Official Panasonic TC-PxxVT20/25 Owners Thread NO PRICE TALK!! - Page 3

Originally Posted by Jimmy

Come back Happy!

Disregard and shake off the negative input. You are doing a good thing relating your experience with your new VT. You have been a big help with my decision making.

Originally Posted by Tacklebary

Did all of the negative comments from a few scare away happy nightmares?

I hope not as I keep checking for his updates!

Originally Posted by mechashiva2k

I had a Mitsubishi HD RPTV that was 12 years old and I decided to finally upgrade to a 50" VT20 last week. Since there seems to be very few VT20/VT25 owners out there willing to share their experience, I thought I could add my $.02.

My impressions are very similar to those of happy nightmares. I love this TV. Under normal lighting conditions HDTV content looks amazing. THX mode works really well out of the box. I'm mostly concerned about its gaming performance and how it works with my PS3 and XBOX 360. I don't watch movies in the dark so I don't really care whether this TV achieves Kuro black levels. Under normal lighting conditions, the black levels look inky enough to me and better than any flat panel TV I've ever seen. For what its worth, I've never seen a Kuro in person and I'm not really interested in professional calibration at the moment given that I mostly will use this TV for gaming.

On the issue of flickering, I have only watched one blu-ray movie and I have not noticed any flickering (TV was set at 96hz output). Once I watch a few more I can report further on that issue.

The gamers on this board will be most interested in the input lag test that I conducted with this plasma. I tried to establish a baseline by conducting a lag test with a laptop and external BenQ LCD computer monitor. I've attached a JPEG with that result. As you can see, I could not detect any lag with the external monitor.

I then did a input lag test with the VT20 set to "Game Mode" and all signal processing turned off.

You can see a video of the test on vimeo here:

vimeo.com/10224970

(Sorry its not a link. Forum won't let me post links yet)

Play and pause the video periodically to see the lag. The result of that test was an average input delay of 30-32 milliseconds. My understanding is that this is very good and is comparable to the G10/V10 series.

I also did a real world input test by playing the song MonkeyWrench on Guitar Hero II with no game lag adjustments on medium difficulty. I was able to achieve 95%+ notes hit pretty easily. Apart from Guitar Hero, I've played quite a few games on the TV including the Just Cause 2 demo, Bad Company 2, the Blur beta, Forza 3 and they all look great.

Lastly, for those concerned about the bezel, I can say that it is an attractive gun metal grey. It is in no way "fugly" as someone in another thread has suggested. Would it look better in black? Maybe. But start watching a high def source and you'll forget the bezel color in no time. I have Verizon Fios cable service and the HD channels look stunning.

Feel free to ask questions or request pictures.

Originally Posted by PussyVampire

hello let me start buy saying I'm jealous and it sucks these TVs are so far away from being on the best buy floors. In any event I need to get a new tv and I would like to wait dr thhis one but my question is how much will the 50 inch sell for. Feel free to pm me if you don't want to post it here

Thanks so much

P.s. I saw one website list it for 10,000

Originally Posted by Orta

Thanks for the test mech. If accurate, 32ms against a laptop is twice as slow as the '09's--I showed 15ms on a G10. This would suggest the VT's could potentially push 40ms against a CRT, which is not good news. They may wind up being on par with Samsung's Game or PC mode. To confirm, you did definitely have blur reduction off in the tests?

Originally Posted by pottscb

The BB mgr. also said they did not have the G20 on display but had 4 of them in the back that could be purchased, I really would like to have seen one to judge if THX mode is bright and punchy and if the colors are on, AR screen is good, etc.

Originally Posted by mechashiva2k

Input lag

Originally Posted by pottscb

Just a few observations...these are subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt, go see one for yourself and form your own opinions before buying:

My local BB/Magnolia store has the 50VT20 on on display. Home theater manager was pretty knowledgable and said that the sets weren't "for sale until 21st March" but that they were taking preorders. I spent about 30 minutes in front of the tv in moderate lighting with a 3D blu-ray player and glasses. First let me say that they are again claiming a "one sheet of glass" but the one I saw definitely had a brushed silver bezel and the glass didn't cover it (just like all the other plasmas). The anti-reflective coating on the TV was impressive, very close to Kuro level. The absolute black level was hard to evaluate with that much light, it was in THX mode and color looked subjectively good. I spent most of the time watching Panasonic's 3D demo disc, which was impressive on some clips and mediochre on others. The glasses have a design flaw, the opening on either side lets in a LOT of stray light causing reflections inside the glasses and hammering contrast. They would be OK in a bat cave, but how many people are going to watch major sporting event (the majority of broadcast 3D as of yet) without being able to see the beer and nuts. I feel that this technology may be ready for prime time (all 3 versions of it!), after they get the $150 glasses soted out. Watching this TV, I've decided what really makes the 3D immersive is a gigantic image (something around 100"), so I'll be bucking what the CEO of Panasonic and Samsung said and NOT pitching in an extra 30% just for the 3D feature (and AR screen, 96 hz, I know...). The BB mgr. also said they did not have the G20 on display but had 4 of them in the back that could be purchased, I really would like to have seen one to judge if THX mode is bright and punchy and if the colors are on, AR screen is good, etc.

Originally Posted by Kuros

Thanks for the review happy nightmares.

Just one question: by "line bleeding", do you mean the green phosphor trails you can see on fast moving objects, a problem which seems to affect most plasma tvs (they're usually more noticeable on b&w movies)?

Thanks.

Originally Posted by happy nightmares

Hey guys.

Here is a video I made (with audio) showing all the VT20 menu, user controls. This will give you a good idea of the picture tweaks you can make.

http://www.youtube.com/user/pannyvt20

Do not use this to judge picture quality. This is only to show the menu, and I made some sacrifices in video quality so menu text would be clear.

Please note: I had a few drinks tonight so the narrative is not exactly my proudest moment.

Be back later.

Originally Posted by mechashiva2k

B]input lag test[/b]

Originally Posted by NOAMattD

Thanks a lot for taking the time to test input lag mechashiva. I guess my theory that "faster phosphors" would equal less lag than usual is kind of out the window :P

Originally Posted by mechashiva2k

I had a Mitsubishi HD RPTV that was 12 years old and I decided to finally upgrade to a 50" VT20 last week. Since there seems to be very few VT20/VT25 owners out there willing to share their experience, I thought I could add my $.02.

My impressions are very similar to those of happy nightmares. I love this TV. Under normal lighting conditions HDTV content looks amazing. THX mode works really well out of the box. I'm mostly concerned about its gaming performance and how it works with my PS3 and XBOX 360. I don't watch movies in the dark so I don't really care whether this TV achieves Kuro black levels. Under normal lighting conditions, the black levels look inky enough to me and better than any flat panel TV I've ever seen. For what its worth, I've never seen a Kuro in person and I'm not really interested in professional calibration at the moment given that I mostly will use this TV for gaming.

On the issue of flickering, I have only watched one blu-ray movie and I have not noticed any flickering (TV was set at 96hz output). Once I watch a few more I can report further on that issue.

The gamers on this board will be most interested in the input lag test that I conducted with this plasma. I tried to establish a baseline by conducting a lag test with a laptop and external BenQ LCD computer monitor. I've attached a JPEG with that result. As you can see, I could not detect any lag with the external monitor.

I then did a input lag test with the VT20 set to "Game Mode" and all signal processing turned off.

You can see a video of the test on vimeo here:

vimeo.com/10224970

(Sorry its not a link. Forum won't let me post links yet)

Play and pause the video periodically to see the lag. The result of that test was an average input delay of 30-32 milliseconds. My understanding is that this is very good and is comparable to the G10/V10 series.

I also did a real world input test by playing the song MonkeyWrench on Guitar Hero II with no game lag adjustments on medium difficulty. I was able to achieve 95%+ notes hit pretty easily. Apart from Guitar Hero, I've played quite a few games on the TV including the Just Cause 2 demo, Bad Company 2, the Blur beta, Forza 3 and they all look great.

Lastly, for those concerned about the bezel, I can say that it is an attractive gun metal grey. It is in no way "fugly" as someone in another thread has suggested. Would it look better in black? Maybe. But start watching a high def source and you'll forget the bezel color in no time. I have Verizon Fios cable service and the HD channels look stunning.

Feel free to ask questions or request pictures.