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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Impressed, but some bugs"
Pros: Excellent price, massive inputs, good SD, excellent HD picture clarity
Cons: Proper calibration not possible, DVI/HDMI black screen bug
Summary: I have had this TV for about 3 weeks. I am pleasantly surprised at its rendering of SD (standard definition) channels. Looked much nicer than other plasmas I have seen. The price of this unit in Canada is at least 1200-1500 less than Panasonic HDTV's, and close to those no-name brands you see at Costco and elsewhere, which look pretty bad when you see them on display. Blacks on this TV are quite black and not greenish as with some other brands. Colors are good, and the picture is bright enough for use in a sunlit room. Viewing HD and 1080i upconverted DVDs is simply AWESOME. I love the massive amount of inputs on the TV. The remote is a thing of beauty with very bright blue LED lights that match the onscreen slider control colors.
There is a problem if you use and HDMI/DVI cable (instead of an HDMI/HDMI cable, which works great) or an HDMI/DVI adapter .. you get a blank screen for about 2 seconds every 10 minutes or so. Its a bug ... Dell can fix via firmware update in future, I hope. Also, the color temp reverts to blue if you change presets and go back to your custom preset. Also, the set doesnt save any RGB calibrations done to it, so a pro calibration is pointless, since the settings would revert back to factory settings. However, you can do your own calibrations via THX Optimizer/AVIA/DVE, which do help quite a bit. Still pro calibrations would make the picture even better .. oh well.
Overall, a solid value. Not quite up to the elite Panasonic/Pioneer plasmas, but certainly much better than the bargain basement ones, and better than direct competitors like LG/Samsung.Updated
Some quick notes:
- I have not noticed the "black crush" exhibited by the 50" Dell plasmas on this 42" .. blacks are well defined and show detail in darker scenes.
- Dual tuners are really great. I have one connected to analog cable and the ATSC tuner will be used to recieve Over The Air (OTA) HD channels once I get an antenna.
