Originally Posted by
HTMLSpinnr 
I bought and picked up a WD-65734 and matching stand from Walt's TV on Memorial Day (5/28/2007). The folks there were very helpful and patient while my wife decided which stand was best for the TV.
This TV replaces an older 34" Toshiba CRT (34HF81) which was way too small for my room (14" viewing distance), and lacked any sort of digital input - HDMI or otherwise. I'm keeping that TV though - moving it to another room to become a video game and "secondary" kids TV.
My initial impressions of the WD-65734 are pretty good, though out of the box, the settings favored a very cool, but bright picture. I immediately turned the lamp brightness down (to increase bulb life) and changed the image presets to the "Natural" setting which helped quite a bit. There's still a slight yellow cast with some material that I'll have to tweak later on. I also enabled the lower standby power setting within the menu, but startup time takes a good 20-30 seconds as a result.
Menu functions seem fairly straight forward, and relatively easy to use. I had the basics tweaked to my liking within 10 minutes of setup.
I've only tested 480P (DVD and a Nintendo Gamecube) and 1080i (Cox 8300HD and my PC w/ component adapter) via component inputs so far. Viewing pillar or letter boxed material is revealing a bit of pincushion distortion at all edges, and a slight upward bowing of the image in the center. I confirmed this w/ some patters from my Avia DVD. Overscan appears to be 2-3% left and bottom and 3-4% top and right, which was first apparent when attempting to view a full 1920x1080 desktop from my PC, which had to be reduced to a slightly lower resolution to view all menus and icons. I guess coming from a CRT to a fixed pixel display, I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get a geometrically perfect image with zero overscan. I'm curious if the geometry will improve w/ an HDMI connection or if it's an optical issue. Perhaps just a bad expectation on my part for any RPTV.
When I plugged in my PC to the front component inputs, I was very impressed that the TV's ClearThought feature detected the connection and asked me to "label" the device. By selecting "game", the TV automatically reverted to game mode which supposedly removes most image processing to eliminate video lag. I was also impressed when I discovered that after turning off the PC, the TV warned that it would automatically power down due to lack of source signal. This should help those who tend to power off the cable box, DVD player, etc., but not the TV, and then only get 1 year out of their bulbs.
Standard definition (Cox digital cable) content doesn't look too bad, though the size and detail of the screen do bring out the compression artifacts. The DVR sends all content upscaled to 1080i. I might try to see if it'll send 480i content as 480i to compare the TV's scaler with the 8300HD's. 1080i material, however, looks spectacular. Even 720p content, scaled to 1080i by the DVR, then to 1080p by the TV looks pretty good. I'll have to figure out how to get the DVR to output content w/o scaling. Anyway, watching Titanic on TNT-HD yesterday was an amazing experience, though at that resolution and size, the 10+ year old CGI technology used in the movie was more obvious.
Although the video games will ultimately stay on the 34" Toshiba moved to another room, my kids were very impressed w/ the games on the Mitsu set (F-Zero GX in Progressive/Wide-screen mode).
DVD's from my older Panasonic RP81 player in 480p mode look great - for DVD's. Some content, like National Treasure, the DVD color compression becomes more obvious as face tones tended to look a bit washed out. SuperBit discs like Starship Troopers, however, look "almost HD" even at 480p. The TV's internal scaler tends to do a great job, making me leery of even trying an HDMI connected 1080p scaling DVD player.
I don't own any HD content players yet (waiting for the format war to end or a reasonably priced combo player), so I'll have to leave those impressions to someone else.
I also plugged a USB fob into the front USB port and images which were not modified (i.e. stock from my 5 megapixel camera) were displayed. Image access did seem rather slow though (i.e. USB 1.1 vs 2.0). 5 megapixel images are the most the TV can handle, which for now, is fine by me as I own a 5 megapixel camera. Given that most people with this size set might own a camera w/ larger resolution, this limitation might limit the usefulness of this "feature" for many buyers.
I just got around to experimenting with the NetCommand feature this last weekend. For the most part, it works pretty well. I've got the TV controlling the COX DVR and my Onkyo receiver with the 2 provided emitters. Programming functions into the TV for my DVR and receiver was a simple process and just about every feature you'd need to pass on is doable. Having 4 "specialized function" keys is useful for the DVR's "A, B, and C" buttons. There is a very slight (< 1/2 second) lag between the TV remote press and the reaction from the expected device when compared to controlling directly.
At this point, I'm most interested in having the receiver volume controlled when the TV receives volume commands. Ironcially, volume control is where I'm having a bit of a problem. Each time I configure the appropriate setting to associate the receiver with my component input (video only) for the TV to send volume info to the receiver, the menu "reverts" to its default of "Audio Out" upon exiting the menu. I'm going to call it in as a bug and see if Mitsu releases any future firmware fixes to resolve that. The TV does, however, power off the receiver when I turn off the TV - but ironically doesn't turn it on. Again, either I've mis-configured, or it's a bug w/ the same association setting. I guess I'll call NetCommand a nice feature "when it works".
Other things I plan on trying out include switching the cable box to HDMI (bypassing my component only Onkyo), and seeing just how well the TV's "clear QAM" reception works on Cox Cable in the Phoenix metro area by connecting the coax straight into the TV. I have a Cox DVR, so don't really have the desire to bypass it, but it may be worth my while to connect an over the air antenna to the other input at some point for broadcast HD should Cox not carry all channels or sub-channels available in my area.
As for DLP "rainbows", I am sensitive to them, and with this set, while reduced over some thanks to the 6 color wheel, I can still see them. They're most apparent when small bright objects are surrounded by black or dark areas. The screen is large enough, even at 14" away, where with HD content, you may need to dart your eyes to change focus from scene to scene. Moving my eyes from left to right when the rainbows are most apparent to me. For now I can tolerate it given that I otherwise love the size and features of the set.
Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. Other contenders were a Sony 60" SXRD (no rainbows, but lacked HDMI 1.3 and 1080p24, smaller) and a Sammy LED DLP (slightly smaller, could still see rainbows, more expensive). Feature wise alone, I think the Mitsu was a better choice. Image (color) quality thanks to the 6 color wheel was what helped push my decision though - and that was when demoing last year's Y series and a clearance priced 65731. I chose the 65734 though because of the improvements and the desire to not buy last year's model.
