Our most helpful positive review

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Zenith 42" Plasma HD TV is a great television at a decent price. September 21, 2011

The Zenith 42" HD Plasma television is a great televsion, i love it, it's flat screen, great picture, great sound, easy on the eyes, and looks great too. I purchased this television from Sears about three months ago, and we are extremely happy with it, we wanted as big a screen as we could get without going over four hundred dollars, i didn't think we would find anything at all of quality, but we came across this one and decided it would be our choice. So we purchased it and hooked it up and have not regreted one second of it. I really love this television, we have it in our living room. Later when the economy gets better (if it gets better), we plan on purchasing a bigger screen for the living room and moving this one to our bedroom, but for now, it is in the living room and is doing great. The high definition is a great feature that makes it so nice on your eyes, clear picture, great sound, easily operatable, and is also equipped to be able to buy a roku box or game system to be able to have internet tv. Which i plan on that being my next purchase, a roku box to hook up to this tv and connect to the internet. We are very happy with our purchase. Zenith has always been a great brand that has been around for decades and shows it still has what it takes to compete in toay's market. Great television by a great company, quality with a great price, what more could you ask for? In today's economy this is one great find. We highly recommend this television to anyone looking to purchase a new television. Sears always has quality.

Our most helpful negative review

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Great pic, many inputs, but makes annoying high-pitch sound February 11, 2012

When I saw this TV on the shelf at Sears, I had come to the store to buy the Panasonic X3 plasma (TC-42PX3). I saw this set alongside it and reconsidered.  It was $50 less and had a ton of inputs, including a VGA input that let me plug in my older laptop was sans an HDMI jack.  That along with 3 HDMI and two component vid blew the Panasonic out of the water. I had owned a Panasonic plasma before and was very happy with it, but this seemed to offer good competition.  I went home and researched this set and the LG equivalent of it.  I was pleased with what I found.

I purchased this set the next day.  I was impressed by the picture quality and the way it upscaled SD channels over the competing Panasonic.  I have to say that I previously owned a Panasonic plasma and was very pleased with it.

What took me by surprise when I got home with this set was the constant high-pitched sound it emits.  It is very similar to the sound that old CRT televisions made while they were turning on.  On this set, the sound becomes more apparent when the image on the screen is bright.  During darker scenes it is a little quieter.  This sound, even during darker scenes, is audible from a couch 10 feet away from the TV in a carpeted room.  It can be extremely annoying and distracting, espescially during quieter parts of movies.  This is not a regular upper-midrange plasma buzz that you can always hear faintly when you put your ear near the back of a set...this set makes that too, but you can't hear it from more than 3 or so feet away.  I have never heard this high-pitched sound from a plasma before.

To me, that 1 issue is enough to make me regret buying this set, and certainly enough to make me not recommend it to others.  It may push me as far as returning it, paying the restocking fee & buying the Panasonic instead.

Once in a living room, this set still has good picture quality.  There are certain issues with it,  the video looks a little bit less natural than Panasonic's plasma line, almost as if the set tries too hard to remove video noise and imperfections... but overall, and espescially for a set of this price, the PQ on here is phenomenal.  You get access to dozens of detailed settings to perfect the image, things you might use with a calibration DVD.  In most TVs, these sorts of settings are locked away in a service menu reserved for techniciains.

At a 8 or 10 foot viewing distance, there is no way you can tell if this is a 720 or 1080 set.  The pic looks crystal clear.  Even go up 3 or 4 feet away from the screen and as long as you're on an HD channel it still looks crystal clear.  1080p is not nescessary on a set of this size.

One and only one other major downside about this set is that if you are watching a 4:3 aspect ratio channel or 4:3 video source, the TV will not display it with black bars on the sides.  It will show light grey bars on the sides...there is no way you can change the color of them.  That can be distracting when watching 4:3 content for extended periods.  I don't watch enough 4:3 stuff to need to worry about burn in and wish I had that seemingly normal option of keeping black bars on the sides of it.

I can forgive the grey box issue, and will say that were it not for the high-pitched sound, this would be nearly a perfect set.

But as the high-pitched sound is a big nuisance, I will probably stick with Panasonic plasmas for any future TVs that I buy.  They've served me well in the past and I wish
I would not have strayed from them.