Akai PDP4273M 42" Plasma HDTV Review

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(More customer reviews)The reason I gave this a one-star is that there's no check box with zero or minus ratings.
I have a 42" plasma Akai and have been waiting two months for a warranty repair, with no resolution in sight. The "service" number in the Akai manual connects you with seems not to be tech-support at all, but an answering service in Ohio. (The corporate HQ is in California!) The "associate" who answers the phone tells you that, "...they will pass your problem along." They also tell you not to expect any action for over a month because they have to do "research" on finding someone in your area to fix your TV. A month or more to look up "TV repair" in the phone book. Right!
When you ask for a name of somebody who is empowered to make decisions at the company, you get the dodge, "We're just an answering service." No phone numbers. No last names. They evidently got off the dime when, on the third phone call, I threatened legal action, after a month of being ignored. But I still can't talk to anyone at Akai to find out the problem or who's in charge. Zero, zero, zero in the feedback dept. Customer service at Akai borders on criminal negligence. Nobody is home.
Six weeks after my first call, a local repair person called me and showed up a week later. Akai really must have done that "research", because he reflects their corporate culture--he doesn't return my phone calls. I suspect they just picked the cheapest service and now are dragging their feet on providing the part. But I don't know. He hasn't gotten back to me for over a week. But at least with him I can personally go to his physical location to find out what's going on.
If you think you can solve this problem by getting an independent warranty, think again. Your contractor still has to deal with the coorporate black hole at Akai to get the part...

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Large and in charge but still compact thanks to its bottom-mounted speakers, the 42-inch Akai PDP4273M will brighten your home theater with a broad color spectrum of 16.7 million colors and a high luminance display. Built for those who want an affordable large screen TV, the PDP4273M has a built-in NTSC tuner for standard over-air programming, and it displays HDTV channels and signals when connected to an optional receiver or compatible cable/satellite set-top box via the component or single-cable HDMI connections.
It features a 1024 x 1024-pixel resolution, 160-degree viewing angle, super-bright 1400 cd/m2 (candela per square meter) brightness rating, and a stunning 3000:1 contrast ratio. (The higher the contrast ratio, the greater a TV's ability to display subtle color details and not get washed out by ambient room light.) A 2D comb filter separates chrominance (color) from luminance (brightness) information in the video signal for independent processing to improve picture resolution and minimize distortion.
This set also 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 gamma correction, color temperature controls, multiple display modes for video inputs as well as the PC input, and V-Chip parental controls.
It includes two integrated stereo speakers that produce 5 watts of power per channel for 10 watts of total power. It offers the following connection options:
Composite AV (RCA): 1 in
S-Video: 1 in
Component video: 2 in
HDMI: 1 in
PC VGA: 1 in

Tech Talk 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.
What's in the Box Plasma TV, stand, remote control (with batteries), printed operating instructions

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