RCA MM52100 52" Rear Projection CRT 4:3 HDTV-Ready Color TV

Rating:
Summary: RCA MM52100: Set OK, RCA/Thompson needs to improve quality.
Review: After buying this "HD-ready" set in September of 2000, I used it as a regular large-screen TV for about 18 months until I bought an RCA HDTV tuner for OTA and DirecTV signals. I became acutely aware of bad convergence with the VGA input from the RCA tuner box. I had everything looked over by an authorized service center, and they discovered that a board was probably bad in the set. After months of trying to get this board from RCA (and they are really not even sure if it will fix the problem), I have called RCA/Thompson customer service repeatedly since May of 2002. They will not respond to our questions on reimbursing us for a part that could not be detected as being bad during the 1 year warranty period, much less as to when the part might be available. The authorized service center informed me that he would recommend against buying an RCA product worth more than several hundred dollars due to the frequency with which quality problems occur, and the prolonged waiting required to get parts. I have since bought a new Panasonic LCD TV with much better features and quality for just a few hundred dollars more than I wasted on this RCA MM52100. Although this set may have features that purport to show DVD and HD signals well, I was unable to partake of those features. Buyer beware!

Rating:
Summary: RCA MM52100: Set OK, RCA/Thompson needs to improve quality.
Review: After buying this "HD-ready" set in September of 2000, I used it as a regular large-screen TV for about 18 months until I bought an RCA HDTV tuner for OTA and DirecTV signals. I became acutely aware of bad convergence with the VGA input from the RCA tuner box. I had everything looked over by an authorized service center, and they discovered that a board was probably bad in the set. After months of trying to get this board from RCA (and they are really not even sure if it will fix the problem), I have called RCA/Thompson customer service repeatedly since May of 2002. They will not respond to our questions on reimbursing us for a part that could not be detected as being bad during the 1 year warranty period, much less as to when the part might be available. The authorized service center informed me that he would recommend against buying an RCA product worth more than several hundred dollars due to the frequency with which quality problems occur, and the prolonged waiting required to get parts. I have since bought a new Panasonic LCD TV with much better features and quality for just a few hundred dollars more than I wasted on this RCA MM52100. Although this set may have features that purport to show DVD and HD signals well, I was unable to partake of those features. Buyer beware!