Best Buy Details Insignia Blu-ray HDTV Combos

[Attebery]

Retail giant Best Buy has released details on their upcoming Insignia brand Blu-ray player HDTV combos. At $599.99, they run a scant $100 more than the equivalent drive free model.

[taygan315]

Is the Insignia brand decent?? I like their prices and their warranty...just wondering about their quality. Would anyone recommend this brand..either their HDTV or blu player??

[The_Doctor]

Um. They can be. I think they are more or less Funia re-branded to the Best buy name. Not sure about who makes the Combo TV. Although I always avoided TV with built in players as a rule

[Blckman]

They are really great tv's in fact. I've seen ratings on them and have seen them side-by-side with a Sony and Samsung of the same size side-by-side. Let me tell you something. The Insignia HD quality was if not better than both the Sony and Samsung. I just would wonder if you needed a firmware update on the installed blu-ray player in the set how would you do that? You must have to either download the firmware from your pc, burn it to disc, and then install it. Or it would just be plain nice to have an Ethernet/RJ 45 jack available for updates. I just don't like the fact of all-in-ones at times. Just give me the separate set top blu-ray players period.

[GizmoDVD]

Wish it was bigger. I'd love to get a 42" for my Mom.

[Blckman]

Originally Posted by GizmoDVD

Wish it was bigger. I'd love to get a 42" for my Mom.

Now, that is a great point GizmoDVD. For someone older that really doesn't want to hassle with all the extra cords and separating different units, then this would be a great deal. In fact, this would be great for my parents as well. My bad and point taken very well.

[GizmoDVD]

Originally Posted by Blckman

Now, that is a great point GizmoDVD. For someone older that really doesn't want to hassle with all the extra cords and separating different units, then this would be a great deal. In fact, this would be great for my parents as well. My bad and point taken very well.

Considering she gets confused on which remote is for the TV and which for the DVD player and which for U-Verse...yes, something that did everything would be fine. The name brand, 720p etc. would not matter as long as it was an all-in-one. And if it tossed in a Blu-ray player so she could watch movies I'd be down. Show me a 42" and I will show you my AMEX.

[Conscript]

I have an Insignia 37" 1080p LCD TV and I can say the quality is fantastic. In the store it looked as good as any other TV side by side, and when hooked up to my Walmart Blu-Ray player for $98 it makes for a great viewing experience on a really tight budget.

It doesn't do very well with 480i or 480p content, honestly, but HD content looks great. It also doesn't have some features like the channel guide (though it will tell you what the current program is). It's also annoying that to go to a DTV channel (like channel 7-1, for example) you have to enter 7 - 1 on the remote (3 buttons to press) as simply typing in 7 will take you to the analog 7.0. I have not found a way to change that and removing the channels from my line up does not work, but it does let me skip them when using the channel up and down buttons.

Other than those minor quips (my collection is all blu-ray now, with only a few, maybe half a dozen, sentimental value standard DVDs in it so I don't care about 480p content) there really isn't anything wrong with the set. I think it was a fantastic value (I paid $549 for the 37" 1080p set).

This TV looks like it will be great for people who want a blu-ray/HDTV experience in their bedroom without a lot of clutter and wires. I wish the TV I got had a blu-ray player built in (even with an extra $100 added to the cost, which is about the same cost as the Walmart player).

To be honest, if they had it in the 37" size I'd sell my current TV and Bluray player and swap for that. Imagine having a full blu-ray experience with nothing more than the power cable hooked up. Amazing.

Okay, well throw in the Ethernet if you want BD-Live and/or Media Streaming from your network and an audio output if you want to use a home theater system, but still, eliminating that blu-ray player frees up space in your entertainment center and at minimum cut at least 2 cables out.

[vinnie97]

^Yes, it does but let's not pretend these TVs offer the pinnacle of video quality.

[DasRaven]

Originally Posted by GizmoDVD

Wish it was bigger. I'd love to get a 42" for my Mom.

This but replace "mom" with "bedroom" for me. I'd even take a 40" model.

[bladou20]

Originally Posted by Conscript

I have an Insignia 37" 1080p LCD TV and I can say the quality is fantastic. In the store it looked as good as any other TV side by side, and when hooked up to my Walmart Blu-Ray player for $98 it makes for a great viewing experience on a really tight budget.

It doesn't do very well with 480i or 480p content, honestly, but HD content looks great. It also doesn't have some features like the channel guide (though it will tell you what the current program is). It's also annoying that to go to a DTV channel (like channel 7-1, for example) you have to enter 7 - 1 on the remote (3 buttons to press) as simply typing in 7 will take you to the analog 7.0. I have not found a way to change that and removing the channels from my line up does not work, but it does let me skip them when using the channel up and down buttons.

Other than those minor quips (my collection is all blu-ray now, with only a few, maybe half a dozen, sentimental value standard DVDs in it so I don't care about 480p content) there really isn't anything wrong with the set. I think it was a fantastic value (I paid $549 for the 37" 1080p set).

This TV looks like it will be great for people who want a blu-ray/HDTV experience in their bedroom without a lot of clutter and wires. I wish the TV I got had a blu-ray player built in (even with an extra $100 added to the cost, which is about the same cost as the Walmart player).

To be honest, if they had it in the 37" size I'd sell my current TV and Bluray player and swap for that. Imagine having a full blu-ray experience with nothing more than the power cable hooked up. Amazing.

Okay, well throw in the Ethernet if you want BD-Live and/or Media Streaming from your network and an audio output if you want to use a home theater system, but still, eliminating that blu-ray player frees up space in your entertainment center and at minimum cut at least 2 cables out.

After I burned through 2 Insignia portable dvd players, I decided to stick with more established brands. The Insignia blu ray player has a terrible reputation and series of reviews on the Best Buy website. I have seen the sets in the store and was not blown away by them. They seemed like a fine unit for the money though.
On a somewhat unrelated note, Wal-Mart makes a Blu-Ray player for $100?

[The_Doctor]

Originally Posted by bladou20

On a somewhat unrelated note, Wal-Mart makes a Blu-Ray player for $100?

They did. A Funia clone. Profile 1.1 - MG500MGX or NB530MGX.
Probably not all that different form the Insignia.

They were on sale for while for $98, but apparently didn't fly off the shelves as expected and a few weeks ago they jack the price back up to the $140s

[bladou20]

Thanks for the link. I had not seen that.

[Conscript]

Depends how you define pinnacle of video quality. I think the TV looks fantastic and displays HD content as well as anything else I've seen. I am sure if you approach them at a store with the thought of "these TVs are crap" then they will look bad to you. If you approach them with the idea that they might be good, they will look better. The power of suggestion is quite powerful.

Bladou20, anecdotal evidence is also a wonderful thing. You may have burned through 2 portable DVDs from Insignia and as such assume it is not a reliable brand, but to be honest I can find someone who can give me a horror story for every brand in the world including the most premium ones.

If you don't trust Insignia for portable DVD players, that's fine, but also do realize that different products for the same brand can be built by different factories with different standards too. There is no one "insignia factory" where all their products come from.

A 2 year warranty is included with the Insignias, so should you run into trouble you will be taken care of. That is much better than the standard 1 year warranty on TVs from other manufactures. I'd love it if my Insignia TV lasted as long as my old Toshiba LCD (6 years at the time I sold it, but it did require one repair which was covered under an extended warranty).

But I also paid $2200 for my 26" LCD Toshiba 6 years ago, and I paid $549 for the Insignia today. My expectations are, therefore, a bit lower and if it breaks down on me 3 or 4 years from now I'll just buy a new TV. By that time, given how quickly prices are dropping I'd be able to get an equivalent TV for $200 probably.

I didn't realize Walmart jacked up the price on the player, I guess I am lucky I paid only $98 for it. So far it has played everything I've thrown at it including many older titles and some of the newest releases (like Crank 2 a couple weeks back). I've had 0 problems with any of them and I've seen quite a few thanks to some good deals as well as my brother's Blu-ray Netflix subscription.

The reason it was not flying off the shelves, IMO, is that the general public is still not sold on blu-ray. It is still in the early adaptor stage of its product lifecycle, though its reaching the mass adoption stage. My guess is another year or two and it will get there, and then it will really take off. With that, Blu-ray players will drop to $59 or $69 where current standard DVD players are, and movies will drop to where DVDs are today ($19 for new releases, $10-$15 for catalog titles).

All in all, going back to the original topic, I think these 32" LCDs with Bluray built in offer a fantastic value for anyone looking for a clutter-free Blu-ray experience in a smaller room (since let's face it, unless you have a tiny living room or a studio apartment, you won't be making a 32" your primary living room TV). My guess is it will be great for the 18-25 crowd, especially those going to college.

[vinnie97]

The pinnacle of video quality includes an extreme contrast ratio affording unbeatable black levels and thus giving a picture more pop, accurate grayscale and color reproduction (giving a sense of realism, with the former helping to give the impression of a 3D image), good motion resolution, proper 24p framerate support and much more. There are actual benchmarks that measure all these items and TVs that score higher in these areas generally provide video quality that surpasses that of lesser brands and performers. This is shown in the publicized shootouts. I've owned the Syntax Olevia series of LCD and they're passable but there really *are* objective differences between displays. Also, comparing in-store is not the best gauge (due to the lighting plus the quality of the video signal being fed to the TV, not to mention the inability to adjust PQ settings) and I take great offense to your implied suggestion that the Insignia models look just as good as a Pioneer Elite Kuro Plasma.