Official Panasonic TC-L32S1 Thread

I wish I could help....but mainly I am considering purchasing this set. I don't need anything fancy except I would like to go with 1080p even at this size because my pc and pc monitor is in the same room, but it would be more of a secondary monitor to compliment the projector and screen in the same room. Still, while I haven't come across many, some reviews are troubling me with this set. Has anyone else purchased it yet?

I love the set, I don't know why everyone was bitching about the speakers it sounds great to me. I have the volume on 21 and it's plenty loud. I can't give an opinion yet on the HD because I am waiting for my DTV HD receiver, but I do have it plugged in via S-Video to my DTV standard receiver and it looks pretty good for SD. The black piano finish is very nice as well.

Yah I won't be using the speakers much if it all, have a surround sound setup I have on all day. In fact I don't even really need a tuner with directv. More concerned about problems that might arise like the one shown above, and some reviews that say that adjusting the brightness higher (as its rather dim on default) does not produce a very nice overall image.

I just got the DTV HD box and let me say the HD and SD is outstanding. I have 2 other Panny TV's 1 plasma and another LCD and the this one is on par with them.

I'm really interested in this tv, so if anyone who owns it could give a brief overall review it would be appreciated. If you wanna make it detailed I won't mind

Ok I will give a brief overview.

Out of the box the LCD looks very classy, Piano Black Finish. 2 HDMI ports 1 component 1, 1 composite and 1 S-Video on the side of the TV. Everyone who has one complains about the sound, I hear no problem with the volume it's loud to me at setting 17 or 18. I have direct tv so I first hooked up the non-hd box to the lcd via S-Video, the picture was ok but not great. I then purchased the HD box for Direct TV and man let me say the picture is great. There are 4 TV settings, Standard, Cinema, Game, Custom. I left the setting at Standard and just lowered the Contrast a little bit. I paid 640 for the set and in my opinion it was well worth it.

The only downer to the set is the remote, believe it or not you cannot control any other device such as the HD box or any other device. So you do not have button for a cable box or Aux device.

Thanks for the insight Rob

I bought this set a month ago. I like the picture. The sound doesn't bother me as it is in the bedroom and I'm not concerned with the sound. I have a home theater set up in another room for that. I set the TV to standard, lowered the back light to 50, tweeked the color and brightness settings. It is a fine set. Nice, clear picture. I set the remote for the Directtv HD box to control both the TV and the Box. I only use the TV remote to access the inputs and adjustments.

Anyone tried measuring input lag on this set?

I came to this thread looking for the exact same thing. If someone could do an input lag test I'm sure seth and I would be very appreciative.

Are you confirming the TV has low sound as other people complain?


I want to know since I am about to purchase it, wanted to know if it is really that bad...

Thanx in advance

Since I'm a newbie here, I'll follow the AVSForum 9th Commandment and give my thoughts on the Panasonic TC-L32S1, which we owned until relieved of it by a burglar this past Tuesday!

The reason I joined the forum was to research alternatives for a replacement, so it's obvious I wasn't totally satisfied with the set. On the other hand, I doubt any of them is perfect, and it was our first non-CRT television so I have little to compare it with.

The original decision to go with the TC-L32S1 was influenced by positive experience with Panasonic TVs in the past and with Panasonic products in general (don't get me started on Sony). Being located in a small town I was not able to view the TV prior to purchase (mail order), but I did decide from viewing other sets that 1080p was worthwhile even for a 32-inch screen, and the Panasonic models I was able to view in the stores looked better to my eye than the competition (including the Samsungs), although who knows how they were set up. Also, I was less than impressed with off-axis viewing of my father's 32-inch Samsung LCD (one of their better units), although he's been very happy with it.

So, as for the Panasonic TC-L32S1, I can say that it did in fact have a very nice picture, better than other 32-inch LCD sets that I have seen (bearing in mind my limited experience). Off-axis viewing was excellent, with no noticeable change/compromise in the picture when sitting at different locations in our living room. It also worked seamlessly with our DVD player, an upper-end Panasonic unit from a couple of years ago; it seemed particularly good at "stretching" older video to the wide-screen format without it being noticeable, which is critical for us since we only watch DVDs (many old movies and TV shows) and don't have/watch broadcast/cable television. Build quality (as with most Panasonic products I have owned) was very good.

However, I can confirm that the audio volume was much lower than expected and in fact weaker than any other set I can remember, and with some DVDs we could not get adequate sound levels even with the volume setting at maximum; ultimately, we resolved the problem by connecting it to a pair of old AR PoweredPartner external speakers. It was also very difficult to pick out details in shadows and dark scenes (e.g., night scenes in old crime movies), although frankly I have not seen better with other sets so perhaps it's inherent with LCD TVs in general. Incidentally, we are limited to 32-inch sets by the size of the cabinet that we put the TV in, so I have never considered plasma and high-end LCD TVs that are not available in that size.

I am strictly a layman when it comes to TVs, so please take these comments with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I hope that folks here might find some of these observations useful. Also, I'd be interested in any thoughts or suggestions others may have, since I am currently trying to decide whether to replace our TV with another TC-L32S1 or with something else, like maybe going out on a limb with a 32-inch Sharp 700UN.

Just got this TV today. Picture is amazing, great whites and blacks and very sharp. Gets tons of channels that our Vizio plasma does not.

Things I liked: S-video input (for Sega Dreamcast), headphone out (can be used as analog audio out, which many current sets do not have anymore), channel signal strength meter (useful for pointing antenna in the right direction).

The ONE thing that is going to be deal killer: PC input is limited to to 1280x1024! What the heck?! The limitation is hidden in the back pages of the manual. I got it to use in my room primarily as a pc monitor and occassionally as a second TV. Now useless for that purpose - lower resolutions come out fuzzy. Probably going to get an LG 32LF11 instead. Even though it doesn't have any of the plusses I listed above, it definitely does 1920x1080 in PC mode and also has an IPS panel.

I was talking about using the PC input (VGA/RGB plug). None of my computers have HDMI. The manual specifically states that the PC/VGA/RGB input only displays 1024x768 and cannot take higher than a 1280x1024 signal.

Had this TV for 3 days now. Only had it hooked up to analog cable and original xbox. The box say it has 120hz refresh rate but the panasonic site only has 8ms response time listed. I find the sound to be pretty low. At 7 feet viewing distance the volume is set between 55 and 75, 100 isn't that loud. Will test xbox 360 games and HD-DVD at a later time. Watching movies on original xbox is pretty good, colors and fast images are good. The pre-set picture settings and A.I. Picture aren't that great. The backlight dims when there is a dark scene and then lights back up. I turned that feature off. Overall i'm happy with this set and will come back after I hook up some HD sources to it...

You need to use HDMI to DVI cable to get a full resolution of 1080p.
I just ordered this TV yesterday, once I get it I'll post my input lag results.

Just a friendly reminder about your promised input lag test results

This TV is rumored to have similar PC monitor performance as the famed LZ800, some proof or confirmation would be fantastic.

I'm about --->.<--- that close to purchasing this TV for full time PC monitor use, viewing distance would be between 2 1/2 to 3ft away.

So there aren't any problems then connecting this model to a DVI / HDMI port on a PC? As long as you set the resolution on the video card's driver to 1920x1080, it'll work properly?

yes it will

most modern video card's drivers will actually recognize they are connected to a TV via HDMI insuring compatibility (like nvidia cards for example)



note that my video card is a 8800 GT and does not have HDMI out but i'm using a DVI to HDMI cable to connect my current TV a sony 32xbr6 to it

Thanks frito. I recently upgraded from a GTS250 to a HD5770. I hope ATI's drivers are as adjusted to running LCD TVs as NVIDIA's.

All new panasonic elettronics have this limitation on D-sub 15(vga) imput .
You must try with a dvi adapter to HDMI !
Using it as pc monitor you need set pixel mapping 1:1 and disable every image enhancement like sharpening .
So you can view your desktop running at 1900*1080 with clear readable text

All of my Samsungs can save custom picture settings for each input.

Do these Panasonics sets do that too?

I am still waiting for someone please to do the input lag test. Thanks.

Woah, that was like Cliff Notes for Threadjacking 101.

I'll give it a shot when mine arrives if no one else has.

its going to have 0-16 ms input lag

panasonic has been using the same IPS-Pro panels in their LCD's for quite a few years now and they are the main reason for the low input lag vs other brands.

LG's LH30 used to be recommended too because they were using S-IPS panels but LG has gone cheap on everyone and started putting AUO MVA panels in them and the lag shot up to typical numbers like every other VA type TV (the majority of the LCD TV market, due to better contrast ratios they have over IPS)

Please do! I'm also really interested in this tv as monitor/gaming tv.

Hey guys, I've been busy lately, I got my Panny for 469 - 5% bing cache back. I threw away my old 15 inch crt monitor last year so my input lag test was not pure. But I have 19 inch S-IPS NEC 1960NXI monitor that I believe has 0 input lag, I played UT3 constantly online on regular death matches and sniper servers where input lag is critical and never had a problem.The biggest difference among probably 50 shots I made using 200-500 shutter speed was 16ms compared to Nec, where 8 out of 10 times it was showing exactly same result as my Nec. So now i completely switched to this panasonic. I definitely gonna be buying a tv wall mount because sitting 2.5 feet away is a little bit close and hard to game actually, because even though resolution is 1920x1080 (Nec is 1280x1024) I can't see the whole picture without looking left and right sitting that close. Viewing angles are great, had to tweak the tint and brightness, they were set too high, too bright and too much of Red. I also used DVE Digital Video Essentials HD Basics to calibrate it a little bit, I don't have a blue filter nor hardware calibrator so that BD image was the best I could do. Porn in 1080p on this 32incher looks awesome :P. If anyone has any questions I'll be glad to answer and/or to test.