I bought this set at the recommendation of a friend of mine "in the industry". Evidently NEC is not a big brand name like LG, Sony or Samsung, but it quite popular as an OEM provider of plasma to supler-luxury brand names like Runco, DWIN, Tandberg, Louwe, etc.

The panel itself is non-descript: neutral and sort of boring. Good news (I guess) is that it fits in in any decor or environment. The bezel is black so it absorbs ambient light...I think it makes the picture appear to have a bit more contrast and obviously doesn't make any difference at night.

I primarily watch HD shows, mostly movies on broadcast, satellite and Blu-Ray. Colors on the set are truly awesome with great, realistic details. The specs say 1024 levels o9f grey and 1.2 billion possible colors (10-bit) so there way little to no perceptible artifacts (sometimes called the "amoeba" effect or "paint-by-numbers" effect.

Also, little to no "blocking" or pixelation from fast-motion video. The scaler in the unit is OK. You'd benefit from an outboard scaler *IF* you can match the panel's native resolution. With sports and fast-moving video there is a small bit of block artifacts, but that can come from high MPEG compression rates on the satellite. Hard to say.

Overall I've been impressed with the panel. I got a great deal on it ($4000) nine months ago but lately I've seen it for half that price (http://www.bestbuypcs.com).