Fireplace fire makes a nice reflection in the large non working black screen.

Durability. Quality in workmanship. Education in the technicians required to provide repair.

I purchased our RCA MM52100 in 12/ 27/01. I even bought the extended warrenty. Almost immediately it was sent to the authorized repair shop in our area due to it turning itself on and off. It was not fixed the first time, sent back and kept another 2 months. This unit has never worked properly. Yesterday it turned itself off and will not come back on. When I try to power it on, it will stay on only a second, then go on and off for a second each time for @ four times. It will not power back on. I expected much better from a unit I paid so much of my hard earned money for. And the "authorized" service technicians were obviously clueless as to the knowledge in how to fix my problem. I highly discourage the future purchase of an RCA product.

Customer Service

Totaly unreliable

reliability is poor

remote and automatic shutdowns for no apparent reason Fair deal rating would be approiate if the unit worked all the time

MM52110 manufactured 4/2001 purchased 6/2001 nice unit but about 9 monys out started turning off buy itself. Did not think much of it as stray ir can do that. But 5 months after the 1 year warrannty is up this does a hard shutdown i the middle if the night. Still waiting for the results of the Authorized service center. The Place of purchase REX Lake city Florida told me they only repair products they they sell an externed warratny on and now they tell me that the unit I opurchsed is expected to need service within 3 to 5 years after purchse and thet is why they sell the extended warranty. I have a Toshiba that is 10 Plus years old and still playing ie 48 inch projection. Big mistake buying the RCA unit especially Form REX ie no serice. I will let you know if RCA/ Thompson does anything.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba, Zenith

VGA and component inputs

Poor reliability

After years of owning Sony and Panasonic sets with no problems, I bought this unit "on sale" at Circuit City as a store display. After 1-1/2 years of use as a regular TV, I added an RCA High-Definition receiver recently. I then quickly discovered that the VGA and composite video inputs did not process the signal properly (bad convergence). This was ultimately diagnosed as a bad component after discussion between the video repair service and Thompson. RCA/Thompson's response to my plight (that why would a 1 year warranty limit apply to a component that could not have been discovered by me within a year) was that "a 1 year warranty is a 1 year warranty". This will now cost me $355 to fix on my own, and I have still waiting for the repair after 3 weeks because Thompson took a week to diagnose the problem and I am still waiting for the part to arrive. Consumer beware: the initial cost is lower than Sony or Panasonic, but the future costs will probably exceed the other brands' costs.

Interlaced and Progressive (new speak for non-interlaced) scanning all in the same unit, fantastic picture, plenty of inputs, even has USB ports on front and back.

Even though I know there's not much that can be done about it, the one weakness I can think of about is how the jack panel is very low on the rear of the chasis. After all this while of using it, this is the only hassle I can honestly remark on.

What can I say about this unit that would do it justice?
!!! IT TOTALLY KICKS SOME SERIOUS ASS !!!
There, I think that will work. :-)

I have to explain how I ended up with this unit in the first place. When Gateway decided to no longer sell its Destination Big Screen PC at the end of 1999, I decided to build my own computer. The Destination PC I have has a 31" monitor. I knew that the biggest expense of the next PC system was going to be the monitor because I knew that I wanted to go big if not bigger than the 31" I already had.

As my web research got under way I quickly realized that the market for big screen PC was by no means flooded. Yes, there were some good options in the 36" category, but I still kept looking until one day my searching brought to my attention some LCD rear projected displays and a site called www.digitalconnection.com was the place.

Actually, I was unknowingly getting into the Home Theater arena, but it's all good in the end and the knowledge I gained from the past year is a good thing.

Anyway, I emailed them explaining what I was trying to do and asked if they had any suggestions. Kei (pronounced Kay) at DC suggested I take a look at the RCA MM52100 that was unveiled at the Comdex show in Nov.1999 to be released in the 1st quarter of 2000. She said it had PC connections that were treated just as any other monitor would treat the signals. This means the display was not taking the PC's video signal and converting it to an interlaced scan. That would not be acceptable. It also was digital and was not a wide screen unit. I did not want a wide screen because I knew I would be using this unit 90% of the time as a PC monitor. Even if I were using it as a Home Theater, the wide screen is not necessary. This unit is big enough that even letter boxed movies from the DVD look good.

By the way, that is another reason to buy this unit. It can handle a Progressive Component output DVD player without converting the signal. The picture brings tears to my eyes sometimes it's so damn unbelievable.

Other than it weighs a ton (just under 300 lbs), but luckily it's on wheels, I love this unit. I am so damn glad I decided to go with it. You have to remember one other thing about this unit, because of its weight, shipping and local delivery is going to cost. It cost me $250 bucks to ship this from California to Pennsylvania. Keep this mind when pricing one out. Some sites and stores are not saying this until you specifically ask about it.

Here's my Multimedia A/V system as it stand now:
- Yamaha HTR-5250 receiver (see it for review)
- Yamaha CDC-575 CD player (see it for review)
- Yamaha EQ-70 equalizer (reviewed???)
- Toshiba SD-6200 Progressive DVD player (see it for review)
- Pinnacle Gold Tower front speakers (see it for review)
- BIC Venturi bookshelf front speakers (reviewed??)
- Pinnacle AC-Widescreen center (see it for review)
- Advent 575 rear speakers (if reviewed I will write one)
- RCA MM52100 52" Digital Hi-Res rear projection display
(reviewed above) PC monitors should all be this BIG!!!

Thanks for letting me go a bit long on this review, but I think it's important since buying this takes a commitment to spend this much money. I obviously did not have the benefit of this web site (since I am the first review on this) to help me. To be honest, as it turned out, I was one of the first of a short list of people to get this unit that early in the year (May 2000). Many thanks to Kei at www.digitalconnection.com for being very honest and not pressuring me into buying this unit. She tried to answer all my questions and concerns very honestly.

If you buy one you will be very happy with it.

Similar Products Used:

Persoanlly none, other than seeing others big screens and trust me, this is not your fathers rear projection of just a few years ago.

Excellent picture from DirecTV, DVDs and as computer monitor. Enough inputs to handle any application.

The advertised 160 degree viewing area is stretching it a bit...but overall a great picture from NEARLY any angle.

If you use this model as a monitor, the inputs are limitless and the quality far exceeds any other projection TV I saw on the Circuit City floor. I have plugged in my DirecTV, DVD, Nintendo 64, laptop computer, digital camera and everything else I could find, all at the same time! The quality is excellent. And for a medium sized living room, the 52" screen is perfect. When connected to a Dolby Digital receiver, it's almost like being in a theatre. Almost. I live in an area where HDTV broadcasting will be a while in coming, so I haven't bought the companion set top converter yet, but if what I've seen so far is any indication, it should be razor sharp. You couldn't find a more versatile and impressive projection digital tv. Shop around for the best price, though. Prices can vary by $500 on the net and from showroom to showroom.

Similar Products Used:

None

Great picture, lots of inputs, easy setup, handles all video applications, Price is right

The remote, screen glare, Problem with red hues

The picture on the TV is excellent. Could not see any lines with digital cable. The color is excellent when the settings are adjusted. Normal settings tend to show more red then expected. However this can be adjusted quickly.

Glare is an issue with this screen. Be sure to use it in a dark room. Place your lighting so it cannot be directly reflected by the screen.

I use TIVO with the tv, so I'm used to the tivo remote. The RCA remote is not very user friendly. It is also bulky.

The picture from TIVO is very good.

When I purchased the set, RCA included a free progressive DVD player (RCA 600P). This is RCA's top of the line player (a 500 dollar value). This player and the TV provided an excellent picture. I have not seen any better. Everytime I watch this combo, I'm still blown away.

Thier are a ton of inputs for this set. You can use your PC, Game set, TIVO, VCR, DVD player, Cable, and Satellite and still have more connects to spare. Just amazing.

I highly recommend the set. The price is right. For me it was $1700 and a free DVD player. You can't beat that.

Wow...a 52 inch PC monitor to surf the web, read email, play PC games, watch movies, do my finances, trade stocks, play MP3s, videoconference and, oh yeah, watch TV in my living room from my sofa...too cool.

None really. Minor improvements would be appreciated. The refresh rate is only 60Hz, the remote requires you to cycle through the inputs to get to and from the TV and VGA, the remote is not backlit, the 10W speakers are nice but not great, and the corners of the VGA are not as sharp as the rest of the screen. Oh yeah, no center channel, no true surround sound, darn.

I was tired of the "home stereo lifestyle", all those components, all those cables, all those wires. I knew I could replace all those components with a PC if I could find a TV with SVGA or better (some tvs only have VGA, 640x480, which is not acceptable, most tvs dont even do that, Svideo connection is as good you can go with a standard TV). The easiest part was pitching this to my wife who hates my "stereo-farm" as much as I do.

I looked at the 52100, liked it, checked out the RCA site and saw the new 52110 was coming out with some minor improvements. I read the reviews here and shopped for price.

My shopping experience was mostly online, Yahoo, CNET, etc. Finally Best Buy offered it for $1899, I bit and got burned. They promised delivery the following week and sent me an email the day before saying they would miss the date. They put the onus on me to call them, then I had to wait for a callback to set up a date...I called Circuit City and they gave me next day delivery. Sorry Best Buy.

Delivery was fine, two guys, $35 bucks. Setup was pretty simple, a VGA cable to my TV, a LAN connection, and I was surfing. All the features work well except for the Gold Plus which I have to keep playing with. No PIP unless you use your VCR.

TV picture is marvelous. They claim 160 degrees give or take a few. Color is brilliant. Some shows look too dark. Digital cable is no problem even with my Win TV running in mini-mode on the PC. No problems with sunlight, the picture is really bright.

Sound is RCA 10W pair with SRS (simulated surround). Not bad, but not great, so I'm getting a Cambridge Soundworks system and hooking it to my external speaker jack on the tv. Buying 4 sats and 1 sub on Ebay where hifi.com dumps their refurbished/returned speakers. Saving a couple hundred there and should have a tremendous sound.

I'm using the Silitek wireless keyboard SK-7100 which is infrared. I tried the Logitech and other RF (radio frequency) keyboard and mice combos and the IR works best. This has a pointing device on it, very light, fast and accurate. Only $35.

My PC is a black box to match the TV. I shopped online and ended up at AdvancedTech.com for the black case, motherboard, chip and Toshiba 12x DVD combo. I added a soundblaster live with 5.1, a Win TV from Hauppage, an AOPEN GEForce card with 32 Megs DDR, and a 40 gig hardrive at 7200 rpms. The Toshiba 12 is noisy when it spins. The Abit motherboard required me to flash the BIOS to take advantage of my AMD Athlon Tbird 1.0 gig CPU. If you buy from AdvancedTech, have them build it for you. I had trouble with the floppy drive cable and the eject button on the Toshiba was missing. I was pleased with them overall. The case has a "hydraulic" cover to hide the drives which is very cool. Also, they packed it really well and it arrived with no bruises.

Also looking at getting a new videocam...Canon makes the VC line with remote pan/tilt/zoom using IR or a PC control for $1,000... Also looking at getting HAL software to run my x10 devices via voice command....$500. Currently running the X10 program that automates all that via the serial port connector. Cool stuff.

If you need more feel free to email me at curt_atlanta@yahoo.com.

Similar Products Used:

I looked at a 16:9 Panasonic that had VGA and saw a Samsung that did as well. Also, RCA makes a direct view 16:9 that handles VGA. Also looked at Princeton Graphics for direct view up to 36 inch and XGA. Those were pretty nice. I also tried a "VGA Converter" on my old TV...dont waste your time, they actually look worse even with SVideo jacks.

Appearance; ease of set up; input/output connections

Reliability

I bought the Proscan PS52800 which is the dressed up, slightly upscale version of the RCA MM52100. The features are identical and the video projection is the same in both units. The Proscan is better looking in my opinion having more black finish than gray and the stereo components internal to the unit are slighty upgraded (but who cares if you're going Home Theatre...).

The unit enjoys the same excellent reputation as the more popular RCA cousin and on first set up I was particularly impressed with the ease of set up and tuning. After reading dozens of audiophile articles that lectured on the tricks of fine-tuning a RPTV, I was pretty intimidated, but the Proscan sets up straight out of the box with a programming guide that is close to brain-dead easy. I did find that reference to the manual was helpful to get clear on what brightness, contrast, sharpness, warmth and all those video terms really mean, but basically, follow your eyeballs on set up and if the picture looks good to you, you've probably tuned it right.

Now for the horrible frustration and customer-service hell that followed. Within days of the TV arriving, I noticed that it intermittently powered off all by itself, then turned back on a few seconds later. Sort of irritating. The problem got worse in terms of frequency (up to 3 times per 30-minute program) so I called the warranty number and was referred to an authorized RCA/Proscan service shop called AAB Tech Electronics, in Toronto. They sent over a mutton-head who had never seen the unit in his life and spent the better part of an hour peering into the back of the unit while listening to (his boss's?) directions on the phone as to how to diagnose it. He ultimately pulled out a huge mother-board-looking assembly about the size of a PC computer without the case. He took it out to his truck (swinging it like a lunch pail with no anti-static protection or wrapping) and buggered off for a week. He returned a week later with a replacement part for the one he took and spent another hour installing it while getting coached over the phone as to what screwdriver to use. The problem remained. More guts yanked out of the unit and off again. Two weeks later, returns with more parts, installs them and says "yer all fixed" and whistles off. I try the TV out and the picture is totally FUBAR. White lines all over the screen, horrible grainy texture, all dark colours running together and giant vertical bars showing. But the intermittent powering off was indeed fixed. I call the dude back and show him the picture which is close to unwatchable. He looks at me like "I don't see no problem, but I'll play around with it anyhow." He does, says it's fixed and beetles off (this is visit #4 and 30 days after the original call). No improvement to picture. I call Thompson Consumer Electronics (Canada) head office and get to the national marketing manager who refers me to another repair shop called Mazotta Electronics. Nice guy named Giulio comes over and is shocked at how poorly the TV is working. He says "you could fiddle the settings all you want on this but it ain't gonna work. The whole calibration internal to the unit is off and can only be set up in the shop." He tells me that the AAB Tech guys followed none of the proper repair procedures such as using a portable signal generator to test the picture and also tells me that RCA procedures mandate a factory re-calibration anytime boards are replaced. I'm stunned. He sends movers over to take the unit out of my house and back to Mazotta for inspection and re-calibration. They call back in a week with bad news. Several boards are fried inside the unit and one of the video projection units inside is damaged by (apparent) AAB Tech incompetence. They order a whack 'o new parts from Thompson. From here, I go into a week by week series of delays as parts take forever to come to Canada by truck (and everybody loves to blame 9-11 for the slow delivery across the border...like I need another reason to hate Osama's guts!). The parts that do make it up are 3 times defective and more parts are ordered. This chews up TWO MORE MONTHS (no fault of Mazotta, who says, they are helpless waiting for Thompson RCA to deliver good parts.)

I will spare my patient readers the voice-mail, push-button hell that RCA customer service puts you through as they assign well-meaning-but-useless clerks to track your "case" and tell you what they can't do to hurry anything up.

It is December 14 at this writing, and I am 3 months without my TV, waiting for more parts.

My conclusion and advice? ALL of the new generation digital HDTVs are extremely complex and sophisticated devices. They all look fabulous in the showroom. Take my advice: DO NOT sink over $2 grand of your hard-earned dough on one of these puppies without asking for the number of the authorized warranty repair shop. Call them and ask them a) if they have remote diagnostic equipment on a laptop for on-site calibration. If they don't, any repair to your TV will necessitate them taking it out to their facility, vs. repairing it in your home. b) how many units have they seen or repaired and are they trained? Don't let the monkeys from AAB Tech (or similar) screw with your investment. You'd be as smart to let your 9-year old kid fix your car's brakes. I get the distinct impression that even in large cities like Toronto, these high-end units are rare, so the average shmo repair shop has never seen one.

BUYER BEWARE.

Similar Products Used:

None

Connections. USB, 2 x SVGA and the basics like any other HDTV ready TV.

Video from a VCR, DVD Player, Cable is not line doulbed and you can barely see the scan lines. but it still looks GREAT! Getting the HDTV tuner will fix this problem.

Using it as a monitor:
In windows 98, the TV acts like a plug and play monitor. Windows will detect it as an RCA 800x600 monitor. 640x480 is also supported. The picture quality in either mode is great. Text is easily readable and games are phenominal. Unlike a reguler monitor, if you go into a resolution that is not supported, such as 1024x768, the TV does not blank out like a regular computer monitor. Instead it will display starting from the upper left hand corner and show 800x600 of the image and the rest will be cut off of the bottom and the right. Which is great for games, becuase it lets you go into their set up and change to 800x600 or 640x480. It looks great in a brightly lit room, just like a tube TV. I am amazed at the quality of the image and love the versatility of it as a monitor.

Similar Products Used:

none.

Problem encountered with this set:
Incompatibility issue with component video with several progressive scan DVD players. The picture aspect ratio gets squashed to a 2:1 ratio, resulting in white bars across the top of the screen and frequent unpredictable blackouts.
RCA knows about this problem and is sending my dealer updated parts for repair.
Just be warned if you plan to buy this set used without warrantee.

Still an awesome set...the newer model MM52110 supposedly has fixed this problem and added HD component inputs.