PIECE OF CRAP, November 4, 2004

By 

rbhatta “rbhatta” (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) – See all my reviews

  

I have this TV for past serveral months and have *Love* *Hate* relationship with it.

The *Love* Points

1. Can’t Beat the price for this HDTV

2. Can’t Beat the size, It is small enough to fit into those tight entertainment centers, Honestly buying a bigger TV means you will have to replace your existing old Entertainment center which will cost you another 0 not to mention the pain of replacing the old Entertainment center.

3. Great HDTV reception via Component Video Input. (Note: Needs additional OTA HDTV tuner)

4. Very Good Picture quality for the price.

The *Hate* Points

1. Constant buzzing sound from the speakers even when the volume is low

2. Poor convergence at the edges looks that Speakers inside the TV produce magnetic interference that the manufacturer failed to notice.

3. Picture is too Dark in Standard Defination Mode (SD)

4. Unable make the 4:3 Aspect ratio lock permanently when used in HDTV mode it always defaults to 16:9 after power off.

5. The Menu for adjusting TV settings is TOO bright and *NOT* transparent.

6. Only *ONE* component Video Input!!!!!!!!!!! Come on panasonic, What were you thinking?.. This is a HDTV for Goodness sake!

7. HDTV ready only, No HDTV tuner included!!

If you can learn to live with the *Hate* points, then this is a decent TV.

I am keeping this TV as in HDTV mode the picture quality is excellent! in 1080i mode. It upconverts all signals to 1080 mode (Frequency doubling). It also as 3:2 pull down conversion for Flims, Velocity Modulation and Video Noise reduction makes the pictures very clean and sharp.

If you can ignore the poor convergence or lucky with your set you can surely keep this one for years to come.

EDIT: (PIECE OF CRAP)

Just after 2 years of use, My TV just Died! – No Picture, Sound OK.

I believe the Picture Tube is DEAD!

Part Number A68QCP891X CRT 27″ 294.07 + Taxes and Shipping from Panasonic parts.

DO NOT BUY THIS TV.

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great television, September 16, 2004

this is a great television, and it is a big improvement over an analog set. There are a few aspects of the tv that make it a #2 choice, though compared to the sony. Consumer reports (2003 issue) states that not all hdtv’s are the same in terms of the hd picture quality. this is definitely true. they rank (10 point scale)

sony 10

panasonic 9

samsung 5 (boy is Samsung bad. the king of fuzzy images)

the panasoic image is very close to the sony image, but not quite as good. images run prog. scan through a dvd player (not 720 high def., it is 480 lines (enhanced def.)when playing dvds prog. scan) the image is very very good, but there is slight blurring (probably only noticable by those of us that are very detail oriented, but it is there. a good way to test is to turn on the subtitles and you can see how well the letters look). I compared the panasonic and sony at the stores, with some difficulty becasue the images on screen keep changing, and rarely show a steady detailed image for long, but the sony picture (as of August 2004) were better than the panasonic. I would have gotten the sony, but they didn’t make a 27″ hdtv in early 2004 when I got this set.

Another advantage of the Sony is there are 2 component inuputs, this set only has 1, so you can’t run a DVD recorder signal and DVD player into the set at once. also sonly has 4 picture settings, panasoic only has 3, and two of them are really dark. the Vivid setting is the only one that looks good.

The buzzing coming from the set is from the transformer (claims a repair person), that sound isn’t from the speakers. a bit annoying, but there’s nothing that can be done as far as I know to fix that.

one note on the s-video. the s video images are really dark on this set. I use the s video to get the closed captioning off some dvd disks that don’t carry over on prog. scan, but it’s unlikely many people will be using s video much unless you have a specific reason like i do. It’s too bad they seemed to have messed up the s video on these hd sets (I tested a few). that may have to do with the hd technology inside. an anolog set may give a better image that these hd sets with s video.

this is still a great tv compared to others and the picture is great, I would imagine these tvs will last a long time so one should make the best decision. ( I chose the 4 by 3 shape because that’s the format I watch the most of).

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