Official Panasonic VT50 owners thread - Page 200

Don't forget about Breaking Bad and Mad Men (even though I don't watch Mad Men).

Anyways, back on topic. I get my 65 VT50 delivered on Friday (coming from a Panasonic TH-50PX75U 50" plasma so I'm hoping I'll be blown away).

You will be, I'm loving mine and am almost finished with my living room, will post more pics when done.

In a dark room are the black bars bezel black on the vt? The posted pics look really good.

Close enough in my opinion that I have a very, very hard time distinguishing one from the other.

There was time when I worked for Dish and Direct and i made impression but direct had better picture quality, but back then i was no as anal about quality as i am now.
So far i have been riding on online sources and dvd and bluray, but now with this monster tv i want to get some live nba action.

There is comcast which i dont want. i saw the picture and for me it looks computerized.
Same with Uverse, i tested it with my uverse internet and did not like the quality.
I saw dish and direct and they were kind of similar but i was leaning towards direct.
I dont want to start the out of topic discussion, but i was wondered if any of you having direct can say that quality is better then dish or vice versa?

hey rogo, i bet you have no remorse in getting the vt over the Sharp elite.

Me either and I seriously labored over that decision... came very close to going Elite and I really like the TV but the VT is just outstanding and I could not get the colors on the Elite to look like this. We watched Jaws the other night and I was just in a state of awe the whole time... a perfect transfer of a classic horror film combined with this panel is just bliss.

I completely disagree. The reason you see more people with projectors posting about the Darbee is because people with the money to have dedicated home theaters, would be more likely to drop money on a $270 video enhancement box.

There is a reason the Darbee is selling out everywhere, as soon as they get them in stock.

I have a Darbee on the way that I'm going to try on both my projector (older Panasonic PT-AE2000U LCD 1080p) as well as my 65VT50. I'll give some feedback about how noticeable the affect is on both units after I get everything up and running and figure the little guy out.

First post here.

Thought I'd interject, having the 55VT50 delivered tomorrow. Really can't wait since this will be my first plasma, I also have a Sony 55EX710 which is pretty damn good, but suffers tremendously from poor black levels in night time scenes.

I work in the Magnolia Department at a Best Buy so I stare at this thing everyday and finally just had to have it. It also doesn't hurt that the employee price on this sucker is pretty ridiculous.

I decided to go with this over the 60GT50 because I felt the VT50 was significantly better IMO. I hooked up a dual HDMI blu ray player in Magnolia to the 65VT50 and 60GT50, and the shadow detail and black levels were noticeable even to the most pedestrian customer. The GT50 has the black panel from the VT30 last year, so it's no slouch.

And a bit of advice, spend a little extra for the Panasonic 3D glasses over the Samsung ones. They both work, but after testing both of them for a long time, the Panasonic ones have a little bit better color.

Nice review. I agree after trying both and now owning the Panasonic 3D glasses that they are pretty great.

It depends on the overall brightness on the content, since that affects overall light sensitivity of your eyes. I'd say 80% of the time it's difficult to distinguish the black bars from the bezel.

Hey gentlemen,

please anyone can help me with my 55VT50E - yeah its the European model - and it has NO panel brightness option in its professional mode. It just cannot be set, and it is the dullest least bright mode of all the modes. I just cant use it - it is so dark.

I read the the American model can be calibrated to around 140 cd/m2 - while I think the European model is cut back to some utter dark 65 cd/m2.

Please anyone - can you recommend me a fix, or a hack, how to overcome this??

I love this TV for its "normal" or "dynamic" modes are bright enough, but those modes cannot be gamma nor color calibrated.

Any help would be much appreciated!!

Thank you,

George

Welcome back Topper! Please don't ever leave again- this thread is MUCH more interesting when you're the host, replying to everyone & making every other post. Also, I hope you don't give out your settings to just anyone now. I.e. folks who don't appreciate them. Do it on a per request basis, for those who demonstrate they deserve them, acknowledge all you do for the forum etc. No more free rides.
Yeah sorry, but I don't think topper would have gotten that mad over people merely "asking" about his settings- reading back over it, I'm thinking there must have been some really nasty stuff that has since been deleted, to make him internet rage hard enough to take his proverbial ball & go home. For a little while. Case in point, he even got mad about sheshe's post, even though in it sheshe made it a point to explain just how much everyone LIKES his settings! Now obviously that wouldn't make anyone mad, so i'm guessing sheshe engaged in a little namecalling & wild accusations, then quickly deleted them before getting busted. It's really the only explanation.

Wow that was gracious of you! & congrats sheshe- you dodged a bullet & have been given a 2nd chance. don't blow it this time! I think I speak for all of us when I assure topper that he will see NO MORE MANDATES here!

(group hug!)

I'm in the same boat as you mate.

I'm from the UK and have a VT50. I find Normal mode is able to go exceedingly bright but its also the most nosiest picture setting so I don't like it. I want to be able to use the Pro Modes but like you say they are too dim. I use THX cinema mode for watching films in the evening which is just about bright enough but you cant adjust the gamma or colour so it appears a little washed out.

We have paid the extra cash for the pro modes but they are useless. Unfortunately they is no way to make them brighter. Even the calibrators claim after calibration they are bright enough yet they use THX Cinema for extra brightness...Yeah! And for that you need to splash out another 1k on a Lumagen. pfft.

I don't want to pay out for a calibration as I feel I will be underwhelmed with the results.

I love the TV, The design, Black levels, PQ with Blu Rays but it pisses me off too.

Normal = Bright but noise fest.
THX Cinema = No controls, Washed out slighty.
THX Brightroom = No controls, Awful gamma, Washed out colours.
Pro Modes = Very Dim.

ATM I am having to make do with Normal for daytime and THX for Evening but I am constantly changing the settings. Thats why I have asked for some nice person for some calibrated Euro settings just to get a rough idea what a calibrated set can look like, If I like what I see I would get it done but even after a calibration they will still be dim. Though may appear a little brighter due to the extra dynamic range a calibration brings. Eg Deeper blacks, Whiter whites.

Hey jasjw,

thank you for your reply. Finally there is someone who can tell the same regarding this issue. I started to think that my unit is fautly, since here in Hungary I know nobody who bought this very expensive set so I just could not talk to anyone with the same problem.

Now I know that it is by design.

Today I filled in a complaint letter to Panasonic, asking for an official statement, when are they going to fix this, when are they issue a firmware which will enable panel brightness in the professional picture mode. I look forward to their reply.

To be honest I find this very upsetting that for us European users Panasonic decided that we do not deserve that setting. But why oh why for Christ sake? If the panel can operate itself on much higher brightness for eg in dynamic mode then why cant we have the same in the professional setting.

And what really pisses me off is the fact that a simple ST50 can achieve around 130 cd/m2 calibrated and it is only a hair worste compared to the calibrated VT50, with double the brightness. For half the price you get double brightness- this is how it works??

ppfff - sorry I got really mad about this issue. Here this 55VT50 costs around 3340 USD and we get this crippled TV.... damn...

Yep its takes the piss to be honest.

I actually had the ST50 before my VT50, Thinking the VT would be alot better. I do think the colours are better and the filter does alot better job but the blacks are the same and the ST50 goes alot brighter. So in a way I wish I saved the extra cash and stuck with the ST50.

Panasonic did the same with the VT30, restricting brightness in the calibration modes and never fixed it so I wouldn't hold your breath.

I've been looking at other TVs but they is only the Sammy E8000 which comes close but that comes in 51 or 64. Well 51 is too small and 64 too big, I want a 55 so that rules that out and i am not going back to LED tvs, too many issues, Clouding been the biggest issue for me.

Just out of interest do you like the Normal mode? If not why? Do you find it fuzzy/noisey full of dither?

In pro/isf modes, you can calibrate using Panel Brightness set to high to achieve over 50 FL easily. I have done this with very accurate results.

We dont have the panel brightness option here in Europe, Thats why we are pissed off. Our Pro Modes are capped.

Whoa whoa whoa. Easy Leon! LOL Thanks for the "support" but let's not not throw a torch into a swimming pool full of gasoline. There were childish things pulled on both sides of the fence. Thread is back on track and all is good in the world. Thanks and peace bro.

Hey jc, I watched some of the game for you last night. I am running through the Onkyo as you know, but I felt that the grass looked exactly as it should. I actually saw a ton of detail and very little noise. Granted, the color of the field did not pop like I wanted it to, but I think that's because I was seeing the accurate color of the field. Overall, I felt the picture was excellent although slightly muted "accurate".

We all know there is a sub culture that lurks among us that prefer a picture in between "accurate" and over saturated LCD torch mode. I actually shoot for that while trying to lean closer to accurate. Will post more on that later.

At any rate, please describe again for me what you are seeing regarding the field jc? Thanks

Of your available choices, DirecTV has the best picture quality and is in 2nd place behind Verizon FIOS. I'd rank Dish in 3rd place.

AT&T U-Verse's HD quality sucks in every household that i've seen it in, and Comcast is usually fairly poor quality as well.

yeah but as we said this option is NOT present in the European VT50- it is factory set to "low" - now how much FL would you achieve with the low setting. Maybe around 22...

This is why we are so much pissed off. On the European models professional modes are light output capped, and there seems no way to fix it - yet.

So I watched last night as well and didn't see the grass/field have as much judder/pixelation as I did when I was watching some of the other pre-season games on NFL Network. I think we are getting back to the issue of how great the source channel is. This game was on ESPN vs. NFL Network and I noticed a big difference in quality of the field/ players from wide angle and distance shots. Definitely nothing wrong with the vt50 in this regard, however I am still trying to determine if the VP in the onkyo 818 will make a difference compared to my Denon 2113CI. But thats a totally different topic. Thanks for checking out the game on your set Topper, very helpful.

im using normal mode during daytime, with eco mode on- so it gets even brighter. It is very good, i would say. I set my color temp to warm, and movies look like in the cinema.
Dynamic is useless since it is way to contrasty.
When night falls I switch to THX, and set eco off, since in the evenings eco makes the picture less bright for some reason.

Talking about normal mode, I would say its only a little noisy, nothing which I could not tolerate.

I look forward to your impressions for these three options: Onkyo 818, Denon 2113CI, and the VT50.

jdg

Off topic on DirecTV East Coast feeds:

Being on the Left Coast, I really prefer these feeds. They cut down on conflicts, as the basic cable prime time shows are in a block three hours earlier than the West Coast showings for network TV. This setup is tailor-made for taking full advantage of DVRs.

I can understand the issues with protecting the kids, however, resulting in the forced use of rating based password controls.

jdg

It gets brighter with ECO mode ON? If I have ECO or CATS ON then the picture is a lot dimmer in NORMAL.

Sounds like you do the same as me. I also use warm although I do like Normal for watching sport.

Have you thought about getting your set calibrated?

yep, no FIOS at my location, so i will go with Direct as i planned.