The Short Form DELL.COM / 800-915-3355 / $2,599 / 51.875 x 28 x 3.25 IN / 99 LBS Plus •Crisp HDTV and DVD pictures. •Natural color and contrast. •Excellent built-in HDTV tuner. •Clear, detailed onscreen menus. Minus •Dark gray blacks via S-video inputs. •Onscreen guide lists wrong times. Key Features •HDMI, DVI, VGA, and component-video inputs •1,024 x 768-pixel resolution •Built-in HDTV tuner with onscreen guide •Custom picture memory for each input Test Bench After calibration, the Dell's grayscale tracking was excellent. A -25% green channel error in the color decoder was apparent only on component video - HDMI was perfect.

Dell Dude, you're getting a Dell...plasma When computer companies first made the jump into the business of selling plasma TVs, I cast a cold eye on the occasion. Weren't those guys busy enough already supporting the billions of PCs out there with their daily virus updates and blue screens of death? But after receiving Dell's W4200 plasma HDTV, I started to warm up a bit. The W4200 looks a lot better than your average low-price plasma sold through PC channels. Staring at it, my thought was: I wouldn't mind hanging this set on my wall.

Other things that add to the Dell's warm and fuzzy appeal are its built-in HDTV tuner, wide array of back-panel inputs, and well-designed onscreen menus and remote control. The remote has a substantial feel and echoes the TV's black/silver look. The buttons on its top half are backlit, and the bottom ones are spaced far enough apart that you can easily locate a specific control in the dark. Pressing the Size button calls up a list of five display modes, each of which can be accessed when watching HDTV.

SETUP AND USE After I connected my antenna, the Channel Add feature of the Dell's digital tuner successfully added the full lineup of digital broadcasts in my area. The set's onscreen program guide posted the titles of upcoming shows for digital channels, but it unfortunately listed program start times incorrectly - a problem Dell says it is working on. When you press the Display button on the remote, you see a screen that lists the digital channel ID (WNBC-HD, for example), signal strength, and both the digital channel number and its analog "alias" (Channels 67 and 2, for example).

Adjusting the Dell's picture was a snap thanks to a Personal picture preset that could be customized for each video input. The Normal setting gave the most natural and accurate picture of the four color-temperature presets, but shadows and skin tones looked a bit reddish, so I made adjustments in the set's service mode. The only real picture problem I saw was that blacks looked too bright via the S-video input, which translated to limited shadow depth when watching movies or TV.

PICTURE QUALITY To check out the Dell's picture quality, I revisited The Aviator on DVD. In the movie-premiere scene, colors showed a distinct Technicolor punch without looking noisy or lurid. This made it easy to see slight variations in hue between Kate Hepburn's lipstick and the red velvet curtains in the background. In this and other scenes, skin tones looked balanced, neither too orange nor too red. Meanwhile, details in the partygoers' black tuxedos and other dark images showed off the Dell's strong shadow rendition.

HDTV programs like Six Feet Under also looked very good. The sunlit scenes that opened one episode had strong contrast - highlights on the surface of a trailer home looked entirely natural, and I could see fine gradations in the shadowy inner branches of the surrounding trees. Picture detail was very good, which helped bring to life the interior shots of an old woman's ceramic-frog collection and a finely textured wall-hanging next to it.

BOTTOM LINE The entry of computer makers into HDTV space hasn't been a totally happy affair, but with Dell's W4200 things are looking up. This set's nice styling, strong features, solid picture quality, and reasonable price add up to a winning package.