Great set, major cable card problems

Bought this set at Costco after I returned a 37" Sharp Aquos for pixilation problems. Set seemed to work fine, except Cablevision had a real tough time setting up some preimum channels through the cablecard. Took about a half dozen visits including supervisors. Still don't know if it is the set, the Cablecard interface, or the Cablecard itself. Cablevision tried changing cards many times.

Finally got it working. The set, however, would occasionally loose it's binding to the Cablecard. You would get a message that indicated that the Cablecard was detected and it would automatically reconnect. It was very intermittent, sometimes happened a few times an hour, sometimes a few times a week.

The other problem, however, was that the set would lock up like a frozen computer. This would happen when you shut the set off, then tried to restart it. It would not restart, either with the remote or the switch on the TV. The only way to get it working was to unplug the set and replug it in. Again, this was intermittent. Happened some days every time you tried to turn it on, sometimes went days without a problem. I had this in a bedroom, mounted on a wall and it meant you had to get out of bed, slip you hand between the narrow space between the set and the outlet and wiggle the plug out and in. A real nuisance.

I called Phillips, and they were no help. The told me to download the software upgrades, which I already did. They did not help.

I returned the set to Costco, figuring it was the set. After going through the same set up problems trying to get the premium channels to work with Cablevision people, to my surprise, the new set had the exact same problem.

I tried running the set without the Cablecard. The set worked fine. It ran for a week with no lockup issues. But I wanted the Cablecard.

Again I called Philips, thought they would be interested that 2 of their sets had the exact same problem. Seemed to be a design problem to me. Tried to talk to the "real" techincal staff, but all I got was customer service who wanted to send a TV repair guy to my home. I figured with 2 set doing the exact same thing, no local TV guy was going to fix it.

So, back to Costco another time. Returned this set. Costco has great return policies -- I love the store. Unfortunately, they did not have another name brand TV of similar size and features, so I got my money back and bought a Sony Bravo 40" elsewhere that I am really happy with.

One final note. The set seemed to work fine without the Cablecard, however there were a few other somewhat annoying quirks. Once you turned the set off, it took about 10-15 seconds before you could restart it. This was all the time. Also, in my opinion, the remote was poorly designed from an ease of use perspective. It was not illuminated. No sleep switch button on the remote -- you had to plow through many layers of menus to get to it. In fact, it seemed that most things that required the menus you had to go through many layers, and the keys were cumbersome -- you couldn't just keep hitting enter -- had to keep pointing then selecting.

Lastly, the set is only 37", however the mounting holes are spaced at the far ends of the back of the cabinet. In order to mount it on my wall, I needed to return mounting bracket I bought that fit TVs up to 40" sets in exchange for one that worked on 60" sets. It was the only one that was wide enough to fit. These wall mount brackets are expensive and this large one cost one hundred dollar more that the smaller bracket just because Philips decided to space the screw holes at the extreme ends.