Burn-in already?!
Written: Jul 26 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
|
|
| Picture Quality: |
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Great value, connectivity, features.
Cons: Fast burn in! Slow channel switching. Sub-par user interface.
The Bottom Line: The fast burn-in is downright scary. Slow channel and mode switching are annoying. But it has tons of features and it's cheap.
|
|
|
| jdproconsumer's Full Review: Panasonic TH-42PD50U 42 in. EDTV Plasma TV |
I bought this Panasonic EDTV for $1,800 about 4 months ago and have been fairly satisfied with it overall. I think it's a great value for the money and offers a good combination of features, quality and value. But I do have a few issues to point out.
1. Burn in.
The TV screen is in 16:9 format on this Panasonic. The unit comes by default configured to show bright gray vertical side bars, when you are watching a program in 4:3 size. The bars were extremely annoying so I turned them off immediately (leaving just black bars). That was a mistake! We watch about 80-90% of programs in 4:3 (satellite TV) and after couple of months I turned of the TV and before I turned on the satellite box I noticed burn-in (lighter screen) where the black side bars normally are on 4:3 broadcast.
I don't have previous experience with plasma TVs so I don't know if this is normal, but this was certainly very upsetting. I wish Panasonic included a BIG notice in the manual about not turning off grey bars. I have since restored the grey bars and found out that you can make them less bright than comes from the factory (there are several settings). I have no way yet of measuring if the burning is continuing to get worse or not.
2. Command response time. In addition to hooking up the TV to satellite box and DVD, I bought an over-the-air HDTV antenna and was surprised to find out that I'm able to get good signal on all local digital stations. This TV has a fantastic feature for pointing the antenna: signal strength meter. The problem is that it takes about 4-5 seconds to switch from channel to channel. This seems grossly excessive. Response time to some other commands is similarly too long, e.g. turning the TV on or switching the inputs. It seems like whenever the unit has to adjust video, it takes awhile to do.
3. Not the best menu interface. I've had two Panasonic TVs in the past and they had more intuitive user interfaces.
4. Picture quality is not as good as I was hoping it would be. It has to do with one specific problem that I find hard to describe, but I'll try using an example. When I compare the face of John Steward from the Daily Show on my rear-projection Sony KVHS30 to Panasonic, I can see normal skin texture with small imperfections (I can see that he shaves) on the Sony, but it is all uniform and unnatural looking on the Panasonic. Since I constantly switch between the two TVs, I can't get used to the way Panasonic displays picture and it's a matter of constant small irritation.
Other things:
* It's a good looking unit with excellent connectivity.
* The remote is well laid out, if a bit too big.
* Sound is good but not great.
* I don't know if it's a reasonable expectation, but I was expecting some sort of automatic logic to recognize aspect ratio of the incoming signal and adjust the screen automatically. I find myself constantly hitting the Aspect button. It also would be nice if there was a separate button for each aspect mode, since it takes unit very long to switch from one to another and you have to cycle through 3 modes sometimes to get to the right one.
* The stand is sturdy, but doesn't swivel. Not an issue for us though.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1800
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jdproconsumer
|
|
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.