JVC HD56FH96 Television

Great Big Screen TV - IF you can get a good deal

By meleemaster74  Apr 17, 2008

Pros: Fantastic Image quality, numerous inputs, cable card ready

Cons: Prevelent fan noise, difficult to use with a pc via hdmi, not the fastest channel switching out there

The JVC HD56FH96 rear projection tv brings one of the best image qualities I have seen in HD Tvs. It comes with 2 HDMI inputs, 3 composite inputs, and 2 component HD inputs, all you could ever really need. It also features a cable card slot which I f...ound to be a much better deal than a stand alone box. ($2.80 more a month instead of $8.00)The cable card allows you to watch all the HD programming available with a box on your tv. One of the main reasons I purchased this tv was for use with my pc via HDMI ( A vga "pc" slot is provided but only supports 1024x768 resolution). Naturally I was very excited about playing games and watching movies on my pc in full 1080HD. Unfortunately, when I went to connect my pc via the HDMI, the TV had the problem of overscan, a condition where a tv's pixel structure is not in a 1-1 ratio with the pc and therefore produces and image that is cut off at all edges, which creates a major problem for functionality as a pc. I utilized and Nvidia graphics card and bundled software which included the ability to "resize the desktop". This feature included on the software, effectively put my resolution at 1840x1016 but shows the screen taking up all the area on the HD56FH96. For this reason , and the fact that even the pc vga input only supports 1024x768 or 640x480, I would NOT recommend this TV for people who want to use it as a pc monitor more than just "once and a while". While the TV is in most aspects very good, there are a few things that could have been improved: The channel switching in HD and from input to input is rather slow. This is merely an annoyance. There is a persistent fan noise I have recently noticed. NOTE: This may be actually a mechanical part that needs repair rather than a characteristic of the television. I say this because I recently moved houses and the TV was transported by truck (very carefully mind you :). The noise was noticed in the new house in a smaller room than it had been before. For this reason, I do not know if the Tv was damaged in the move, or I am just noticing the noise now because I am sitting much closer to it. In any case, with the volume at a reasonable volume the noise is completely drown out so its not really a big deal. Summary: I really like this TV, Bottom line. I only paid $900 last year for it though, as my friend was selling his off and needed the money (I think he paid close to $2,000 with the warrently originally). For me I am could not have spent $3,000 on it. It just wouldn't be worth it. As the price of TV's comes down though you may just want to look into getting a JVC HD56FH96 Read more Less