The set's built-in ATSC (DTV) tuner pulls HD signals (480p/720p/1080i) right from the airwaves, and its QAM tuner is fully compatible with unscrambled HDTV cable reception. A standard analog NTSC tuner receives standard-definition (SD) programming.

The digital 3D Y/C comb filter (with vertical contour correction) separates brightness and color signals better in 3D domain to eliminate cross-color, cross-luminance and dot-crawl distortion. It performs field-by-field comparisons of the television image to accurately separate the color from the black-and-white information and remove both horizontally and vertically hanging dots, as well as dot crawl, resulting in a razor sharp image. The Natural Cinema feature performs 3:2 pulldown detection and reversal, too--a handy feature for watching progressive-scan movie programs in their native 24-frame format. To adapt 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video, frames in the original movie must be duplicated; 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this duplication by removing the redundant information to display a frame-accurate picture.

Other features include multiple aspect ratio modes, video noise reduction, color temperature settings, world clock, sleep timer, input labeling, high-speed channel changer, and V-Chip parental controls.

The front-firing speakers produce 10 watts of power per channel for 20 watts of total power. Other audio features include MTS stereo/Dolby Digital processing, virtual surround sound, advanced tone correction, and MaxxBass capability. It offers the following connection options:

• Composite AV (RCA): 4 in
• S-Video: 2 in
• Component video: 2 in
• HDMI: 2 in
• PC VGA: 1 in
• RF: 1 in
• Audio output: 1 analog out

Tech Talk
Microdisplay, also referred to as LCoS, which stands for Liquid Crystal on Silicon, is a hybrid projection TV technology that sandwiches a layer of liquid crystal between a cover glass and a highly reflective surface patterned with pixels that sits on top of a micro-sized silicon chip.

HDMI is a lossless, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface to link any audio/video source (such as a set-top box, DVD player, or AV receiver) with your TV--all over a single cable. It provides up to a 5 GB per second bandwidth for transmitting pure digital video and audio signals with no degradation in the transfer. It can carry up to eight discrete audio channels, making it compatible with 7.1-channel surround sound systems. Signals are encrypted with HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) to prevent recording. HDMI is fully backward-compatible with most DVI connections.

Component video (also called Y/Pb/Pr) features a three-jack video input, which provides separate connections for luminance (Y), blue color difference (PB) and red color difference (PR). This results in increased bandwidth for color information, resulting in a more accurate picture with clearer color reproduction and less bleeding than you would get with S-Video or composite (RCA yellow video plug) connections. You will need a separate RCA left/right audio cable for sound.