The Official Panasonic U50/54 Owners' Thread - Page 25

What kind of receiver? Be more specific when you say "sound on and sound off" since we are dealing with tv sound and avr sound.

Sounds like a handshake issue. I don't have my set yet but I remember reading about someone else who had the same problem with a Denon receiver; his solution was to turn on his equipment one at a time in a specific order.

Sorry to disappoint you guys with my Hisense story. What can I say I have them both SIDE BY SIDE runninging on DISH NETWORK 211K as well as compared with the movie THE GREY.

Because of the brightness of the LEDs the lighter details in the shadows just seemed to show up more than U50

Yes there could be some calibration to help it but I have played wi th settings and WOW and could not get the same detail to show on the U50 without ruining the image.

Now the Hisense is going back since the sound cut out twice for now reason and would reset when I turned it on and off.

As I said if Dish did not have poor network broadcasts from my area I would not be even considering plasma.


BTW ho do you guys bet past the the 50u50 uses 3-4x the electric? 300W vs 70W?

The image is not THAT much different especially with Blu ray. In fact, and you are probably not going to agree with me, but from the $169 Quantum view to $800 Tvs I tried, they all did a wonderful job with Blu rays. and it was only the plasma that seemed to hide allot of the lower quality HD feeds. Honestly I am shocked, being new to HD how many have learned to settle and make excuses for the crap these companies are putting out.


For me viewing angle and how the TV does with images are important . Since plasma makers decided not to allow me to turn off ABL I am having a hard time justifying what I am getting when viewing side by side.

Now if you have one on and off and watch for a while, sure you think it is great. And since the Plasma is doing something to smear the pixels better than on ALL the LCD and LED tvs show the same defects and Dish techs say that is just the way it is. But side by side it then you can see plasma is a bit flat in comparison..

Anyway, if I did not see the extra detail in the Hisense shadows, compared tot the 50u50 I would not have an argument.

When I compared to the Samsung 43" I was not sure if the extra detail was due to that one being 720p and now I have confirmed that it was not the quality of the 50u50 rather that the lower resolution just did not have the detail.

Sorry guys, I am not sure I can justify 4x the electric use if it is not displaying the detail. The Hisense needed to be turned down allot and even with knocking down allot of the brightness and color saturation, it was still showing a detail that was not there side by side. And next to the high band stations they were near equal.

I am frustrated over this since I thought I was going to settle on the plasma. Still the extra cost to run , and I watch allot of TV, is just hard to think how much extra I will spend yearly just to have the plasma.

300w is just about a full white screen. I had a watt meter plugged in for a while, and most of the time I was using around 150-175 watts. Commercials go up. Football was 150-175 most of the time. Prime Time dramas (that I watch anyway) are about the same. Some lower, some higher. Even a hockey game or two didn't go much above 200, which surprised me, since there is a lot of white in that.
Obviously messing with contrast and brightness will change those numbers. Mine both hover near 50.

^^^ Its a Sony receiver. Ok no problem I will clarify. When the TV is on: no sound, no image. When TV is off: yes sound is there but no image (obviously). Weird? I know.

^^^ Ok I guess I can look into that a bit more and see what comes of it. Thanks!

For the same reason why I drive a car with a Hemi that requires premium fuel; performance is more important to me than energy costs.

defiantly sounds like a receiver problem, if u wanna double make sure its the Sony audio receiver then try a diffrerent HDMI cable andi f it does the same thing it is indeed the receiver.

it could be the cable box, but if u wanna elimate cable box then just try and see if seperate DVD/Bluray player does it

^^^ Just figured it out folks! Its a HDMI Handshake problem. Thanks to "nveleven" for putting me on the trail. As soon as i searched hdmi handshake similar problems like mine showed up in the search. The solution is really simple... turn the tv and avr on first and then the ps3. Thanks to all that replied, I much appreciate it! Problem solved.

Now if this tv didn't have such horrible reflection and glare I would be much happier. I realize I was going to have some before buying it but wow its pretty bad, like distracting bad. Not sure if i should keep it or not. Would suck to have to haul a 60" tv back to the store but I see no other choice at the moment. What's worse is the tv's picture quality is amazing but I cant watch a scene without distracting glare/reflections.

Again, Thanks to all that posted

Hey! Glad I could help out. 3 posts in and I already made an impression on someone. This must be that 'pride' feeling I hear people talk about.

That's too bad about the glare. You sure you can't think of a alternative to returning the tv? Some black blinds or curtains to eliminate the sunlight?

Makes me worrisome about mine. I've only got one window in my room and the TV will be situated right infront of that window. Hopefully I won't have the same issues. *fingers crossed*

Thanks again for posting. It really helped me out. Honestly Im not one to over-exagerate (like a lot of posts you read on the internet) things but the glare is actually really bad. Its one thing for things to reflect on a screen and another for them to glare right back at you making it distracting. The issue with finding something to cover the blinds is that I want to be able to watch tv in this particular room with room light on or with the blinds partially open. And this tv while awesome I just cant do that. I can live with reflections and glare being there as long as they don't distract the viewing experience. I had a 5 year old LCD in the same spot where this plasma was sitting and no issues whatsoever with glare. In light of this I just couldn't convince myself to keep the tv so I packaged it back up and loaded it in the truck in garage just a few hours ago and tomorrow morning it gets returned. Believe me I didn't take the decision easily and went back n' forth a lot but ultimately wasn't happy so I decided its best to return it. I wish you better luck with yours and I suppose if your willing to watch the tv in a dark room then this tv will be perfect for you. The picture quality is better then most if not all other tv's in its price range. Its either a LED tv for me or a projector.

Understood. Sounds like you came to this decision through a lot of contemplation. A little bit of ambient light makes any LCD technology pop way more than in absolute darkness; I'm sure you'll find something that suits your room.

I'm picking mine up today and am very interested to see how it fares in my room against my LN40B5 LCD which I honestly think still looks decent as long as I sacrifice a shadow detail for near blacks.

Last night I tried the AVS HD 709 Calibration Black Level MP4 on my Samsung LCD in darkness (how I like to watch movies) and I could not get the bars 17 and 18 to flash with any sort of authority without graying out the whole screen. As my first plasma, I'm excited to run the same test and see what all the plasma hubbub is for myself.

New here....thanks for all of the great info so far. I think I've narrowed my TV search down top the 60" U50, but I'm curious as to exactly what the differences are between the U50 and the Sam's Club U54 models? I read somewhere that you don't get all of the picture settings options with the U54, is this true? Any help is greatly appreciated. The local Sam's here has the U54 for $798 right now, but I don't want to pull the trigger if I won't be happy with my calibration options. Thanks!

Just playing around to contrast and brightness to reduce the power usage is a laughable. sorry but why would I want to turn everything down? I could use default eco settings if I wanted a dull dark picture.
It truly is amazing what people put up with and convince themselves it is acceptable.

What can I say, I have the kill a watt plugged in and watch the numbers hop around. No, 300 is not a nearly white screen. That is I hit that number even if it is not. The sticker on the back of the tv says 325w average use. Yes if you have a dark back ground you can get 175 w but there has to be very little changes. So I got 135 w during a SNL monolog with a singer. It was a fairly dark background and spot light on her. She would play her guitar and was not moving much So in that case yes it dropped low.

What I did not realize was that plasma was going to jump around so much in energy use as the scenes change when my old tube tv , lcd and LED hold a wattage in a very tight range.
Plasma rarely is holding a wattage.
So instead of focusing on the readings, I based my findings on over all use over 48 hour period and had approx 4.5 KWH in that time frame. I am not leaving the TV on 48 hours but what I used in that period.
LED was 1.4 KW This does seem to be in range with what Panasonic states on the back label.

As far as I know the numbers do not lie and if they the still show there is indeed a 3.5x-4x power use increase with the plasma. While this might be less in the past it is still high and not a trade off if they are not giving me a bright screen on those full white scenes. Now the Samsung 43" I tired which was E450 I think it was called, and 720 P was averaging 135 W at its high end and whites still dimmed but were whiter side by side, I was getting a loss of detail with the 720 that I could pick up and had gotten Walmart to price match PC Richards at $358 but in the end it was less resolution . I am not sure if that same set was 50" if the power use would go back up or if Samsung just have gotten it to use less and still be bright.

But really, to tell me to turn bright and contrast down just to meet my wattage use desires is not the answer I would accept. Sorry but PQ is priority and then trying to hit what is on my wish list is next.
If Panasonic wants to let me turn off ABL I would accept higher use. But since they are penalizing me for liking a bright image, since I am also watching TV during the day and even at night am not in a cave, I have to consider this is not for me.

Well if a couple dollars more a month is goin to break you then this or any Plasma is not for you, go back to LCD/LED, why even try Plasma if your so energy cautious? A little research would of told ya they obviously use more energy than LED, if you expected the plasma to be anywhere close to LED in terms of energy use you were mistaken, I have some issues with this Plasma but how much energy it uses is on the bottom of my list of issues

I don't think it's that he's energy cautious, he's nitpicking because he actually thinks the LCD looks better than the plasma. I'm not sure if he's trying to convince himself or us though. His complaints with ABL are justified though, but then he probably would have a genuine energy concern if the TV was allowed free roam. Personally I found the ABL on the U50 to be too strict. I may have had contrast too high, but I was using CNET's calibrated settings. I didn't run AVS709 at the time though, so I can't say if the contrast/brightness were set properly, I just know that even watching something like Family Guy, the ABL was constantly active. I'm hoping the GT50 is better or I'll be looking toward LCD myself. lol
Edited by JSpectre88 - 2/5/13 at 1:23pm

After going through several LED-backlit LCDs from Samsung/LG prior to my panny plasma, I purposely modified my viewing room for my plasma as the picture is just too good. Do you understand why your LED-backlit LCD is much more constant in power usage? The backlit is always on regardless if it's a bright or a dark scene. Your plasma has to boost power to just like the old CRT sets of old to brighten up the picture. If the quality of a hisense LCD is better than plasma to you, by all means please return your panny plasma post-haste. Even though I pay a ridiculous $0.30 kWh here in LA, I'm more than willing to pay for the performance increase. As another poster said above I don't care that my BMW TT 6 cylinder burn premium at 22MPG, it's helluva more fun than my neighbors craptastic Prius that would give me the same thrills as riding the metrolink.

I find it extremely puzzling that anyone would pick that a Hisense 50" LED TV over the Panasonic U50 Plasma.

I am probably the only other user who had a Hisense. Coincidentally it was also a 50" LED version. I absolutely hated that TV. My fiancee was disappointed because she won that TV at 2013 CES. We wanted to keep it, but the PQ was so terrible we simply couldn't live with it. It was obvious to her as well and we agreed to sell it after less than 24hr. I can understand someone picking a high end Samsung/LG/Sony LCD over a plasma due to the brightness, but .....not the Hisense.

Fast forward, I got my first plasma P50U50 and I am blown away. Love it. It has some negative points, but overall the PQ is simply amazing for this price.

Can anyone help with this? Thanks

Got my U50 last night, have it set up now and am playing around with it. Came from an LN40B500 Samsung CCFL LCD.

First impressions - Positives:

Wow. Blacks are black. Movies like The Matrix, Terminator 2, Alien are all widescreen but you can't make out where the black bars starts and ends during dark scenes. Gray movement isn't blurred. When I open MPC and for a few seconds before a video loads, the center screen is pitch black, as close to a CRT you can get.

Negatives:

Plasma buzz was instantly noticeable. This TV doubles as a monitor for my HTPC and opening any explorer window with excess white makes a loud buzz. Right now I'm typing on AVS with this TV and it's buzzing away. Not a problem in movies, but I would definitely not use this as a monitor.

Noticeable flicker when I look away from the screen.

Whites aren't white in Cinema mode, and in other modes it is a blue. I do miss the LCD white temperature, but in movies its not noticeable. Another reason this won't double well as a monitor. I guess I have to choose between white and black (LCD vs plasma).

Flicker of colors when something pans against white. For example, the opening scene of ALIEN, the letters slowly dissolving into the title scene flickers yellow/blue/red as the background pans across the stars. Can be distracting if you know to look for it.

Dithering is annoying, and very noticeable even at low brightness levels. I suppose this is a plasma phenomenon and its how it gradients colors for an overall picture; I miss how an LCD was just "what it was" for the lack of a better explanation. The title screen of The Matrix when the green colored code falls into the scene is an example. If I pause any of those frames, there are green dancing pixels between the edges of the letters where it is supposed to be black. My LCD was clearer in this regard.


I'm having a hard time justifying keeping this TV; the store return policy gives me 30 days to decide. Maybe my opinion will change as I use it.
Edited by nveleven22 - 2/6/13 at 11:53am

Read my other posts if YOU really want to know the answers to your questions.

I have no idea. I own the st. Have you tried the Panasonic website or called Sams electronics dept? If you need an answer right away that might be worth a try.
Edited by Bond 007 - 2/6/13 at 10:29am

Sorry guy, NEVER said I PICKED this tv OVER plasma. I am sorry guys I am pointing out the flaws I see with Plasma. YUP another side by side test and just reporting what I see. THe plasma is more smeared and thus why it looks smoother. I when I am talking I AM NOT talking about BLURAY. I am speaking of my experiences with these TVS and the poor DISH HD quality or the poor network feeds.

I have returned the HIsense since the sound cut out twice. And yes, it was hard to get the faces, on DAY TIME talk shows like morning shows, not look over saturated. However I am working with the same poor signal from Dish HD (and to repeat myself I have had 3 techs out who said the signal is in the 60s and nothing they can do.

Fellas, my point is this. If I can see more detail even in a HISENSE tv when side by side, then Plasma for all its other flaws such as buzz 4x electric use , ABL and the glare and maybe even too much green in flesh tones on the u50 that these flaws are just too many.

And sorry but even Quantum View, Hisense, Vizio, Sprectre, Samung six series, the plasmas, at ANY price point, all looked very close with Blu ray. My goal was to get something that worked well for the pixelated oil painted faces on the network shows that it seems so many are living with on DISH. Sadly I have nothing to compare to and people are telling me Dish HD is so great and I am not seeing it.
Techs blamed the TVs. And sorry, I should not have to buy a tv costing thousands just to get it.

All I am reporting is what I see side by side. So if I pause a blue ray and the Hisense is showing more detail in the shadow areas than the U50, well don't shoot messenger.

Really it is sad when people can not admit that an off brand can be better in some areas in comparison. Yes the Hisense has very poor off angle viewing but it is just me hear so when in final location it would be in the best or I would find one like the Quantum view I tried that had very good off angle viewing. It was shockingly goof for a $200 TV.
Yes the Hisense 50" does not have enough calibration for color. Just saturation and tint. Also I was not able to adjust the settings for each mode it would flip back to custom if you were in cinema.

And even though I can see more of the defects in the broadcast stuff, which are still there if you look close at the U50 plasma. you can see how the plasma might be achieving this by blurring the image a bit. EVEN WITH all the DNR turned OFF. Side by side there was a sharpness more 3D look with the Hisense and the U50 softer and duller. Believe me I turned the HIsense color way down. The LED had more over all contrast which makes images pop. but I guess it also shows the flaws in the signals.

All I can tell you guys I tried so many TVs since December since Dish was blaming my TV selections. So then I went to Best Buy and tried open box items like the 50u50 and some LED 3d Samsung Series 6
What I have seen is not one LCD/LED no matter if it is $800 or $189 has been able to m EVEN WITH DNR smooth out this effect. It bugs me so much to see food shots looking great but then when they go to the faces there is major compression flaws. I really do not think , since Blu ray do not do this, that the issue is with low quality, laughable "HD" quality or the Dish equipment is not able to compress and decompress well or Dish is overly compressing.

WHenI first got the U50, without other TVs to compare side by side I thought my problem was solved. Since I watch TV more than movies I thought this was the solution.

However now I see I am still missing out on some things, that plasma is not the be all end all.

As I told you guys, I would be more likely to accept the issues I see with the50 U50if they just let me turn off the auto limiter so I can have my full white screens, But since they do not then I have to cpare to others. Maybe eventually Dish w or hte netoworks will match the soft HD say on Discovery.

quote name="openwheelracing" url="/t/1410013/the-official-panasonic-u50-54-owners-thread/720#post_22928614"]I find it extremely puzzling that anyone would pick that a Hisense 50" LED TV over the Panasonic U50 Plasma.

I am probably the only other user who had a Hisense. Coincidentally it was also a 50" LED version. I absolutely hated that TV. My fiancee was disappointed because she won that TV at 2013 CES. We wanted to keep it, but the PQ was so terrible we simply couldn't live with it. It was obvious to her as well and we agreed to sell it after less than 24hr. I can understand someone picking a high end Samsung/LG/Sony LCD over a plasma due to the brightness, but .....not the Hisense.

Fast forward, I got my first plasma P50U50 and I am blown away. Love it. It has some negative points, but overall the PQ is simply amazing for this price.[/quote]

Was gonna post this...

Then I saw the remnants of a quote Markstar tried to embed into his post.

Dude, you need more fluid thoughts when posting. I can barely follow what you were trying to say there.

FYI...I spoke to Panasonic and they told me that the U50 and U54 were identical. No lack of features, picture settings, etc.., on the U54. I had heard somewhere that the U54 was missing the "Game" preset picture mode, they told me that this was not the case. We shall see i guess.

Everything I have heard is that the U54 doesn't have game mode, everything else is the same as the U50.

Thinking about picking up a 60" U50 from Walmart.. I'm between the U50 or a 70" Sharp LED TV.. The 640U (cheap low end version).

Would it be safe to say the U50 pretty much smokes all LCDs on the market in PQ? It's not really a matter of money, but i've been hearing even a entry level plasma can dominate the quality of $3000 led tvs these days.. This true?

I would say that's a bit of an exaggeration but you can't beat it for the money.

Anyone else having a really hard time getting skin tones to be natural with this tv?

On any of the Normal, Warm1, or Warm2 color settings, I have to turn color down to 40 and tint to -10 to get skin tones to appear correct, and by that time all the other colors are dulled out.

Using HTPC with Blurays to judge. Connected through HDMI.

Edit: Tried both colorspaces, full and limited. Corresponding setting in the video card panel is selected as well.
Edited by nveleven22 - 2/7/13 at 5:07am

For the U/UT series plasmas, you have to go into service mode to get rid of the green. The higher priced GT/ST/VT sets have adjustable WB without having to go into the service menu

Try this thread here
I applied those settings on my UT50 (which I'm pretty sure has a very similar panel to the U50) and the colors are 1000% better!

....unbe-freaking-lievable.

Using Anikun07's settings...my TV is transformed. Holy hell, I can't believe Panasonic would ship these in such a condition by default.

ANYONE with this TV, please go into the service menu and change the RGB values for Cinema / Warm to Anikun07s settings and watch it on that. It makes this TV watchable. NO ONE should have to watch this TV in the grating color scheme it ships with. The directions are a little different for the U50 but you should be able to figure it out.

Thanks magbarn.