might buy the Panasonic TH-50PX80U (read for hours)

Welcome to the forum. Here is the master thread for this set with lots of great info!

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ght=th+50px80u

I worried about the break-in DVD at first when I got my Plasma a few months ago, and I decided to just not use it. It's really not needed. Keep full screen images on the HDTV all the time and don't leave it on channels with a static Image. That alone for the first 100 hours or so is just fine. As for the Best Cables, well only Component (RED, GREEN, Blue) and HDMI will give you a HD picture. (Well VGA will also!) HDMI is Generally the Best, especially if your hooking up a Blu-Ray player because of Digital Rights Management(DRM) and to get the best Resolution you need to use HDMI, otherwise it gets lowered down to I think 540 from 1080 if your using Component. HDMI also handles Multi channel Digital sound. So a single cable and single plug handles it all. If your just plugging your Satellite Box into your HDTV, well you get a HD picture IF you have a HD Satellite Box and your tuned into a HD channel, and your get Stereo sound out of your HDTV.

As for Screen Door Effect, I don't know what your talking about. I have none of that and I sit just over 6 feet away from my 50" 1080P screen. Are you not watching a HD channel or some other HD source? Are you not using a HD connection? Plugging in a Composite or S-Video cable won't get you a HD picture. If your still watching SD content on your Satellite box, well your only watching 480 line content, and not 720 or 1080 line content.

Picked up the 50" PX80 two weeks ago for my daughter for under $1,000 delivered. As far as the SD Effect it depends on how close you will be sitting to the tv & how good your eyesight is so I would check it out for yourself to see if the SD Effect bothers you.

As far as break in is concerned I really don't know what all the fuss is about because last year my neighbor bought a 50" Panny PZ700 & when I asked him about breaking it in he told me he was not going to do anything special & that included playing games for hours on end & even pausing the picture & etc he never had any problems & when I got my daughter her 42" PZ700 all I told her was to just use it as normal after the picture settings were turned down except not to let the tv have any black bars on the screen for the first 100 or so hours & it worked out fine for her so I've told her to do the same thing with her new PX80.

To me with the new breakthrough Panny 12G Neo PDP coming out next year the only model I would buy this year is a PX80 which my daughter will be using as a "Carry Over" tv until the new Panny's are out.

The only other thing I'll add is as far as I'm concerned the PX80 has the Best Picture Quality on Standard-Definition pictures of any tv on the market so if you have a lot of older Video Tapes, DVDs & Home DVD Recordings that's something you might want to consider.

For the prices that the PX80's are going for I think they are the best value out there & I did consider the 50" 1080p PZ80 Panny but I just din't think it was worth $400 to $500 more than the PX80 & so far my daughter loves her PX80 so that's all that really counts to me.