The Short Form MAXENTUSA.COM / 888-373-4368 / $2,000 ($2,500 LIST) / 49.625 x 28.5 x 3.75 IN / 98.125 LBS Plus •Low price for a plasma HDTV. Minus •Noisy picture quality. •No analog or digital tuner. Key Features •DVI, VGA, and component-video inputs •1,024 x 768-pixel resolution •PIP (picture-in-picture) Test Bench Grayscale tracking on the Maxent was poor, explaining why skin tones had a red/orange tint despite a relatively accurate Low color-temperature preset. Test patterns revealed a degree of picture noise and some softening of detail with HDTV signals.

Maxent At 2k, it's almost a giveaway The Web is filled with lots of things, including plasma TV deals that seem too good to be true. But when we confirmed that Best Buy was selling $2,000 plasma HDTVs from a company called Maxent, we had to check one out. With its black screen border and silver case, the MX-42XM11 shares some design elements with Dell's plasma. It also comes with a reasonably sturdy plastic stand and separate side-mounted speakers.

The Maxent's lack of an analog or digital tuner means you'll need your own cable, satellite, or off-air tuner/decoder box to watch TV. In contrast to the Dell, which got a shout-out for its onscreen menu system, this set's menus get a thumbs-down. The problem is speed: After you press buttons on the remote control, the sub-menus take a painful second or two to render.

The remote control lacks a backlit keypad, but the buttons are big and easy to locate. Direct video inputs (nice!) and the Wide button for selecting display modes are hidden beneath a sliding door - an unfortunate location since it makes the frequently used input buttons hard to get at. Five display modes are available, two of which (4:3 and 16:9) can be used for HDTV.

SETUP The first review sample Maxent sent had all sorts of problems. Adjusting picture controls for one input affected the picture on other inputs, the set wouldn't display any standard 480i signals, and using the DVI input with my digital cable box resulted in a momentary copy-protection error message every time I changed channels. Fortunately, a second sample TV had none of these issues. The Low color-temperature setting delivered pictures that were reasonably close to NTSC spec except for a moderate blue-green bias in shadows.

PICTURE QUALITY Checking out the Maxent's picture on DVDs, I noticed a degree of "shredding" visible as breakup on fine diagonal and vertical lines. In the black-tie premiere from The Aviator, shadow depth was solid, and a decent amount of detail was visible in the tuxedos, but the highly saturated colors looked soft and noisy. The skin tones of partygoers also lacked subtlety, tending toward a uniform, reddish-orange hue. And in the shots of Hughes zipping through the sky on a test flight, the clouds had a rough, patchy quality that obliterated much of their detail.

HDTV programs like Six Feet Under looked slightly soft, but they had punchy contrast. For example, in a shot of the trailer home against a desert sky, the TV conveyed the intense quality of the desert light. And though the Maxent tripped up on "Technicolor" scenes from The Aviator, it did a good job here of conveying the less vivid tones of the ceramic-frog collection. But the reddish skin tones that I saw on the DVD also extended to HDTV.

BOTTOM LINE Maxent's MX-42XM11 plasma TV sells at an amazingly low price, but its limited features and relatively mediocre picture make it something less than a great deal. This is definitely a situation where spending a few more bucks will get you more.