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I bought a 42 inch ILO last year from Walmart. I am retired and price was the over riding reason for selecting this TV. It cost me $700. This is still a very good price.
I found several issues with the TV and chose to fix them myself rather than return the unit. I just did not have the money to buy the more expensive TVs.
The first problem I had was that the sound out was not variable. I have this TV hooked to an amplifier and 4 large speakers. I was forced to use the stereo remote to adjust sound.
The fix: I went to ebay and bought a $10 transformer that hooked to the speakers inside the TV and then gives you a line output. This is easily done if you have any experience with moding.
Second problem: I discovered that this TV will make a buzzing sound when it is first turned on and is cold. In the upper peninsula winters, our tv room gets cold.
The fix: None at this time. I just leave the set on for a few seconds and it warms up and the problem disappears.
Third problem: When our tv room gets nice and toasty and the TV has been on a couple of hours, the picture will begin to show unpleasant looking artifacts in the dark areas of the picture.
The fix: I installed two muffins fans on the plastic rear cover. These were 12 volt low volume fans. These were mounted over the areas of the TV that got quite warm while powered up. I discovered these areas by running the tv set with the rear removed for several days. You cannot just use screws to mount these fans. They will make too much noise if they are mechanically coupled to the TV. I finally bought some foam insulation tape from Kmart. One side was sticky. I put this tape around each fan hole. I then drilled two holes in the plastic cover the matched up to the screw holes in the fans. I used those little girl stretchable hair loop thingies to fasten the fans in place. I simply put a tie wrap through these thingies. (bear with me, I don't know the name of these things). I threaded one end of the thingies through the back case and through the fans. I then pulled them over and tie wrapped them to the next over fan mounting hole. This made a nice snug fit without any hard connection. These fans were ball bearing fans and the only noise they make now is simply the sound of the air blowing. They are VERY quiet. I ran small speaker wire inside the back cover to supply the 12 volts and fastened it in place with duct tape. The wire comes out the rear bottom of the set. I just used an outlet strip that powers up my stereo, room lamp, DVD recorder, and 12 volt wall wart when I turn on the TV.
If anyone still has a 42 inch ILO and wants to do these mods, I could send pictures. If you keep your 42 ILO I strongly recommend the fan mod because I believe the life span of this TV will be short if it is always run hot. My wife and I really enjoy movies and this set has a very nice picture. We sit close to the TV and so it provides us with a large screen experience with nice bass from four 12 inch woofers.
The fans were four bucks a pieces from All Electronics on the web. We have a nice movie experience on the cheap. I see similar sets now selling at Walmart for over a thousand dollars.
It was a poor design, but is fixable.
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