Polaroid FLM 3232 Reviews?

Tomorrow i'm going to take my Gal-Pal to CC and have a look at this TV. I've got her talked into a mid-size flat panel so she gave me a budget and this TV is just under her limit. Right now she only has an antenna so she'd be able to pull in the local OTA HD stations, but she will soon get TWC analog/basic cable (straight from the wall) and they have the locals in HD included. And this TV can handle both. [EDIT/Update - I've come to find out that this TV does not have a QAM tuner and that it will not tune-in the local network HD channels straight from the wall as i initially thought it would.]

And it will just fit inside her girly armoir(sp?)/china cabinet thingy and she's given me permission to drill a small hole in the back panel. Great gal !

Another TV i considered was the 32" LG with Cablecard slot but it's kinda wide so she'd have to get a TV table or credenza of some sort and place it on top but she doesn't think it's worth the extra money. No go.

I wanted her to get a 32" Sharp but she won't budge on her spending cap.

Purchased FLM-323B at Walmart this week. It is for bedroom - have 61" Samsung in den which is great.

Wanted 1) LCD 32 with low cost AND ATSC tuner. Meets & exceeds my modest expectations.

PQ is good to great in HD - average in SD. Hope this helps.

PS: Petters who markets the Polaroid TVs, says the FLM-323B (sold at W-Mart) and the FLM-3232 are the same TV. Walmart's has an attractive price - if you can find one is stock - may be hard to find since there are fairly new.

Yeah

I thought this model had NTSC and ATSC but not QAM. Therefore it will work with an antenna and pickup OTA HD, but if you plug in a cable or satellite you won't get any HD without a STB.

Am I wrong?

I purchased the 2632 at CC and returned it. Great value but just wasn't enough for me. The biggest issue for me was the speakers. I have had clock radios that sounded better.

Further proof is this line copied from the Specifications table in the online User Manual:

Specifications MODEL FLM-3732/FLM-373B

Hey you might have a point - i guess i'm assuming that if a TV has a CABLE TV input that it can tune the HD locals along with the analog channels (2-99) because this is how it works on my Panny plasma, but it does have an actual QAM tuner. So what you're saying is that just because a TV has a Cable tuner, that it's not necessarily QAM and will not tune the free HD locals? The specs and reviews don't mention anything about QAM so it appears that it doesn't have such a tuner. That wouldn't be a problem in her situation though since she can just switch to the ATSC tuner and pull the same locals in OTA instead. Probably better PQ this way too

I just bought the FLM-323B at the local walmart, but I had to go back twice to get it since they were out of stock right after two shipments. They must be selling a ton of these things.
The complaints about the sound are correct, these speakers are equal to the old Sanyo that I had but like the Sanyo if you hook the TV up to a sound system everything works fine. I really don't need speakers on a TV in this apartment to begin with since I'm hard of hearing the stereo headphone jack comes in mighty handy and I have a good set of Sony headphones that make the sound for me just fine.
I bought this unit for the price and for the picture quality, and also because of the dual tuners with the expectation of not having to buy a box in the future for HDTV.
I feel for the price, I got everything that I need.
I have no idea how anyone could say this picture is washed out because the contrast and colors are better on this Polaroid than on any other LCD that I have seen so far. The colors are also better than on any plasma TV that I've watched and the store clerk said the the LCD screen will last longer than plasma so that was another selling point.
I've had this computer hooked up to my Viewsonic 20 inch VP201b for better than a year and now I intend on trying the Poloroid out for computer use. :-)

I guess this is the same TV but I'm not positive on this. I don't notice any ghosting and it does have PIP. This is the sharpest picture out of any LCD or Plasma that I've seen so far. This Polaroid works for me. :-)

Ok me and the chicky-friend bought the FLM-3232 at CC last weekend. Her antenna is in the attic and it turned out that the cabling had been removed so i couldn't utilitze it or watch any actual TV channels. But we did watch a few DVD movies and the TV did look pretty good; and much better than i thought it would.

So yesterday she got digital cable installed with an SA8300HD DVR. HD looks great - fairly sharp and clear for an LCD TV, but not quite as good as my HP LC2600N (maybe 90% as good) but that's understandable. Digital SD looks pretty good but Analog SD looks fair for the most part - some channels look almost as good as on a tube TV but other lower quality channels look kinda poor, but my HP doesn't do much better on these channels so i'd say this Polariod is doing a fairly good job overall with SD. Better than the discount wharehouse brands, but not quite as good as a Sharp.

I wish it had more adjustability and features in the menus but she prefers a more basic TV anyway and is very happy with it. She had a get together last night and everybody who checked it out thought it looked great. For the price we paid at CC this TV is impressing me.

Another issue that i discovered when going over the instruction manual for programming the SA8300HD's remote is there is no remote code listing for a Polaroid TV in my DVR's code table. So i contacted Polaroid's Support through their website asking if they're using the remote codes from some other brand that i could try with this DVR and within a few hours a rep responded via email and correctly assumed that i was a UEI brand remote, and went on to give me three possible codes that may work with that remote. I wasn't here when the Cable Guy installed everything but i wrote all three possible codes down for him and he was able to get the DVR's remote to control the TV's volume and on/off etc - but i don't know which of the three codes he ended up using (i'll retrieve it later though). In the meantime for those of you who have a UEI remote with your cable box here are the three codes he gave me: 0019, 0178 or 1276, one of which did work. Once i know which one he used i'll come back and edit it in . . . .

EDIT - OK i double-checked the remote code on the DVR's remote and apparently i initially retrieved the wrong code (it was the DVD player's code, not the Polaroid code) so i re-checked the TV's code and it is indeed 0019.

Thanks to the Polaroid Rep who emailed me back so quick and actually solved my problem correctly with the first attempt, and literally kept us from returning this TV to CC for a refund. It was imperative that we be able to control the TV's volume and on/off with the DVR's remote and this Rep saved the day. My chicky-friend refuses to juggle two remotes for daily use (but it's ok to dig the Polaroid remote out to adjust the menus and stuff).

Randy...

I'm thinking of picking this FLM-3232 up this weekend at CC. I'm going to put a Comcast HD DVR box in.

After owning this set for week, do you have any other comments to make on it?! I really hope this set turns out to be the real deal, and not fold in a month.

I agree, when seeing this Polaroid next to higher end LCDs at CC, the picture quality was very good. The wife is actually pushing for me to buy this, can you believe it!?

Any new info would be great!!
Thanks
Sean

Has anybody verified 100% there is no QAM tuning ability along with the ATSC by actually plugging into a cable jack and doing a scan? This TV looks perfect for the space we have at home, but I'd really like to have the QAM option - we don't get sufficient reception on some OTA channels, and I already have a MCE box for that anyway.

Thanks!

There is only ATSC. I tried pluming my cable in to the both inputs, but it never found any of the QAM channels on my cable.

Randy...

I'm thinking of picking this FLM-3232 up this weekend at CC. I'm going to put a Comcast HD DVR box in.

After owning this set for week, do you have any other comments to make on it?! I really hope this set turns out to be the real deal, and not fold in a month.

I agree, when seeing this Polaroid next to higher end LCDs at CC, the picture quality was very good. The wife is actually pushing for me to buy this, can you believe it!?

Any new info would be great!!
Thanks
Sean


i've had the flm 3232 for about a month now and it still looks really good. i stood at CC for about an hour prior to purchase comparing it to the higher end models and i could really see very little difference. certainly not a 600 dollar difference. i bought the 3 year warranty just in case though. picture quality in HD is stunning.

Vikinguy...

Thanks for the info!

Buying the extra 3 year warrenty, didn't you basically push your total price into the range of the other name brand LCDs?!!

Sean

yeah, but i buy a warranty for every electronics purchase over 200 bucks. the samsung would have been close to 2k with a warranty...

Ok, I just pulled the trigger on this one from CC. I don't care about a QAM tuner since I'm using a SA8300HD DVR from Cablevision. As mentioned, the speakers suck. I have the volume way up and it's not great. Looks like I'll be using my receiver (Onkyo) for sound. I'll most more feedback as I get used to it. If anyone adjusts the setting with Avia or similar, please post what you set. I and I'm sure others would appreciate it.

Has anyone seen the BDI Aspect stand? It looks pretty cool, but it's expensive. Need to look for it on line. http://www.bdiusa.com/avfurniture/aspect.shtml
Edit: Couldn't find it cheaper on line so bought it at a B&M (6th Ave Electronics) today. Will assemble tonight and post a pic.

Well it's at my gal-pal's house nearby so i haven't had much time to fiddle with it, but the menus are so simple there's not much to fiddle with. I wish it had more options and adjustability but she's very happy with it, and i don't feel the urge to constantly bring up the user menus while watching TV with her (drives her nuts). The HD image is somewhat soft compared to my Plasma with the exact same DVR but my own 26" HP LCD is similarly soft as are the LCD TVs in the stores so that's just the nature of LCD TVs, not this one in particular. I'd say this Polaroid looks maybe 90% as good as my HP (rebadged Sharp) and is a pleasure to watch, especially for the price she paid at CC.

If it were me buying it i would have chosen a name brand for $500-$700 more but this is a nice basic TV with above average PQ. Even analog SD looks decent. I'll try to play with it and watch more HD shows this weekend and report back.

I don't know how good the build quality is but it does have a one year parts & labor warranty. You can download the Owners Manual from Polaroid's site if you haven't already. Their spec sheet says it has Input Labeling but i can't find any such setting in the menus nor the manual so i think that's a misprint.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to connect one of those small inexpensive amplified computer stereo speaker setups (small subwoofer and two front speakers) to this TV's stereo headphone jack. If that works i would think that would give much better sound for less than fifty bucks.

This mother f'ing TV doesn't have standard spacing mounting holes on the back for wall mounting. Because the base screws on at the bottom, not the back panel, the mounting brackets I have don't come anywhere close to fitting.

Back it goes. Sigh! This is getting worse by the minute. Back to the drawing board, looking for a HD LCD at the 1 grand sweet spot.

Or a cheap 5.1 amp with DVD player. I'd be interested in that too. I'd also like to know if my Dish cable box would work without QAM. Will the ATSC decode the signal from my cable box?

Same unit at Walmart is 100 bucks cheaper than CC and they have a 3 year extended warranty for about 60.00. Plus, Walmart has a 90 day return policy. CC is 30 days and in the past I have gotten a hard time from CC about returns.

CC = FLM3232
WM = FLM323B

Exact same TV

yeah, the reason i got it at CC is because they had no interest financing for 36 months....it was a no brainer..

That TV has standard mounting screws spaced evenly on the back panel. I believe you may need to use a standard plasma mounting kit with it, instead of LCD. You wont use the screw holes for the stand to mount it to the wall, but the 4 screw holes on the back panel.

Hah i just discovered that the Aspect Control works on HD signals (currently she's sending 1080i to the TV via Component from her SA8300HD). All the TV's stretch/zoom modes work on HD signals (like when watching the local news on the "HD" channels).

I find it odd that they'd include this on a bottom-level Chinese LCD but not on my almightly Panny Plasma

Next week i'll be adding an HDMI cable and removing the Component cable . . . .

Does anyone know if this TV has the proper outputs for a home stereo system?

FLM-3232 has no backlight adjustment, so black = dark blue on this set.

All those Polaroid sets would be great buys if they had adjustable backlights.

The Westy's are a much better deal in the low-budget category IMO...