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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 17 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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14 out of 14 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Great picutre, great price, great connectivity"
Pros: Excelent darks colors, contrast, lots of hookups
Cons: no PIP, no SD card slot for digital picutres
Summary: After much research I finally made the jump from a Sony TV the size of my computer monitor to the Panasonic TH-37PX50U. The plasmas in this series do a great job with dark colors and has great contrast in the overall image. Some of the best advice I read was to turn down the brightness on display models in the store. I found that all TV's on display (both plasma and LCD) had the brightness turned up the maximum and had picture modes on "vivid" to compensate for the bright lighting in the store. After adjusting brightness and picture quality I felt that the panasonics exhibited the truest colors. This TV does an excelent job with animation as well as fast moving images. I did see some "halos" around extremely bright colors when you are really close (5-6 inches) from the TV but these weren't really noticable from a normal viewing distance. The TV has several noise reduction filters to compensate for this. Also check that your DVD output is set to progressive scan. I was given a brand new progressive scan DVD player after I told the sales associate mine lacked this feature. The cable card is a great feature but if you have DVR or something similar it is obselete because you still need the cable box to store your saved shows. Also, like all plasmas, regular programming (even digital cable) doesn't look as good on plasma's than a regular CRT, BUT for DVD's and HD channels the picture is superb! After getting the HD cable box from Time Warner I also noticed that you lose the ability to control the aspect ratio on the TV, you can only adjust the aspect through the cable box (4:3, zoomed, or stretched) so you lose the "Just" aspect ratio found on the TV which looks best for 4:3 broadcasts. However this is probably an issue with Time Warner, not the TV. Finally be prepared for a big box. Despite the fact that the TV is only 3 inches thick the box is 35"H, 46"L, 21"W and says it can only be transported upright. This TV did not fit upright in an outback or an X-terra.
