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Review 1 of 1
Price Paid:
$1200.00
from Visual Apex, Seattle Summary:
Awesome product for the money. Careful shoppers can find this monitor for about 1/2 list price online. You'll need to spend an additional $150-200 for a table stand or wall mount, as this display is meant for professional, not home use, and doesn't include mounting hardware. I also bought the HDMI adapter board to give me a total of three HD inputs (component and PC-VGA are built-in).
After setting up, I set the TV to display at a much-reduced brightness level and ran it that way for about 100 hours to "break it in," as this was recommended for plasmas in a number of HD forums. Even at reduced settings, in a darkened room the clarity and richess of the color was great! A few weeks later (when I couldn't stand it anymore), I used AVIA's calibration disk to individually set HDMI, component and S-VHS inputs. They actually needed very little compensation to get as optimal a picture as one can get with consumer settings. Now the picture quality is that much better, with bright white levels, deep blacks and accurate RGB across all the inputs.
I've watched DVDs both in 480P and upconverted 720P via HDMI cable and my Denon DV-1920 optical player; the Panasonic handles progressive input very well, with few jaggies evident and no blocky pixelization from the Denon's Faroudja A/D processor (otherwise known as macro-blocking). High-def broadcast (via component cable) from my DirecTV HD receiver looks amazing...you really can see detail in people's faces that you never saw before; strands of hair, skin pores, wrinkle lines, wow. I find that the best demo of HD these days isn't Discovery HD as many think, but actually network news programs such as ABC's nightly broadcasts. People look really real on this TV!
I also record shows from DireecTV to my Series 2 TiVo, and while it is only 480I, the S-Video output looks very good, a compliment to the internal scaler Panasonic uses. In other TVs, notably the Vizio LCD and one Samsung plasma model I tried, SD content looked horribly coarse and dark with lots of banding; the Panasonic seemed to markedly improve on these signals. Until the broadband suppliers start to pump their hundred channels in HD, we'll appreciate the benefit of a TV that decently displays low-res content.
The TV's remote is good but not great. It doesn't light up and doesn't have controls for other devices such as players, etc. But it is a pro model monitor and you'd be better off with a universal remote.
I use a Logitech Harmony 800 (now 880). When I used my remote with a prior TV, the Sharp 37" LCD, it wouldn't properly switch from one input to another because that TV didn't have individual inputs for the different devices, and I had to get up and do it myself; the Panasonic does switch properly. This saved me a bundle since I didn't need to buy a separate switcher or upgrade my receiver to one that had HDMI switching.
Overall, this is an excellent TV that has a few things missing (internal tuners, speakers, built-in stand) in keeping with it's professional heritage, but that's a benefit for anyone with a home theater system and cable or satellite reception anyway. And the cost is truly entry-level for such a high-quality experience. This has to be one of the best values in the midsize flat-panel television class, and highly recommended. Strengths:
Sharp, saturated and accurate color with the best black levels I've seen in a flat panel. Excellent scaler. Simple look, no speakers or plastic overlays to bloat appearance. Individual input selection aids universal remotes. Highly customizable picture settings for each input. Weaknesses:
Relatively low resolution (because it's a plasma) means no true HD; natively displays 720P. Limited inputs, additional ports cost $150-200 per board. No HDMI out of the box. Need BNC-RCA adapters or a BNC+RCA cable to view component video. Not available at most offline retailers. Danger of burn-in with static images from gaming or broadcast bugs ( have not seen this on my display, however it could be a risk for heavy gamers or TV viewers). Similar Products Used:
Vizio VX37L 37" LCD display
Sharp LC-37C40U 37" LCD display
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