It shows up on any picture type of or mode, yes to the black pillar box, yes to letterbox and of course to full screen. It occurs while playing any content through any of my two sources which are DirectTVs HD box and my Panasonic Blu-Ray player.
I hate to have to report on this, but I put up both my videos from before the board switch and after the board switch, both with the same results. Though A&E Factory Service guy says its now fixed. I beg to differ completely. My picture was just perfect the first 7 days of ownership and now its a far cry from that clarity and resolution it originally had.
In fact, with this new A-Board, the picture has what I think is deemed to be crushed blacks, even in THX mode, which I thought had the perfect blend of contrast and brightness etc with original board. Now my picture has lost all detail in any black scenes or in Hair, or pants or anything that has real black in it. Its like just black blothes. Also the color is very saturated in this mode and very warm. Much more than with my first original board.
And last, this A-board has a dithering pattern, that is more dynamic than the first one, which had really non to speak of. Dithering is outside of the dancing pixels or sparking issue in my clip. The dithering is noticeable though now. The biggest change in picture quality with this new A-Board seems to be a mosquito net effect to the screen, the crushed blacks and really saturated colors. It seems like the picture moves behind the net. It looks like there is a kind of grainy net that sits still while the moving content moves behind it.
I really hate to write about this, but its important to let people and Panasonic know that there are quality issues, and consistency issues with their processing and or panels in general. I am getting to wonder about Japanese made products these days, they were perfectionists for most of my adult life, but over the last decade, their quality has been off in the production of electronics.
I don't want to scare people totally away from these types of products, and I want to make a point, that this panel had really great picture quality to begin with, but then suddenly dropped as these pixels started to take over the whole panel in a substantial way and they were not there in the least to begin with. I will film my screen in action in THX mode with same camera and without adjusting any of the settings, this will be right out of the box in THX factory settings mode which is supposed to be their most accurate setting. You tell me what you think of the crushed blacks or if I am imagining things.
I thought when I first bought this TV, that during the first 7 or so days, outside of the less than totally accurate color gamut, this was the best picture I saw on any TV on the market. It was just fabulous and the motion was smooth, fine tonality and dynamic range, and the resolution was clearer than in the movies. It was that good.
