The *OFFICIAL* RCA Plasma (all models) HDTV Thread...

LG manufactures Zenith and RCA may be made by Audiovox or some other company. But if this TV uses a Samsung panel, then it may be similar to the 450 series.

My son in law just bought this tv what kind of settings did you get it might help him as a starting point. Told him to make sure its not in torch mode.
Thanks

If you are tweak-minded and the Y-scan drive board is samsung, you might be able to reduce your black level. More details can be found here.

any comments on the black levels without tweaking the boards?

are the similar to 2011 lg plasma(dark grey) or closer to Samsung and Panasonic blacks?

InYourEyes would you mind giving me the calibration settings you are using? I just bought this set and am going to pick it up tomorrow, this will be my first HD set so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I also would like to know the settings you used, I just got it today and would like to see how they look. Thanks in advance!

Add me to the list of people interested in calibrated settings for a point of reference. I just bought this TV yesterday from best buy because the deal was just too good to pass up.

Just got it too.....any help with adjustments would be greatly appreciated

I have played around with the settings a bit and was able to adjust the brightness level with AVIA, here are the settings I'm using that look better than the default settings for me.

Brightness 48
Contrast 45
Color 40
Tint Default
Sharpness 20

These two settings below are the most important.

Color Temperature NORMAL
Dynamic Contrast OFF

Let me know what you guys think, any suggestions.

I just got it also, the price this weekend was to good to be true.....It was $50 cheaper at Best Buy Sunday vs Saturday, crazy........plus it's only for a bedroom.

I have Panasonic plasmas, the G10 & S2. I wasn't expecting much but I'm quite surprised. Very nice picture.

I tried those settings posted also, they look good but I always tweak off warm color mode.....still messing with it. However, these are better than what I was able to come up with so maybe this set is digging normal.

Anybody have settings using warm?

Thanks Candlejack, just set up using your settings....with just OTA HD for now and I am very happy with this 299 price. This will be used in the back room for our grandkids for wii, Xbox and movies. Will provide feedback on each of these sources.

Just curious as to how the RCA could be using a Samsung panel, which only seems to be cut into 43inch panels?
Also, BB this week has identically priced 42 inch plasmas from Insignia and RCA (both 389ers)...does either one rise above trhe other? I noticed that the RCA has 4 hdmi's . which I thought was an unusually nice feature.

The Insignia plasmas also use a Samsung panel, and the menu interface is also Samsung style. And Samsung also made 42" panels for their own TVs until 2011, when they started producing 43" and 51" plasmas. So they should still be capable of making them for other manufacturers. And that Insignia plasma is similar to the Samsung 450 series, and is a nice 720p version. The RCA should be similar as well.

Thanks for the insights, explains the similar price-I guess the pq should be practically identical? Any reason to pick one over the other? One has 4 hdmi's, but I really only need 2.

Hooked up and tested the Wii and Xbox 360.
Wii no issues...didn't expect any.
Xbox 360 - had to set Xbox video to wide screen to fill the screen. Played Gears of War 3.....colors looked good and noticed no lag.
OTA HD colors look great and even the SD was exceptable......
loving this TV so far.

Still see the RCA & Insignia 42" plasmas for under 4, & Official Panny & Sammy 720's for around 4 and a quarter. For bedroom viewing with controlled light purposes, is the PQ or reliability any better among these 4, or is it a total wash (ergo, go with the cheapest; or take the RCA w/4 hdmi's)?

Burghood from what I could see while I was researching tv's all of those tv's seem to be similar overall. The reason I jumped at the RCA was because the price dropped to $299.99, it was the second time in about a month and a half that it was that price so it may happen again. I haven't done much calibration but I've been very happy with it so far

Was the 299 from bb?

Yes it was from Best Buy, the first time was mid to late April but I missed it. The second was last week on Sunday the 27th , I believe both were one day only sales.

I'd grab one of those, especially when the competition at that price point are all low & mid tier lcd's! Did you just periodically watch the BB ad & click on "Deals of the Day"?

I don't understand the focus on old USA name brands, which BTW should include GE, Magnavox, Sylvania, Zenith, and Motorola, among others, all but GE now owned by asian companies. More importantly, none of those brands actually own manufacturing facilities; they are just names now, not actual companies, and all are sourced at Korean or Chinese-owned facilities, which also source many Japanese brands, of course.

It's a slick marketing move; after all, they have to call them something-who in heartland America wouldn't trust a Zenith or RCA brand vs. a Coby, Goldstar or Sceptre? Most casual consumers never have the time or inclination to research this crap, and they figure the Name gotta be worth SOMETHING...They do this with Motorcycle companies too. TRIUMPH was bought out by investors 16yrs ago, after being dormant for over a decade-they even one upped the old Co. & build a much better product. Indians were brought back a couple times in recent memory, each iteration getting better (& way pricier!) Even the cultish Harly D. was once owned by AMF, the pool table/bowling ball company a few decades ago, & they were ,by far, the crappiest bikes out there!!

Maybe we ought to buy up the name "Admiral" & pay some one in SE Asia to slap together some components we know are decent to good & pimp them out thru WalMart!!!

I have made it a habit to try to check dealnews.com daily to watch for good deals, especially on tv's, and it showed the deal the morning it was going on. They separate the deals by category and have a tv section so checking to is pretty quick. They also compare the current deals to previous ones to help the process.

Please post instructions on how to enter the service menu for the RCA 42PA30RQ.

I have calibrated (grayscale) 3 other plasmas, 2 LCDs and a projector with an Eye1 and Color HCFR so I'm aware of the caveats when entering the service menu.

Thanks in advance.

hey there.
so i have TWO versions of this tv.
bought both at best buy, one a couple months ago, one last week.
thing is, the MENU and ON SCREEN DISPLAY (for the volume) is different!
should i be concerned i bought some bootleg version?
fwiw, the new one does not look as good as the first one, not bad...just subjectively not as good...
thanks
stephen

Well, third party electronics manufacturers are producing this TV for various retailers and using the RCA brand name. Supposedly initial shipments used a Samsung panel. Perhaps this newer version uses an LG panel, or some other panel, or perhaps they just updated the menu interface.