I ended up picking up a floor model ST60 for my bedroom (50 inch) from a local Best Buy last night. I was originally going to wait to see what Samsung delivered later in the year, but absolutely fell in love with the ST60. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Panasonic. I love their picture quality and processing, but hate dealing with IR issues/fears.
No break-in slides for me. A quick slide run with my USB drive revealed no burn-in, which was my biggest fear in a floor model. The set was basically running a Viera demo all day. I also checked the hours and used that information to haggle them down on the price (3600 hours!).
I’m actually very impressed with the black-levels on this set. I used to have a VT60 in my living room before frying a HUD logo into the screen due to a 100 contrast setting (returned it to Amazon) and the blacks on this set look almost as good.
Settings are tricky for me. I’m used to THX settings, so a desire for more brightness has never been an issue with me. I’ve also found that by switching to Cinema and turning off all the enhancements, I’m mostly pleased with the overall look. The only thing that concerns me is a “safe” contrast setting.
Personally, I’ve never bought into that whole belief that sets become more IR resistant as they age. Even at 3600 hours, I clearly saw the Netflix logo in a sky scene several minutes after starting a streaming episode of Dexter (default Contrast of 80). And that logo was only up for maybe 3-4 minutes! Granted, it did go away relatively quickly (10 minutes), but after my past experience, I’m a little cautious after what happened to my VT60.
My experience has me convinced that Contrast is key with these Panasonics when it comes to controlling IR/burn-in. Cranking it to 100 is just asking for trouble, as I quickly learned. My VT60 had minimal IR in its low contrast THX mode of 60. Unfortunately, THX is not an option on the ST60.
Is anyone here using a Contrast setting of 60-70 in Cinema mode? It seems that most of you guys are doing that until your panel ages - but mine is well past that. Has anyone kept their contrast setting this low? I noticed that the guy who reviewed the set on flatpanelshd.com posted a contrast setting of 60 in his calibration of “True Cinema” (which I’m assuming is the same thing?).
I guess the question is: How low can you go (in Cinema) without losing detail in your opinions? My watching and occasional gaming are primarily in a dark room with very little light.