ILO-3200 32 in. TV

Ilo is a house brand of Wal-Mart and is used for many different models made by many different companies. One must not confuse that there are two TVs with very similar model numbers, the 32HD which is a more current model and the 3200 which is the old model. Many of the reviews here are of the 32HD. The old model (3200) was probably discontinued sometime early in 2006 and replaced by the 32HD which may have been made by an entirely different company (there not much, if anything in common between the two). The old 3200 lack an HD tuner and is merely and HD monitor. It is very possible that a given store may still have some of the old ones in stock depending on how fast they sell. This review is of the 3200, so none of the facts pertain to the 32HD.

I've had this TV for over a year (purchased November 2005) for $700. I knew getting into it that it was a cheap LCD monitor but exactly what I needed for the bedroom. I have hooked it up to various sources including an HD box, Laserdisc player, DVD player and DVD recorder using component, composite and SVHS inputs, I've never had the need to use the HDMI or VGA inputs.

The native resolution of this panel is 1366x768, 12ms response time, with 500:1 contrast ratio. These were OK numbers in their day dated looking by today's standards. Despite this it looks nowhere near as bad as those numbers would imply. The TV has a very crisp and detailed picture, with good black levels and it responds fine to fast motion, just goes to show that numbers are not everything. The TV has a very wide viewing angle which is a plus if using in a livingroom, so wide that the picture is watchable if you are looking at it almost directly from the side. A myriad of picture adjustments are possible, including color temps, backlight level, and even separate levels if using the VGA inputs for a computer. Some of the inputs have separate picture memories which comes in handy with separate sources.

Sound on the original version consisted of two way speakers (a woofer and tweeter) and was very dynamic, with an equalizer which allowed you to customize to your tastes. One of the better sounding TVs I've heard.

The TV's picture quality is good from all sources, and does not look to bad with SDTV either. It will sync PAL frequency signals from a DVD player so if you have PAL DVDs and run them into the component inputs you get a very nice picture as opposed to a garbled mess. The TV despite the resolution of the panel looks it's best when fed a 1080i signal.

I'd speculate that despite this being the earlier variation of this set, there were probably fewer companies producing the actual 32 inch LCD panels at the time that this was made and it was sourced from a better source than newer production stuff. This set does not experience many of the problems I've noticed in more recent budget LCDs, such as banding and uneven brightness of the backlight.

This set does have disadvantages, it runs a lot warmer than the current production stuff. The inputs are inconveniently located in several different locations in the back as opposed to one strip, though they are hidden behind little covers so its a give and take type of deal. The clock gains time (they all might not however at the time I got this it was still common to see a good number of dead pixels in a panel of this size, so I kept mine for the fact that the panel was good).

Despite this set being a tad outdated, if you're scraping the barrel for a bargain basement set, check to see if your Wal-Mart has the old Ilo 3200 floating around you'll be stuck getting an outboard box for your HD but probably not have the known issues such as lockups that the successor model has.

update 7/5/2007:
I've recently hooked up a Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player to this TV via HDMI. It handled the HDMI perfectly, no handshake issues with the HDMI despite the fact that the TV is approx. 1 1/2 years old now. The picture looks better than it has through any other source. Based on this I'd expect the TV would look excellent through VGA input as well. I may try this in the future as I believe I can get my video card to output something close to the 1366x768 resolution of the panel. I'm very impressed as to what can be displayed by thea truly good HD source.

update 11/01/2008
Hooked up a Sony BDP-S1 earlier this year. Still running strong at nearing the 3 year mark. Actually it doesn't look bad compared to modern LCDs. I see a lot more flashlighting and lack of backlight uniformity with more modern LCDs, especially at this size. Anyway no issues to report, still looks as good as when I bought it.