Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The picture quality of this TV is simply excellent. Compared it with more expensive Panasonic "Infinite Black" G model and it's impossible to see the difference in real video content. You need to be in total darkness and have very high quality, low noise signal with large swatches of black and put them side to side to notice a slightly darker black in G models. Of course, just watching TV you will never think I wish blacks were deeper.
I've watched HD programs over the air, from blu-ray, Netflix from Roku, and from PC over HDMI. All modes 480/720/1080 progressive and interlaced displayed perfectly, and TV did a good job upscaling lower resolution to native 1080. No problems with motion, no blurring, no color fading or runoffs. TV does have a slightly lower moving picture resolution 900 lines (vs 1080 lines in top models), but it's quite impossible to notice that without measurements. So sports viewers will be satisfied. Also, on a positive side, the screen is not as glossy as the majority of other plasmas, so reflections are subdued.
I've been using this set for a few days now, so I can't comment on "image retention" problems that previous generations had. Supposedly the phosphors used in this set are improved from previous year, and reportedly they last longer. Just be sure you turn on the "pixel orbiter" to avoid burning in the logos and avoid prolonged display of static images. You can also run "scrolling bar" once a day for 15 minutes for the first week to age the phosphors evenly. Not all plasma owners believe a break-in period is necessary for the later generations of plasma TVs, and no plasma manufacturers now suggest their sets require break-in.
The description Amazon (and it looks now they removed it) seemed to suggest that TV had a built-in Wi-Fi. It doesn't, you need to buy a separate Wi-Fi USB adapter for that. Due to lack of adapter I cannot tell if IPTV and DLNA are working as expected. The other negative is common to all plasmas, which is high power consumption. You don't find this information advertised anywhere, because this set is rated at a whopping 339W. The built-in audio is weak, it has two tiny 10W speakers. It's fine for casual watching TV programs, but if you want to watch movies you probably want to invest in a separate audio system.
This TV may lack all the bells and features you can find in more advanced models, but it does deliver an excellent picture at a very reasonable price and that what matters most.
Edit 5-8-2011. I installed USB Wi-Fi adapter (Netgear N600) to test the Viera Tools. I didn't find them very useful though. It has Netflix client, but picture quality is poor (compared to Roku on the same network). Then there is CinemaNow, which I never used. Amazon Video on demand looks OK. I don't have any use for Pandora, Napster, or Facebook, so I can't comment. There is also Media Player for SD and USB cards, works pretty well. I popped in an SD card from Panasonic camcorder and picture was pretty good, no conversion was necessary. And finally, there is DLNA client, which I couldn't make to work. I does find the DLNA server, but connection always fails.
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