Mitsubishi WS-65613 65 in. HDTV TV

Sorry if this review isn't as technical as the others on here. I just wanted to let everyone know how this TV is for an average family (i.e. no super geeks, no people with Superman vision or hearing).

We got this TV delivered a few weeks ago and love it. We had a 27" Phillips before so this is a big jump. They had to take it out of the box to fit it though the door. Be warned the TV is 28" wide even out of the box. But they got it setup and left. We looked at it for a while like the chimps do at the monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey.


I powered it on and started poking around. Here are my completely random impressions:


* The picture is BIG and looks much better than my uncles big screen from 10 years ago. It is very bright. Colors look superb (to my untrained eye at least).


* We hooked up a progressive scan DVD player with component video cables and though it looked very nice. No major difference here from our old TV, except this picture is much larger. When you turn the lights out and watch a movie with the surround sound turned up... well I guess that is why we bought it. It is nice.


* You will want to sit at least 8 ft from the screen. Our house is small and the way we had the living room at first had us about 5 feet from the screen. It was OK but the picture looked kind of blocky. Then we rearranged and put the couches 8 - 12 feet away and it looks much much better.


* We don't have cable (we watch mainly movies) so we were thrilled when we hooked up a set of old rabbit ears and pulled in great looking digital stations. Being new to digital we didn't know that unlike analog antennas there is no static or anything. You either get the station in crystal clear or you don't get it at all.


* So we watched a movie and when the movie went off we flipped though the TV stations and found CSI: Miami and about had a heart attack. HDTV is cool. It is everything it is cracked up to be. It is bright, vibrant, detailed, and life like. It is at this point we became VERY glad we bought a TV with the integrated HD tuner.


* There are a few other nice perks also such as the media card slots on the front. Firewire, S-Video, and RCA connections on the front. A nice (albeit maybe too big) backlit remote. The whole unit is on casters which makes it pretty easy to move around. There is also a nice screen protector on the unit.


* Now there are a few things I wish were better. For one I think the covers on the front of the TV that cover the media card reader slots and the ones that cover the FW/RCA/S-Vid connectors are too flimsy. They are made of a thin plastic that flips up to cover them. It works well but they don't feel sturdy. I also have a very curious 2 year old that I am sure will eventually break them off.


* My other gripe is NetCommand and programming in DTV stations:

- Netcommand. It works. But it took me a lot of fiddling to get it more or less working right. I don't want to bore you with the details but it could be easier.

- Tuning in DTV channels. OK, this one really got me. Digital channels are not something you can just flip to. The TV has to scan for them and locate/remember them. No big deal. The problem is that you have to let it scan for all the channels at once. We get 5 DTV channels at the house but configuring the antenna in a way that the TV will find all 5 in one scan is almost impossible. You cannot tune a channel in individually, it is all or nothing.


With all that said we love the TV. We got NetFlix and watch a movie almost every night. There are a few cons but the pros far outweigh them. I have not commented on the sound at all because we never used it. We have a Sony surround sound system so we never turned on the TV speakers.


If you have any questions or would like to comment I would be happy to hear from you. This was my first review. I can be reached at hazeltc AT gmail DOT com.