Widescreen, HDTV Ready, Inputs can be labeled on screen, several available composite inputs, great multifuction remote that has nice ''back light'' feature! Great looking set! Price I bought it for! No more expensive trips to the theaters! Friends/neighbors love to bring new releases and other necessities over for ''movie night''.

No firewire inputs or digital tuner on this model, however Mitsubishi will upgrade for a ''special'' price. Constantly having friends/neighbors over for sometimes unplanned movie nights!

INITIAL NOTE ON PRICE: Yeah, you read that right, $1499 at Sears! Seems I had went there early last year (2001) and someone had bought one and brought it back becuase of problems. It was ''supposedly'' repaired and it was being sold as a ''used'' model! After discussing it with the salesperson I purchased this beast and tacked on a 3-year, at home service warranty and took it home! Sure enough I ran into the problem that was reported by the previous owner, so I contacted Sears service and after 3 unsuccessful attempts to fix the unit I had bought dirt cheap, they delivered me a BRAND NEW UNIT! (Their cost last year new: $3499) I''ve had zero problems with the new unit so I''m basing my review on this matter as I knew I was taking a ''chance'' on the used unit. Thanks to the saleperson for recommending the 3-year at home service agreement I added for $300 still getting me this unit for about half of it''s normal selling price and informing me that if it doesn''t get fixed, I get a whole new unit! REVIEW: New unit worked like a charm! I finally got my DVD player hooked into the composite video inputs and setup my remote to control ALL of my AV related equipment (JVC VCR,JVC DVD Player, JVC Reciever, Cable Box). Picture quality is excellent playing back DVDs, just also added a new JVC XVS60 Progressive Scan DVD player and the picture is the best I''ve seen so far. I''m still waiting to add HDTV Satellite Dish soon, but waiting to get a good deal on the equipment. I love the widescreen format, my movies have never looked better! With this acquisition, the movie theaters are a thing of the past! Now I can have cheaper popcorn and have a cocktail while watching my favorite movies, and getting a better picture than you see at the theaters along with my Dolby Digital sound to boot! Really happy with this acquisition, and it''s great to have friends that will go rent the movies, bring the popcorn and cocktails just to get to see the movies at "My Theater"! I highly recommend these new Mitsubishi sets!

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Sharp, Panasonic, Sony, JVC, GE, Toshiba, Hitachi

Picture quality, number of imputs, munues easy to use, good remote

setting convergence is too difficult and has to be reset if power is lost.

Have had the 55809 unit for almost 6 months now. You really have to have the TV for a few months to understand how to tweak the settings so the picture is as good as it can get. At this point I think this TV is a an excellant HDTV for the price. The picture looks very good using satellite TV and the DVD''s look phenominal with a SONY 700dsp progressive scann player. There are enough imputs to go around. On thing to not here is that to use PIP with satellite you need 2 cable boxes which I dislike. As far as the red push problem goes I found the reason lies in the default video settings. The red push is real bad unless you turn down the brightness and color. Contrast also needs to be turned down a bit. You have to adjust this for every imput as well. I used the THX audio/video optimizer that is one DVD''s such as Fight club and Star Wars PM. Also, you need to adjust the 64 points of convergence. You also need to do this in a dark room to do a precise job. After doing this the picture improved. Only problem is if the power goes out you need to adjust the convergence all again. Takes about 10-20 minutes to do a good job.

widescreen hd, high resolution .52mm pixel spacing

none!

mitsubishi WS-55805 55 inch hdtv with 16:9 format. Tremendous picture in both standard digital and hd.

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none.

picture quality is great the set look better then it did at the store , i had it for a week and i,m know getting used too the control , i will be doing the video esencial calibration soon , the set is a bargain at this price

aspect ratio control ,remote control have no lerning mode to copied all comand of the other remotes only by code then you only have a few comands

great tv i have yet see hd brodcast, iwill be getting the progresive scan dvd from toshiba and the proscan digital decoder with direct tv built in , i'll keep you post it with future buy

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46hd mitsu

Well-designed, well-built, affordable wid-screen HDTV-ready TV set. Allows viewer to choose between 5 formats to fill the whole screen with image including from a 480p input.

"Red-push" is present and can't be internally adjusted...

This is a review of 20001 model WS-55807.

Summary: If you watch a lot of DVD’s or have an HDTV Dish this TV is definitely a way to go.

It just happened that I’ve got a DVD player a month ago and become increasingly frustrated watching the “anamorphic wide-screen” and “letterbox” movies on my 32’ direct-view TV set.

It is ridiculous, I thought, - I have a THX certified audio system, a best non-progressive DVD player I could find, and I have to strain my eyes by viewing this tiny strip of image!!!

So, I went to the stores, read some magazines, checked around the forums on the net and decided to buy a wide-screen (16:9 aspect ratio) TV set. Based on the most popular calculations it appeared that I needed a 55’ rear projection TV set (RPTV). Well, there are quite a few of those on the market now. What should I get?

After two weeks of intense research I understood that being properly calibrated and tuned they all will render pretty much the same quality picture being provided with a good video source. The problem is – none of them comes from the factory being perfect. Lenses have to be manually focused, tubes have to be electrostaticly focused, convergence has to be adjusted, color balance has to be checked, etc. This is a grim result of the mass-production of mechanically, optically and electronically sophisticated units, vulnerable to misalignment during shipping.

All the above did not scare me a bit. Being a handy person and eager to upgrade my home theater to a really “cinema-like” experience, I checked on the most popular brands.

I found that while most of the RPTV manufacturers are shipping to the retailers their 2nd generation wide-screen HDTV-ready units, Mitsubishi is through almost a year of production of their 3rd generation models (xxxx7 series). It looks like this company had its share of problems with the first two generations, both regarding design flaws and quality control. General opinion is - they studied their mistakes, listened to the consumers and improved upon both aspects. Calibration tips and tweaks to further improve quality of Mitsubishi sets are readily available on the net (www.hometheaterspot.com). Price wise Mitsubishi is very competitive, and knowing that its products are being sold on the commission basis leaves a good opportunity for price negotiation opened (I bought my WS-55807 for $2550 new in the box at PC Richard (NY) while the initial sale tag was $3299).

Their current models include three product lines – Platinum (xx807), Platinum Plus (xx857) and Diamond (xx907). Electronics is mostly the same. They differ in lens design and quality – the higher end models are supposed to have the better focus at the edge of the screen. The xx857 and xx907 have somewhat prettier setup menu and VGA inputs to use these RPTV’s as the computer monitors (I doubt anyone would do that…). The xx907 have a “piano-looking” cabinet finish (as supposed to the matte finish of the xx857 and xx807) and a bit better speakers.

If audio system is already in place, then the audio tract of the RPTV should be discounted. That leaves us with the quest for the best possible picture. From what I’ve seen, the lens difference is not noticeable comparing 55807, 55857 and 88907. It shows itself slightly in the 65” models (if you put a test pattern on the screen and study it really hard from two feet away…).

From a normal viewing distance of 9’ – 13’ and if I was let to see the screens only, I would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

The above made me believe that for the money the best value is xx807 line.

OK.

I ordered a WS-55807 and had it delivered on 12/16/00.

First out-of-the-box impression – quite solidly built and nicely finished unit. Contrast settings set 100% from the factory – bad. Had to immediately adjust them to 33%. Moved brightness down from a midpoint a bit too. Had to reduce color saturation a little also.

Now the cable picture looked acceptable…

Read the manual carefully, checked on convergence in 64 points of the screen – very decently aligned from the factory. Connected it to my Panasonic DVD-RV80 non-progressive DVD player via the “Audio Research” component cable, put in a “Lost in Space” DVD…

… One and a half-hour later a telephone call brought me back to the real world.

Wow! I could not believe myself. How could I get so carried away? Why did I watch again a movie I’ve watched a few times already without a slightest intention of doing so now in the first place?

Well, that is the effect the wide-screen RPTV causes on people. It brings a movie-theater right up to your living room. Oh, my God! The WS-55807 picture from the DVD was AWESOME!!!

But…

It works like a magnifying glass. It makes a good video source look great. It spits all artifacts of the bad video source right in your face.

That is something one have to make a decision to live with or not.

I watch cable mostly to check on the weather. I stopped renting videotapes the moment I got the DVD player.

So it was the easy choice for me. Now I am a www.netflix.com member successfully renting DVD’s over the mail, and I enjoy this TV immensely.

Two weeks passed by now. I rechecked on the convergence – it stays good. I build an external attenuator for component input to reduce a so-called “red-push” – every manufacturer tries to make their sets more appealing to an average consumer by pushing red color 15%-25% above green and blue these days (www.hometheaterspot.com – an invaluable source of information about HDTV, including Mitsu). I disabled SVM. I bought the “Avia Guide to Home Theater” test DVD from www.amazon.com and run some additional tests of the unit.

The geometry, convergence, sharpness, evenness of the screen illumination, high-voltage power supply reserve – everything looks quite good. I checked on the lenses – they all are dead on focus from the factory. No complaints, no complaints…

This TV has a built-in line doubler (makes scan lines almost invisible) and a 3:2 pull-down feature (“Film” mode) for the best reproduction of movies. There has been a lot of discussion about the benefits of using so-called progressive DVD players as a video source for HDTV ready TV sets. It looks like opinions are highly polarized. I tried a progressive-scan DVD player with my WS-55807 and, honestly speaking, I do not see the visual difference that would justify spending $500 more for a progressive-scan DVD player. WS-55807 line doubler does a decent job for me at a normal viewing distance. It may not handle a VCR or cable signal that well, but I do not really use these sources often lately.

Just to help someone to make a final decision – the 2001 Mitsu models allow you to expand the image to get rid of the vertical gray or horizontal black bars, if the source is recorded in 4:3 or anything wider than 16:9 formats. It is true for antenna, composite video, S-VHS and both 480i and 480p component inputs. I think this feature can make a difference for someone who owns a progressive-output DVD player.

The remote is well designed and can control a DVD player, a VCR, a cable/DSS box and a A/V receiver in addition to the TV.

So far I am happy with my purchase.

A warm and fuzzy feeling of well-spent money… Let us see for how long will it last…

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None

Awaiting delivery of the Mits WS55805...also bought the Toshiba 5109...cant wait to see this, from all the rave reviews below. But...does anyone have any experience with the RCA DTC100 receiver with this set? A few comments below, but no responses to my e mails. Apparantly there is a problem with a black bar down right side that can damage the CRT, but the TV can be "adjusted" to compensate for this, from what I've heard. Would appreciate any comments from reviewers, and any technical information on adjusting the two units to be compatible. Thanks!!

Absolutely wonderful picture. User friendly menus. Lots of inputs.

Verticle streaking.

Bought mine new for $3000 from a A/V store. So far, I've really enjoyed it, however still in the learning process of getting everything set up correctly. I've purchased one of the A/V set up dvd's described below, and that should help the things along quite a bit. DVD's look fantastic. DSS looks good...but can vary greatly from the original broadcast. Unforunately, the set shows how really crummy VHS appears. I have resorted to using the "smooth" feature for that input. I am seeing a very faint verticle band about 2" from the right of the set, so am currently looking into fixing that. From the entries below, looks like it's a known problem. I spent many hours in the A/V store comparing pictures and features. I feel I've made the good choice on this one.

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None.

Great picture,good remote

None

Everything fine except light vertical bars on right side of screen. This is my second one. First was delivered with sound but no picture. Service has ordered parts to fix bars or excange will be made when more arrive at retailer. Remote is very good. Even controls Dish Network. HDTV will arrive in area soon.

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Pioneer 51"

Excellent picture quality & design, easy to set-up, nice features, perfect "scratch resistant" front shield (especially made for kids!).

Don't like the cheapy speakers, cheap wood/particle board materials used the top portion sagging from center speaker's weight, cheap material/finish easily damage. Remote light button in the wrong place, ends up draining battery, only one year warranty?.

I've been happy with this Mitsubishi HD(ready)TV. It's my first big screen TV, so far no problem, yet. Got a good deal on it from Sears, new $2700. Easy to set-up, & excellent features. Enjoy using it daily.

I just don't like the cheap parts used, like the speakers, those had to be replaced(easily, with better 5-1/4"). And those materials used, watch-out when you move this TV(i.e. carpeted floors), bottom wood panels falls apart when you slide it around.

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Sony

The picture is indeed very nice.

Broke after two days of light usage.

I have 55807 and I am already very sorry that I bought it. The TV worked out-of-the-box just fine and continued working for 2 more days but then the picture disappeared. I've seen another review here with the same problem by the way. The store (PC Richard and Son) refused to replace it at first and sent a technician to check it out. The guy showed up with just a screwdriver(!) determined that the there in fact no picture and left. After a brief war between me and the store, they said they will replace it but it's been almost a week since then and I still have this monster sitting in my room collecting dust with no clear answer on what's going to happen next. The technician told me that another customer of his had the same set replaced once and repaired twice in a month or so period. The set is assembled in Mexico and, I suspect, for this and other reasons is probably not a very high quality product. I also suspect that they at Mitsubishi were cutting corners everywhere to lower the cost - you can see it in many places once the set is opened (take the ridiculous cheap tiny speakers for example).