Philips' 42-inch Essence LCD TV, which the company announced over the summer, is finally due to be available in stores. The hook for this model seems to be its easy wall-mount solution: besides making the set a light 35 lbs., Philips is including a "smart" leveling bracket, designed to make setting up the TV a one-man job. The 1.5-inch-thick display uses a separate break-out box for its power and input connections, so the screen itself only has a single wire running to it. You can hide the box away out of sight to reduce the appearance of cable clutter; it accepts up to three HDMI inputs and outputs audio to a separately-mountable sound bar.

The 1080p set claims some impressive specs, including a two-millisecond refresh time and a 66,000:1 contrast ratio. That number looks inflated with the help of a dynamic backlight, extending the screen's contrast range by changing the intensity of the set's light source. Although a higher actual contrast ratio would be preferable, it's not the sort of deal-breaker that should turn you away from the set. The important thing is to check out the display in a store and see if it looks good to you. The Essence, model 42PES0001, should be available this month for around $3,000.

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