Panasonic CT-32HX40 Standard Televisions

Panasonic CT-32HX40 Standard Televisions 

DESCRIPTION

PureFlatâ„¢ Picture Tube; HDTV Compatible (1080i, 480p); Progressive Scan Doubler; Progressive Cinema Scan; 1D-1 Detection for Anamorphic DVD; Color Transient Improvement; 3D Y/C Digital Comb Filter

USER REVIEWS

Showing 1-10 of 33  
[Sep 26, 2002]
man02
AudioPhile

Strength:

I cant really remember if had any other than two components.

Weakness:

Its crap and is probably going to break if you use it at all!

When I first saw this tv I Was amazed at the price, It seemed like such a bargin. When I got it home Inoticed a hissing sound coming from the tv whenever it displayed bright images. This was very annoying but I thought nothing of it. About three months later it broke down while I was watching a dvd. Panasonic had it picked up and taken to their authorized service people. I didnt see it again for month and when I did get it back it only lasted two weeks before it whent black again. Since then it has been back a total of five time. I'v called and ask panasonic for a new set, but they insist it is repairable. The store where I bought it was of no help. To this day I'v owned this set for almost a year but have had it for only about for months Oh yeah I forgot the last time they delivered it broke down as the delivery people were leaving. This is the last time I buy anytihg pansonic, and I dont recomend this product to anyone. I am currently pursuing a legal suit against them.

Similar Products Used:

27" JVC D-SERIES you can actually turn it without fear of it breaking.

OVERALL
RATING
1
VALUE
RATING
1
[Sep 03, 2002]
JamesPH
AudioPhile

Strength:

Great picture, multiple inputs. So far no problems, but the set is facing due South, which may have eliminated geometric problems others have commented on.

Weakness:

Manual is weak, but adequate. Remote is large and learning or keeping in mind functions, especially for other units DVD, VCR, A/V Receiver, etc. can be a repeated push and learn exercise.

Great picture. Multiple inputs, just great for home theater use, especially the 2 component inputs, necessary for DVD and HD set top box. I have been told many HDTV's have only one or one only with HD band width. It does take time and experience to adjust to taste and I found that this set is sensitive or exact in displaying programs. I kept trying to get an excellant picture all the time, but found it was not possible on all sources, all of the time. And I found the settings giving the best picture most of the time. Progressive Scan DVD's have been awsome and a recently purchased Hughes DirecTV, off the air, HDTV set top box, on most current movies has been the same. This was a replacement for an 8 year old Sony 30", I believe.

Similar Products Used:

Standard Sony TV.

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Jul 02, 2002]
Nick Nishizaka
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

NONE!!!!

Weakness:

Everything!!! Technical support being rude, quality, terrible remote, too much red, sound quality.

OK. I lost count on how many times I submitted a review on this. After wasting my time 7 or 8 times, having to take the days off from work, they decided that they want to take the TV back to the factory which is what I suggested 7 months ago. They never called back to arrange the pickup. Instead, I called them up and they were complete a**holes about it, telling me that I am never home. I told them I have something called a job and that it costs me money in the form of vacation days when I take days off to deal with idiots like him. So they are going to pick the piece of crap up. I hope they put a sledge-hammer through the useless piece of junk, cuz I can go out and buy me a real TV, a Sony XBR450 from my pocket money. I knew I should have never wasted my money with Panasonic.

Similar Products Used:

Sony XBR450 36", which is lovely. I will buy another to replace this sorry Panasonic TV.

OVERALL
RATING
1
VALUE
RATING
1
[Jun 06, 2002]
R Armstrong
Casual Listener

Strength:

Colour presentation and the number of outlets to plug in to. Good for DVD and VHS is ok.

Weakness:

The remote and the menu design is simplistic and awkward to use. Too much switching back and forth.

I bought the set 2nd hand. I figured for 700 CDN I got a reasonable deal on a set which is not quite 2 years old. I enjoy nature shows and find the colours to be rich and vibrant with a Technicolor feel. Every thing is crisp and I am happy with the quality of the sound. I didn't get a manual and went on line to Panasonic Canada to see if there was something on their website. I wasn't overly shocked to find little if anything. Most of my searches indicated a manual would not be particularly helpful anyways. The action feature is a joke and had I payed full price I would have expected more linear and professional designs in the overall appearance.

Similar Products Used:

JVC 36 inch regular screen and a 32 inch Sony wega flat screen.

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jun 03, 2002]
D Popps
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

good picture

Weakness:

bad geometry, no correction

I've got the geometry problem too. I've been meaning to call the warrenty dept, but after reading these reviews it looks like nothing can be done. I've got a very annoying green wedge running about halfway across the top of the screen. I hope panasonic will read some of these and become convinced that they messed up. If they admit it, maybe they'll figure out how to fix it.

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
3
[Feb 14, 2002]
rushhour
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Great Picture and plenty of inputs

Weakness:

Sound is only okay - but that is why I have a dedicated sound system.

I have used this set for 8 months now and found the picture to be great. Granted if you have a poor signal coming in from the cable company it appears to be magnified - but when the signal is good or you are running a DVD (especially when you are using progressive scan) through the set - the picture is awesome. Like some of the other reviewers I had to take some time to get the color settings right - it does push to the red side. However, I have not had any problems with the geometry issue - hopefully it stays that way. The only real distracton I have noticed is that a small 1 or 2 pixel lines appears on and off at the top and bottom of the picture when it is in wide screen mode. It would be nice if the set had multiple memory options to retain the settings for different inputs - but I can live with this issue. I can''t address the issue regarding Panasonics apparant inabilty to answer and correct the other reviewers problems - since I have not had any yet. However, if the other reviewers are having such a hard time getting things resolved - maybe they should look to legal remadies. The bottom line is that the units do have warranties and Panasonic has to live up to their responsibilty.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Jan 12, 2001]
Shane
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Fantastic picture,line doubler,Auto Anamorphic squeeze

I was looking for an progressive scan capable 32" that would fit in my wall unit(forget the XBR-way too wide) and was amazed to see this one in the showroom before I had even heard about it. Fanatastic picture-bought it on the spot. Paid $2700 CDN taxes inc. I was also considering the 34" widescreen, but chose the 4:3 because all of the programming in my area is still 4:3(even with my digital cable service), I didn't want to ruin a widescreen by burning out the phosphors in the centre(i didn't like the stretch or the small picture that results from viewing 4:3), the 16:9 was almost twice the price, the 4:3 automatically performed the anamorphic squeeze, and even with a 16:9 you still get black bars on all movies with aspect ratios over 1.78:1. The picture after having set it up with avia is incredible, when playing anamorphic dvds on my Sony 9000es in prgressive mode the set automatically performs the squeeze and its really impressive. Also you can select that the set does not squeeze anamorphic material so that the picture is actually stretched to fill the whole screen-interesting but I personally don't like the effect. This set also has a decent line doubler. When comparing the progressive output of my dvd player to the interlace with the line doubler it's surprisingly close with few motion artifacts, but the colour and detail of the progreassive scan is noticeably better. Overall a fantastic set, and for half the price of the 16:9, with most programming still in 4:3, and the set's anamorphic capabilities it was a more logical coice for my viewing habits than the 16:9. Definately the best set I have ever owned.

Similar Products Used:

jvc,phillips

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Aug 02, 2001]
Matt

Strength:

Great picture when viewed from a high quality source like DVD. Line doubler is awesome

Weakness:

Really bad picture when source program is bad. It seems to really bring out alot of inperfections from cable tv broadcasts. Remote is just OK. Manual is a joke.

Excellent picture. Have not purchased a HDTV tuner yet. Comcast doesn't pass HDTV signals yet "bastards". Set needs
to be calibrated by Avia DVD. I did not have any geometric
distorion as others have mentioned. I compared it to others at Best Buy. It looked better than the Sony XBR. All in all it's the best TV for it's price.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
4
[Feb 05, 2001]
Steve
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

HDTV capable, anamorphic squeeze, Flat screen

Weakness:

Manual, speakers, sensitive to signal noise from power cables, anamorphic squeeze does not work with all interlaced DVD players.

This TV is the best bang-for-the-buck HDTV capable set on the market. It provides a beautiful picture for NTSC, DVD and HDTV sources. I have Dish Network and find the line-doubled picture very nice. DVD and HDTV are spectacular. Be aware that the anamorphic squeeze autodetect feature does not work with all DVD players. There is no option to manually select the 16:9 compression(except when it detects a 480p signal). It does need some adjustments out of box because the picture is very dark and there is a bit of a red tint to the picture. I couldn't be happier with what this TV provides for the dollar(especially, compared to the high dollar Sony XBR400). Highly recommended!!

Similar Products Used:

Sony 32XBR400

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Apr 04, 2001]
Braden
Audiophile

Strength:

Fairly good line doubler, 16:9 mode, 2 sets of component video inputs

Weakness:

No direct input access, 16:9 mode cannot be forced, slight red push, some geometry problems

I know it looks like I have problems with this TV, but really, I like it a lot, however, liking a product and being critical are two different things. Since I am using this TV as a moniter only, I will not be commenting on its audio capabilities.

The line doubler in this TV is good. Thus far I have only used NTSC sources (480i only) with this set and found it to be very watchable. DVD's look great, very few digital artifacts. Cable looked less than stellar, but what do you expect from cable. A better signal produced a better picture, but it wasn't close to DVD. Satellite broadcasts (Dish Network) look better than cable, but still exibited some noise. VHS, well, it's bearable if you really want to watch the movie (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc), but looks about like cable as far as noise goes.

The 16:9 mode on this set has two settings, off and Auto. This means that if you feed the TV an anamorphic or 16:9 source in auto mode, you will get a compressed picture (all scan lines in a 16:9 window). This is almost as much of a boost to the quality of a DVD picture as 480i -> 480p. If the set fails to recognize that the source is 16:9 (I've heard of this happening with some DVD players, I don't know which ones though), you can't force it.

The jack pack on this set is great.

2 - wideband component video inputs
3 - A/V Inputs, 2 w/ S-Video
1 - Front A/V Input w/ S-Video
2 - RF Inputs
1 - RF Output
1 - Audio Output
1 - Center Channel Input

The only thing of note here is that both component video inputs can accept 1080i or 480p signals as well as 480i. You can hook up a progressive scan DVD player AND a DTV set top box. On a side note, look at Panasonic's new set-top box (the model number is something like TS-HU20). It has a mode that will convert the scan rates in the following manner...

1080i -> 1080i
720p -> 1080i
480p -> 480p
480i -> 480i

This means that a 480p signal will not be upconverted to 1080i - a bonus since a 1080i signal won't look much better on a 32" TV than a 480p signal will and the conversion will introduce noise. Back to the story...

This set does have some drawbacks, but they are suble and you may not notice them. The first is that there is no direct access to the various A/V inputs. You have to scroll through them all. With a learning remote you can program a macro to do the job for you though. It's pretty easy.

As someone else mentioned here, there is a problem with the color decoder. This has been noticed on other Panasonic Tau models (34" Widescreen). Color balance appears to be good on DVD's if you set it up properly (contrary to what others here think, this set DOES need adjustment out of the box, although it looks better than most). I used Video Essentials, but I'm sure AVIA would work great if that is your preference. With the color and tint adjusted properly, broadcasts (Satellite, Cable, VHS) will display some red push. It's not too severe, but it can be distracting at times. DVD's do not exibit this due to the component video inputs by-passing the color decoder.

Geometry and convergence were OK. A cross hatch pattern shows perfect convergence in the center of the screen, but decent errors at the sides and corners. This is not very noticable with any program material however. Geometery on my set bends slightly down in the lower right hand corner and is rounded slighly up on top. This was noticeable right away when the TV was set up, but I believe it has lessened as time has passed. At any rate, I hardly notice it anymore and it really isn't very distracting when watching programs (only really noticable with letterbox or widescreen sources.

Overall, this set is a good buy, especially at the price I paid (near cost). At $1800, I like it better than the XBR's, which I think have a noisier line double (DRC) and more geometery problems. Look at this set before you buy. Pay particularly close attention to the red push phenomena and see if you can live with it. Also, look at a number of sources. Make the salesman show you a DVD through component video inputs (I suggest Gladiator or Fifth Element). If they won't, they really don't deserve your money. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Associated Equipment

Sources
Sony DVP-S530D
Sony HI-FI VCR
AT&T Cable
Dish Model 4000 Satellite Receiver

Cables
Monster Cable M500cv
Monster Cable Video 2 composite video
Monster Cable Video 2 co-ax
Monster Cable Standard Video co-ax

Accessories
Monster Cable HTS-2500 A/C Line Conditioner

Similar Products Used:

Looked at Sony XBR's

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
Showing 1-10 of 33  

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