great tv with a great value., November 6, 2010

first 1080p tv. bought from bestbuy so as expected we paid about more from what is the listed price here on amazon. out of the box, tv looks ok. i’ve seen lots of tv’s with prettier bezel than this from other brands. but not really a big deal. looking at it from the sides, its obvious that it is abit thicker (maybe 3in) than those upscale lcds or led-lcd’s(note an LED tv is just a LCD tv but with a different back lighting). still its fine for me, i was like “does a TV 2in thicker make our living room that much crowded?” well no. so overall i was pleased with the tv’s aesthetics.

this TV is heavy btw. i just use the tv stand provided. the tv stand doesnt swivel btw. and surprisingly you dont need a swivel stand on this tv. i will explain later. so we pluged all the cable connections. we turned on the tv. did the “first set-up”(if you made a mistakeor want to change something you can just comeback thru the tv menu).

so we finally saw how the tv’s picture looks like in manufacturer setting. the way i could judge the manufacturers settings in general (vivid,normal,cinema,game,custom) i think it is somewhat between OK and terrible. its either too bright, too dark or just doesnt suit to your likes. you really need to take time and play with its settings for a long time.i just tweaked the “custom”picture and left everthing else as it is.

playing with its settings, i thought the settings menu is not as optionated(or finely detailed) as the other high-end tv’s. but its fine with me. at least you can calibrate the options that really makes the difference.

so after hours of calibrating the tv, we finally got over it. and i liked what i saw. the tv’s picture quality is very comparable to those priced way more than this. the viewing angle is plasma like, very wide. the picture looks very good even from the wider angles. you will not even need swivel stands(but still having that would be better). i watched football and basketball on espnhd and it looked great, the colors are very acurate and you can see the benifits of having a 120hz refresh rate(i think a 60hz is ok, but a 240hz imo is just not worth it[thats just me]). HBOhd, hd movies and boxing looks fantastic. HD channels looks awesome and will make you think you got more than you paid for. i cant say the same for SD channels, well its just sd anyways. (i heard bravia with its “bravia engine” improves SD qualities better than this, but idk maybe its just a sony marketting gimmick and like 0 more). sound from this tv was good enough for me, very clear. overall we are very happy with the tv’s performance. like brett favre said on his commercial “you will pay more but you wont get more”. this tv definitely has a great balance between price and picture quality.

other things about this tv:

has 3 HDMI inputs(2 back, 1 side)

a SD card slot(uncommon for many sub 0 tv’s, tho i prefer having a USB port instead of this)

PC input

ole RCA cable input

speakers are at the bottom.

takes about 5secs to show picture after pressing power button.

and oh dont get ripped off by buying those HDMI cables.. for a HDMI cable is actually too much.

so my preliminary review ends here. i will update this in the future..

UPDATE****11-07-2010****

initially gave the tv 5 stars. now its 4. though personally i will give this tv 4.5 stars.(rounding it to 5 seems too much, the tv isnt perfect)

the picture quality is great, i see some moments where i think the color(red) is a bit off, its just i cant seem to find the right balance in the settings. im still in the process of tweaking the settings.

*****12-03-2010*****

i have noticed that at times the feature “Motion pro 4″ is better turned off. and as the other reviewer has stated, it doesnt have a 1:1 pixel mapping on 720p. and as a result of this you can only view about 95% of the picture.. it is like the tv zooms in on 720p images, so you cant see the 5% of the pictures edges.. 5% loss of viewing area may seem unnoticeable, but its not. when i noticed this its a bit surprising how much picture is lost. but with all that said im still very fine with this tv.

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Love the picture, but have had problems with this TV, July 25, 2010

I bought this TV 3 weeks ago. It was very easy to integrate it into an existing home theater set up. The picture was very dark from day 1. I found the filters in the Menu and turned them off and the picture improved nicely. But I found that everything on the screen was too green. No matter how much I fiddled with the available color menu I couldn’t get the green out. I contacted [...] and chatted with one of their CSRs. He walked me through a reset of the TV that wasn’t available in the Menu. It involved pushing the menu button on the remote while holding down the volume down button on the TV, then unplug the TV for a minute or so. This did reset the color in the TV and I now have a beautiful picture. A few days later the TV began shutting it self off every 3 hours. I haven’t used any timers in the menu so I may have to contact Panasonic again. Panasonic was very helpful with my previous color problem so that is a great relief. I am wary of the software for this TV. I also found the Viera link through HDMI that controls linked items like a DVD player can be a problem as it can or will reset the linked item from what it was originally set to on the items remote control. I shut off the Viera link and the problem went away. I have always liked and bought Panasonic products for their reliability and quality but feel somewhat let down by the issues I have had so far.

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Very nice for the price- UPDATE, June 27, 2010

By 

JJ (United States) – See all my reviews

  

I got this to replace a similiar hitachi that I had for just a few days. The hitachi had backlighting issues where the top corners had the flashlight effect and it was very annoying during dark scenes. The hitachi did have a beautiful picture other than this one issue.

This Panny does not suffer from such problems. It has a great picture, same features and very nice sound for built in speakers.

The remote is very solid (compared to the Hitachi’s that felt very cheap). I am very pleased with this purchase. While it’s not an LED I was unable to see a difference at the stores when it was side by side, in fact, I was forcing myself to see a difference in the LED models but was unable too.

You can not go wrong with this TV. I am very picky about my electronics, especially video and this TV has a nice picture, no flaws, no bad pixels, no backlight bleeding etc. I was debating between this and the plasma’s but personally I do not like the picture quality on a plasma. I know they are supposed to be superior but I find the quality to be softer than LCD. Also, on the plasma’s, if you look closely you do see the screen door effect on the screen whereas the LCD’s have a smooth, clear screen. This is jut my opinion and personally prefer LCD vs Plasma but Plasma has it’s share of fans.

edit 7/30

I initially gave this 5 stars but after comparing it more and more to my other tv’s and the one it replaced (Hitachi that had banding issues) the picture is a bit softer than my other HDTV’s. Don’t get me wrong, its clear but not as sharp as the other tv’s no matter how much I played with the settings.

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