Hyundai PTV421 - 42" Plasma

Well, are you happy with the picture? Other than the fact it's a bit of an oddball (Hyundai?!!?) and that Home depot is not the FIRST place I'd consider buying a TV from, what's your personal viewpoint on the pq?

I just bough one and I find it hard to get any info on this TV! My only biff I have i that whenI change channels it takes a long time! Im hooked up to Regular cable not sattilite. Are you having this problem.

Was looking at this TV. I agree that not much information available. It is a pitty that you have to buy it and take it home to find out what its specs are. Any additional information on experriences would be appreciated. May still just go buy it and see how it works.

Just bought one at Home depot. Picture from regular cable sucks but not a fault of the TV Picture from DVD or even VHS is fine actually quite good. User manual is not good - can't sort out all of the features such as PIP. Have not been able to determine if TV has a HD tuner onboard or not - suspect it does not. The guy at Home depot said these are LG clones don't know if he knows for sure or not he says Hyundai is the parent company of LG who knows? he also sells nuts and bolts so am not to sure what to believe. Struggling now to decide whether to go Digital cable or sattleite dish to improve picture quality for regular TV viewing - any opinions out there? Overall am satisfied for the price I paid several hundred $ less then Brand names. I bought the extended warranty for some peace of mind.

Channel up & down just stopped working on the remote anyone have this problem and find a solution or is just a funky remote?

My instructions are not even in english, so much for them. The remote is the most stupid one I've seen. I have found out to get it to work point the stupid thing down towards the floor before the tv & it works fine. The thing I can't stand, is that when watching older shows, everything appears very blury. Sceinfield included. The reason for this is that when viewing in 4x3 aspect ratio which is what ordinary television uses, there are two ways that a wide screen tv handles that. one way is to give you a smaller picture where the two sides are blacked out (preferrable) or as in our case magnify the picture. Magnifiing has some undesireable affects such as taking an already low res picture & blowing it up which makes it appear very blury. There doesn't seem to be the choice to make the picture smaller which would make the low res shows look more in focus not to mention none of the picture would be cut out as is the case when magnifiing. I agree that when playing wide screen new shows it has a very good picture. Personally I already own a projector, which is great for 6 foot wide movies. So I don't need the tv for movies I might just return it for a smaller tv 37" with the smaller 4x3 aspect ratio perfect for watching older shows in focus.

,,,,,,,and this TV was such a good deal because,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

Name brands are slightly more expensive than these "wannabees' " for several reasons - and peace of mind is only one of them.

A quick update on my message. I hooked up a cable splitter to both the Hyundai & my old tubed tv and looked at the results. I ws wrong, the tv is not magnifiing on the 4x3 aspect ratio, none of the picture is missing its just staying on the 16x9 aspect ratio & not going over to the 4x3. This was confirmed a second time, as a picture of the end of a coaxial cable came up, on my old tv it was perfectly round (as it should be) and on the Hyundai it was oval.

I just bought one of these yesterday. bringing it back today, the screen as a lot of weird swirly burn in patterns all over the screen.

It's a pity coz it really seems like a nice TV, cheap I only paid $1k Including Tax. It is also very nice looking.

So I exchanged my Faulty unit. The new one performs beautifully. The image is sharp, colours vibrant & the contrast is much much better than the 32" LCD I have. I also have a 8" Liquid Coupled CRT Projector, so I am comparing the image to it for reference. The difference in resolution between the plasma & the Projector is the only thing I really notice. The Plasma obviously not being 1080p. But even with My Toshiba HD-A1 the image is extremely nice.

It renders everything very clean, with little or no noticeable Artifacts. It does requre some calibration out of the box to get the best image, as all CE deivices do.

The total price I paid was $1200CDN Including a Plasma mount thrown in, so I am extremely happy. I took a trip to a few TV stores to compare with some better known brands. This unit easily holds it own against the LG's etc of this world. If posters before me are correct & the Panel is an LG Panel, then I am not surprised, as it is obvious that this is better then the $1k price it is selling for.

In addition, the unit looks very sweet. The simple HD Monitor look about it, is uncluttered & tidy. I find some of the newer Consumer Oriented units, to flashy & bulky. This is just a basic screen with a very thin Bevel around it, neat, Tidy & to the point.

The only bug I have found, is that it won't display a SD Image in 4:3 mode when I select that from the menu. It stretches everything. This is not really a problem, as my Satellite receiver does it for me anyway.

Also, it would have been nice to have an extra HDMI port. Aside from that, I am very impressed. For the price, about the best bargain I found. Even better then the $1k Vizio Plasma from Tigerdirect. I went to see them, and yuck!

The remote for the Unit is nasty though, cheap, plastic, throwaway and no one knows the universal code yet. Once I have that, I'll be happy. But for such a great price, hey not a problem.

If you get the Hyundai PTV421 Plasma, you will not be disappointed, best Bargain for a 42" Plasma in my neck of the woods. Now if Home Depot could only start seeling Dual-Mode BD & Hd DVD Players for cheap

K./

I found the remote is usually the weakest link among this lower tier TV brands. Bought a Viewsonic few months ago, end up returned it because the remote and TV menu are suck. These TVs may have good PQ but ease of use is very important too. Even with a after market universal remote I found their TV menu/setting is unintuitive . They should refer to those top tier TV manufacturers in this regard not just jump into the market with poor software.

Hi Lost,

The remots sucks, but the onscreen menus are pretty good, much better than I expected. Easily as good as my old Samsung TV

I found them further reduced to $998 CDN, at the Home Depot in Gatineau, QC.
As an employee, I used my Xmas bonus 20% off coupon, so the total cost incl taxes was $910 CDN. I will consider buying the extended warranty for $110.
I hope the news about finding the universal remote code is not going to be a problem. Haven't had a chance to open the box yet. I just hope it turns out to be a good buy and not a nightmare.
Please let me know if anyone finds the universal coding for this remote. Any other comments, good or bad, about this product will be appreciated.

Ok, so i bought this tv as well. there is a universal remote that i have bought that works amazing! its a Logitech harmony 659. its exspensive $130.00 but it does everything! I mean everything! If you buy it when setting it up you will have to phone customer support because the the functions don't work properly at first, but after you will be ready to rock and roll. The customer service is great as well.

On another note, does anyone get a little hum from behind that tv and does anyone notice that the tv pic is a little off center and that it cuts of the right side a bitt!

$998CDN! Awesome, honestly this is such a Great buy!

Anybody figure out the PIP can only get one signal into the TV and can not figure how to get the PIP to work? As stated many times the user manual is no help. Any suggestions are appreciated

I also purchased a ptv421 no problems except for password..certain channels turn blue and ask for password,I never encoded a password so tried serial # bar code # etc. no luck any suggestions? have you had this problem?
Thanks.

No, I suspect it must be your Satellite/Cable set top box. Did you lock out channels to prevent the kids accessing them?

The more I use this TV the more I like it. The picture is way beyond what I thought a 1024x768 Plasma would do. It absolutely Kills my LCD TV. No more LCD in my House. Plasms is far superior

Plus, the TV looks gorgeous

For the BLUE SCREEN problem, just enter the master code password " 8899 " in the Parental guide menu. Once your in, you just have to set it off et voila....no more blue screen.

If someone has put their hand on some documentation, I'm sure many of us would appreciate it, I've made my own research and was told that some would be available sometime in February.

Also, in previous treads question is asked about the PIP, does anyone have any solutions.

Thank you, the password 8899 worked, now I just got to figure out the parental guide controls lol.

Is there anyway to upgrade the Firmware on this Unit?

Also, still love this TV

I to purchased a PTV421 and I scrolled from 16:9 to 4:3 and the picture never changed so I went to home depot where I purchased it and tried the floor model, the picture there also did not change..when I go to 4:3 is it not supposed be a smaller picture with bars on the side?

Mine does the same, I just use the Set-top box to do the change. better for me anyway, as the Expressvu box can be set to stretch Regular 480i material (SD Channels), and leave HD 16:9 (HD Channels) material the same.


I thought it should be smaller as well. I suspect a s/w upgrade is probably required for the function. That aside, the picture I am getting for DVD Using the Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player as my upscaler outputting 1080i, and letting the TV's onboard scaler (DCDi) downscale to 768 is Phenomenal!

The picture on this Plasma is quite incredible for the price. I compare it to my 8" LC CRT Projector, and CRT HD Television.

I just picked one up and I have to say that the previous comments on the tv are valid. I am certainly no TV expert, but I thought I'd share my experiences with this TV, so excuse my non-technical comments:

Pros:
Low price
90 day return policy from Home Depot
Cheaper extended warranty (about $110 for two years)
Nice and bright picture (I would not be surprised to see an LG screen inside, but the pictures on a real LG tv are definitely better)
Standard Definition from satellite looks good
HDMI/S-Video/Component Video/Composite Video/VGA hookups are all there

Cons:
Instruction manual sucks
4:3 aspect ratio does not seem to work
Speakers are cheap and maybe underpowered?
Remote control is cheap and does not work well.
It's plasma, so you do have to "condition(?)" it so that it does not screen-burn.
The refresh is not great. Pictures with lots of fast motion seem to lag behind a bit.
If you look closely, you can sometimes see horizontal lines on the picture when there is motion on the screen (I don't know if that's normal or not).


You do have to tweak the settings for sure (including the speaker settings). There isn't much documentation on the PIP functionality, but I did manage to get it to work - but I don't think I will use it much.

Overall, I am happy with my first flat panel. I am far from a videophile but I just wanted a new bigger screen tv to replace my old 21" CRT. For $1199 for a 42" plasma seems ok for me. I figure that the hundreds of dollars that I save now (from buying a cheaper tv instead of a high quality one) will be better spent on a new tv a few years from now when prices will be lower.

Hope this helps someone!

P.S. There is a little more info from redflagdeals (thread 384826)

Still hoping someone can help with directions on how to get the PIP to work. I noticed one fellow figured it out, can you share your success with the rest of us please

Thanks for a taking a minute to help

Ok, here's a minute's worth of time to help out (actually takes a few to type, but anyways.... Excuse the amateur style instructions, but this is how I got PIP to work in simple terms.

1. Start the "System Menu"

2. Goto the "PIP Menu"

3. Change the "PIP mode" from "off" (using the direction buttons) to one of the following modes:

PIP = picture-in-picture that takes up a small portion of your screen
POP = split screen picture-in-picture
9WIN = 9 windows (from the same source - probably 1 or 2 sec. delay for each window)

4. Assuming that "Main" is set to "TV" as your main video source, change the "PIP Source" to VGA, HDMI, S-VIDEO, YPBR1, etc... This will change the PIP window to show video from one of your chosen video sources.

5. Change the "PIP Size" and "PIP Position" as desired.

6. "PIP Swap" is used to switch between sources for the PIP and main windows.

7. "Window" seems to be used to switch between the sound source from the PIP to main.


Hope this helps and that you pay it forward.

Will use your direction thanks for the "minute" : - )