Give your TV a new home from IKEA
- Average user rating: 4.5 stars out of 21 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"After 4 months, the picture still takes my breath away!"
Pros: Picture, price, value, ease of use.
Cons: HDMI or DVI terminal board should be standard. But I still give it a 10 because it has nothing to do with this monitor's performance.
Summary: After 4.5 months, I can say that my husband and I have absolutely no complaints! I was in total OCD mode in researching this and read every review available at the time! As positive as they were, somehow this monitor has still managed to exceed my expectations! The picture is gorgeous, no matter what we?re watching. HD cable on this monitor continues to take my breath away! It literally looks like 3-D. I can?t imagine it looking any better on an HDTV! Why the prof. vs. cons. model? We had extra speakers (the specs call for 6 ohm, my 8 ohm pair work fine). We also have a surround sound system which we use primarily for watching DVDs. We use an HD cable box so saw no need for a tuner and I read somewhere that the prof. model has no fan (& is therefore quieter) & has more picture adjustments. Also preferred the black to silver. Why ED vs. HD? I had a Panasonic HD-capable 4x3 TV and regular cable looked terrible on it. HD cable looks better on this plasma than it did on my HDTV so I didn't feel I was giving up anything to get regular cable to also look great, which it does on this monitor. We watch a lot of DVDs, don't have any hi-def ones, but ours look awesome (esp. the newer ones). I agree with those that say that you can't tell the difference between HD & ED more than 6' away from the screen. Great picture, even when viewing from the side. We haven't even begun to explore all the picture tweaking options available!
As you know by now, the monitor only comes with one component-in connection. We connected that to the DVD player. We bought an HDMI terminal board which we plug the HD cable box into - we set the signal on the cable box to 1080 fixed - maybe that's why all of the cable stations look so great, even in "zoom" mode!
You need to get a stand or wall mount, & you want another component-in slot if you have HD cable box & a DVD player - composite & S video needless to say do not look as good by comparison. You can get the extra component in connection one of two ways: (1) buy a component video VGA to 3 RCA adapter to be able to use the VGA input as a component-in input (the much less expensive option - which I wish I knew about prior to buying the HDMI board!); or (2) buy an HDMI, DVI or component video terminal board which plugs into the empty slot on the monitor - a cinch to install). If you use the pre-installed component or composite in connections, you'll need BCA to RCA adapters. We did what the manual advises to prevent burn-in and have had no problems whatsoever.
To prevent burn-in, one of the things you want to avoid are either the horizontal or vertical bars you'll get with anything other than a HD widescreen signal (even widescreen DVDs have bars on the top and bottom to my surprise). The ability to change the aspect of the screen to fill it by either using just, full, or zoom settings is a great feature of the monitor, however, you lose these options with an HDMI connection - we have to use the zoom feature of our cable remote to fill the screen for non-HD channels, but amazingly enough, there's no loss of clarity!
We paid the following at the end of May 2006(all prices include S&H) which at the time were the best prices I could find on the internet. Monitor: $1399 from newegg.com. HDMI terminal board TY-FB7HM: $133.79 from buy.com (the manual says use the TY-FB8HM model but I called Panasonic and they said the 7HM model was fine, which it is). TY-ST08-K stand: $157.11 from pagecomputers.com (many of the earlier model panasonic 42" plasma stands will also work with this model). Got the HDMI cable and RCA female to BNC male adapters for a nominal cost on Ebay. You need 3 RCA to BNC adapters for the component in board and 1 for the composite in board only if you don't plan to use S video. The S video is on the same terminal board as the composite in so you can only use one or the other for video off of that board. If you use S video, then you only need a total of 3 BNC to RCA adapters. If you don't use S video and plan to use the composite in, you'll need a total of 4. As others have advised, get the stand (or wall mount) & all this ancillary stuff before or at the same time the monitor arrives!
Installation tip: if you plan to use a stand, install everything with the monitor face down on the floor (with the screen protection still in place) before placing it in the stand: terminal board (if you get an extra one), BNC adapters and cables. All the inputs are on the bottom of the monitor and this will make the install a lot easier.
I'd buy this again in a heartbeat!!! No regrets whatsoever...
Panasonic TH-42PWD8UK:
