Price Paid:  $379.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
I was somewhat disappointed at the picture quality when viewing cable tv and vhs. You really have to play around with the color, tint, etc until you get a decent picture. You finally get it right, and then you change the channel and then it is bad again. The picture does tend to have a fair amount of "ghosting" with whites, especially if reception is poor or when watching sports. Also, reds tend to bloom a lot. I have to say that the picture quality of dvd''s using the component inputs is very good. I noticed a difference in picture quality between component cables and rca''s, especially with small details such as lettering. The unit does have a lot of features, such as dual tuner pip and numerous inputs. The variable audio outputs are nice as well. My other major complaint is that you have to aim the remote right at the laser pickup or it doesn''t work- very annoying, and unexpected at this price. Overall, i would recommend this tv for its features, but not necessarily for its picture quality. I would have bought one of the JVC''s, but they have those darn side speakers, and they were too wide for my cabinet.

Strengths:
component inputs, pip

Weaknesses:
below ave. picture quality, remote

Price Paid:  $379.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
I was somewhat dissappointed at the picture quality from cable/broadcast tv. It takes a lot of adjustment to get the picture right. Reds and whites tend to be way too bright. The factory settings are way off, so it takes some patience, but eventually you can get it ok. Poor reception on some channels results in a lot of "ghosting", which annoys me. I am glad that you can set picture settings differently for each input. However, dvd picture quality is excellent, especially with component cables. I was overall impressed with the dvd picture quality. The PIP is nice. The remote is just ok, but i use the remote that came w/ my marantz 8000sr so it doesn''t really matter. My only other gripe is that the laser pickup for the remote is not great. You need to aim very carefully to change channels, which gets annoying. Overall, i am happy, but there are probably better deals out there.

Strengths:
features dvd picture quality

Weaknesses:
remote laser pickup bad picture quality from cable/broadcast

Price Paid:  $359.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
I purchased this TV as a replacement for a Sanyo 27" TV that had given 10+ years of excellent service (Yes, I know Sanyo is far from the best brand on the market, but, the picture quality and color has remained consistantly excellent throughout the years on this particular model), but was now showing increasing signs of wearing out. Not wanting to spend a fortune on a 27" TV, I limited myself to $400. In that price range the local Best Buy, Cirucuit City and Sam's Club offered a very wide assortment to chose from. Looking for the most bang for my buck, I narrowed my choices down to about 4 TV's (Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony and JVC). All of the sets had comparable pricing and it became a matter of chosing the one with the most features. However, not wanting to waste money, I came to this very web site to check out what others had to say about them. Unfortunately, the only one that didn't have a review was the Panasonic. But, I did find other reviews (Best Buy and Cirucuit City web sites offer consumer product reviews) and eventually settled on the Panasonic model after reading wonderous reviews on the picture quality. And with the large number of extras the set has, I figured I couldn't go wrong... boy was I wrong!

Out of the box the set up was easy and uneventful. As with most TV's, all of the usual picture quality controls were set by the factory to the usual middle of the road settings. These settings produced an absolutely horrible picture! Reds were ultra bright and blooming to unbelieveable proportions. Skintones were harsh and unnatural and either overly red or green, depending on which channel you turned to. The picture was overly bright and the contrast control was turned all the up (!) to compensate.

Adjusting the brightness and color downward a few notches unfortunately did little to resolve the problems. It was not until I turned the color down to 10 (on a scale of 0 to 63) and the brightness down to 3 (also on a scale of 0 to 63) did the picture become watchable! Fortunatley, the tint control did not require such drastic changes. A few notches toward the warmer end of the spectrum worked just fine. The resultant picture quality was absolutely beautiful! The color was rich, vibrant and razor sharp. Skintones were perfect! Had this been the only adjustments necessary I could have lived happily ever after with this set.

Then I changed the channel... and my beautiful swan turned back into the ugly duckling! Skintones were again either too red or too yellow. Anything on screen that had the slightest hint of red in it bloomed with a brightness usually reserved for nuclear explosions. It was as if I had done nothing to any of the settings! So once again I readjusted the settings until everything was again perfect. And once again, after changing the channel, the picture quality changed.

Thinking that this may be a problem with my cable input, I tried a couple of tests: 1)I hooked up another TV (that I new was in excellent working order) to the same cable connection. The result was a consistantly good picture on all channels without makeing any changes to the picture controls. 2)For my second test I played a DVD. Results were generally outstanding... after turning the brightness and color almost completely OFF!

My last hope was to use my "Video Essantials" DVD to try and calibrate this set to some watchable standard. Alas, even that failed.

I quickly tired of this TV and returned it to Best Buy. Their technician promply went to work on it and a few minutes later told me there was nothing wrong with it! The color, tint and brightness controls were normal and he didn't see anything wrong with the TV! It should be noted that he did not check it against any of the conventional TV configuration test patterns or even use the "Video Essentials" DVD which provides professional guidelines for TV adjustments.

In conclusion, I had considered that I had possibly gotten that 1 in a 1000 TV that rolls off the assembly line with everything imaginable wrong with it, and considered exchanging it for another one of the same model (the price and features are hard to resist). However, when I went to get one, I related what the technician said to a rather knowledgeable Best Buy employee helping me retreive it from a top shelf. He told me of many returns of that particular model and suggested an alternative... Sony. Not as many bells and whistles, but a picture that can't be beat! I took his advise and am now the very proud owner of a Sony S42 model which has displayed an outstanding picture straight out of the box! My DVD collection is now safe from torment.

Strengths:
Lots of features for the price, including 2 tuner PIP, 3 A/V inputs, including 1 front A/V input and an S-Video input, Color Tempeture Control

Weaknesses:
Extremely poor picture quality (except from DVD's)

Similar Products Used:
Sony 27" TV, Sanyo 27" TV