). I called Philips again and got some more contact numbers (now 25mi away), and they said they were supposed to perform in-home repairs. When I called them, the service centers were complaining that they had told Philips repeatedly in the past that they wouldn't do services in Ann Arbor, and refused to help me unless I brought it there. Called Philips again, but I knew an in-home service was never going to happen. At this point I decided this was going back. I will look for some other good product and maybe buy some service plans. Just like modern cars, TV's have so many features that I guess they break down more often than simple tube TV's. A bargain is a bargain with a reason.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended-Gorgeous video
Review: Plasma dims with use, DLP needs a new $400 bulb after 2000 hours, LCD doesn't do motion well and can develop stuck pixels, so tube seems best, especially for darker darks and lighter whites. This Philips 30 inch HDTV widescreen tube seems absolutley perfect. Looked at darker Sony sets and brighter Samsung and picked Philips for the beautiful image on the screen. From 6 feet away or even closer, there are no visible scan lines, just a perfectly dazling beautiful image. I've worked on this HDTV purchase for what seems like 35 years and I'm very happy with this Philips HDTV. It's overwhelming.
Specs talk of 1051i resolution with no mention of 720p which confused me, but turned out to be no problem.
Specs talk of "Eye Fidelity" feature which does not seem to be on any onscreen menu or switch on the back. The 34 inch sat next to it at BEST BUY but didn't look anywhere near as good particulary with motion, which confused me, since I couldn't find Eye Fidelity as a user control item. The 34 inch may have been stuck on progressive and the 30 inch stuck on interlaced - but I never found any controls.
Five stars if I could just figure out if the $130 DVI-HDMI cable helped. Component cables with RCA connectors seemed to work just fine, although channel changing seems faster with the non-compressed HDMI connection. My Samsung SIR-T351 tuner will pump out 1080i on either DVI or component outputs, but does the Philips accept 1080i on component inputs is the question. Wish I had some sort of test video, that told me whether I was watching 1080i or 720p. The screen is so enormously impressive, it overwhelms.
Occasionaly sold for $750 on sale, and worth twice that much, particularly for the viewing angle. Projection TVs looked like the old laptop computers when we all asked "is it on?".
My old indoor small plastic Jensen TV-920 settop amplified antennae works perfectly for 16 over-the-air digital channels in Tucson, except the audio is interupted occasionally when an individual stands between the transmission towers and the antennae. Video no problem. Digital audio not as steady. Total confusion asking questions in the stores.
Rating:
Summary: Thing before you buy this product
Review: Pros : Excellent picture quality, excellent contrast, great sound and weighs 8kgs less than sony 30 inches widescreen HDTV. Very easy to install and plenty of ports both on the sides and the back for your dvd/vcr/cable box etc. connections.
Cons : In the widescreen mode, small amount of picture cuts from both the left and right sides. I verified this by freezing a frame on my dvd and switching between widescreen and 4:3 mode. While in the 4:3 mode, the black bars on the sides are not perfectly straight. In the 4:3 mode if you switch on the tv captions, the tv automatically switches to widescreen mode which is really annoying. This problem does not happen with DVDs in 4:3 mode.
My conclusion is that this tv is much cheaper than other entry level HDTVs so if you can live with the negative points I listted above then it is a great tv.
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