Official New Panny thread: 42PD50, PX50, PX500 - Page 19

Good points, Macfan... I really think you're right about the marketing optics.

It is 390W as stated on the back panel. Lets remember that the manual is posted on line for all to see.

I decided to compare the power requirement for all of the 42" commercial and consumer displays. (these came from the operating manuals)

42PWD6UY 395W
42PWD7UY 290W

42PD25UP 395W
42PD50U 390W

42PX25UP 445W
42XVS30UP 357W

You can see that going from the 6th generation to the 7th generation panel showed a significant decrease in the power requirements for both the commercial ED and the consumer HD (Onyx used for comparison as PX50 specs not available). The ED panel is not using a new glass otherwise we would have seen a similar drop in the power requirements. It looks to me that the PD50 is still using the either 6th generation glass or 6th generation electronics as I am not sure if the power saving came from the glass change or the electronics change. Either way the 7UY ED display seems to be the better choice as it didn't carry over as much from the 6th generation display

Hoodlum, what you say would seem to make sense, with it being assumed that 6th gen. glass was used with "8th gen electronics." This would account for lower power w/o the cable card, and other changes such as sub-pixel control would seem to be elctronics changes. However, do you really think panasonic would feel comfortable labeling the pd50 as an 8th gen panel just based on new electronics?

Not sure this deduction is entirely true. For example, the 7UY in general, has less consumer add-ons like the tuners and speakers (assumed to be running I'm sure in the PD50u). The most interesting thing is only a 5W difference between the 25u and 50u (no cable card or extra tuner?). If the glass makes a difference, there appears to be none between these models. I still say the picture looks better on the 50u for whatever reason. Though I had not seen them side by side, I spent much time with the 25u before I bought the 50u.

I understand questioning the glass generation based on the power consumption remaining unchaged. But, do the additional specs on the pd50 television compared to the 7y justify additional power consumption. For instance, more colors, wider gray scale. Just asking.

The Power Requirement dropped 105W from the 6uy to the 7uy and they had the same add-ons. We should have seen a similar drop with the PD50.

There was also a 90W drop from the PX25 to the Onyx with similar add-ons. Based on the Onyx, it looks like the 42PX50U will require less power than the 42PD50 which is the reverse of what should be happening since more pixels require more power.

The GSP Mall BB has on on display and it does look better than most plasmas in there.

I compared the PQ to the Sony HD 34" XBR CRT on the opposite side and to the Pio HD 5041? about 2 panels away (all in the same isle playing same loop).

Everything else equal and taking into account the non-perfect setup and lighting conditions, I was surprised by the vibrant colors and sharp contrast.
Definitely a WOW factor for an ED panel. The blacks were jet black, equal to the CRT and obviously darker than the Pio.
The Panny did not look at all washed out in the very lit isle and had an equal life like feel to the Pio (the Sony CRT lacked punch and depth).
SDE noticeable at about 7 feet (squinting hard and looking for it on bright background) and evident at 5. Panel looked like it was in torch mode (so were all the others).

The silver bezel is not reflective shiny but more like matted plastic silver (poor description, you have to see it to understand) and don't care for it. I thought the speaker under the screen gave it a balanced feel and will make it easy to fit in many entertainment centers.
No remote around so no comment.

FWIW, all the other ED and HD plasmas in the isle (LG, Sony, Phillips, Maxtent? and Pio) had poor PQ which made the ED Panny stand out even more.... I can assume only that it is done on purpose by management to push the new Panny.
I also asked the 3 floor guys some knowledge probing questions which quickly revealed they should be selling pizza instead of plasmas.

Since I am in the market for a 50", can't wait to see what the 50 HD model will look like when it comes out but boy was I tempted to buy this one on the spot (and it is priced to outsell all others).

IMHO don't buy anything in the 42" size until you see it.

Gman

Well, let me start by saying I am a proud owner of a 50u, so I am biased (of course). Anyway, there has always been alot of discussion about what generation this panel is. I was crazy-concerned about it because I had it on pre-order site-unseen, but then I got to see the unit one day before delivery. For me, the bottom line is that the 50u's picture is great (I am using tame words compared to what I would like to use). In fact, I am actually inclined to believe Panasonic when they say its 8th generation.

If you are considering the 50u the best thing you can do is go look at the unit (if you can).

Best regards...

OK guys after reading this forum for 6 months I finally took the plunge...I bought The PD50 Today @ PC Richard and got an unreal deal..I mean unreal..My Dirct TV TIVO DVR will be hooked up Tomorrow..


Anyone know tthe proper settings.(tuning)....that would help..


Thanks..The picture is awesome and the guy at PC Richard said the HD on this set looks better than some HD sets.

..

Needed to buy a ED plasma for a vacation / rental property and the local BB did not have the 42PD50 in stock. Ended up with a FEB05 build 42PA25 from SAM'S Club. IMHO a great deal at $800 less than the MSRP ($2499) for the new PD50!

ED and HD from Directv look great on the 42PA25 and it compares well to ED and HD from Comcast on my NEC 50XM4 at my home. ED actually looks better on the Panny.

Just thought I'd mention a weird occurance happened today with my PD50u. Note that most all my ATSC off-air stations come in at around 88 to 97% according to the signal strength meter (though I can't believe it, really). In any case, all channels were playing fine for the last several days.

But today I switched over from S-video 1 input (I use for all SD cable channels through the VCR) to TV input and found it said "Signal too weak" on 3 of my major DTV channels.

I checked them all on my other OTA tuner in my computer and they were all fine as usual. I checked the cable and connections. Nothing had changed. I finally had to do a re-scan of the off-air channels again in order to bring everything back! They all still register very high as usual too.

Good thing, because I was ready to return the set to BB tomorrow if the tuner was going out . Why should I have to re-scan channels? Has anyone ever seen this? I'll have to keep a close eye on this over the next few weeks.

Amen. I tried to find a PD25 to buy in mid-Feburary, but they were all gone in my area and so I settled for a Zenith. Fortunately (in retrospect!) the first one I got was DOA and the second developed a bad column after an hour of operation, so I exchanged it for a PD50.

I can't say for sure if the PD50 is better than the PD25, since I only saw the latter in the stores showing the HD loop. (Until you get it home and use it in your environment on the material you typically watch, you will never know how a plasma will perform for you.) Certainly the PD50 is 10x better than the Zenith in every regard (JUST mode is better, ZOOM mode is better, SD is better in general, gray levels are awesome.)

There seem to be a lot of people here who want to trash the PD50 for some reason. If you can't live without a Cablecard or PIP, it's obviously not a good choice. I'm totally satisfied with it. But whatever you do, get a Panasonic of some sort!

CareyP, ccdenger, jspirate,

How do you guys have your picture tuned?

Does anybody know if there's any way to find out if the px50 is going to have 3:2 pulldown, since the px25 strangely didn't have this important feature?

I change it almost daily, so I think you should set it to taste or to the program content you're watching. For SD or taped programs from S-Video input, I use the "cinema" setting and boost the sharpness and contrast a bit. I use Standard for my DTV off-air stuff using lower brightness and contrast settings (at least during break-in period, anyway).

I use the different video selections per input so that it remembers the settings when I switch back and forth. Don't know what I'll do when I use HDMI or Component inputs, as I am out of video settings to associate (unless I use Vivid!). Hopefully, one input will be similar enough to another so not to worry. That's how it is when you're limited on features .

Can any of the owners of the 50U tell me how quiet the unit is in operation? Does it have a fan or is it passively cooled? I find fan noises distracting so thats why I ask.

No fan that I can tell. There is a slight buzzing noise if you put your ear right up to the back of the unit.

The Panasonic ED Models (Cons/Comm) don't have fans.

I had this happen once and found it puzzling, too. In my case, it was only one station and I later learned it was performing maintenance.

I have discovered posts on my local OTA forum that suggest that others have this problem occasionally, often with STBs. Most of the time it is apparently related to something the stations do. (They are still testing/enhancing/fine tuning their equipment.) I have no idea why, but it seems to affect some tuners but not others. Re-scanning seems to be a standard recommended solution. From what I read, re-scanning would have solved my problem when it occurred. I think a temporary frequency shift was involved.

I don't know if there is a local channel forum for your area, but you might want to check. If there is, you can find out if others are having the same problem.

Thanks. I actually manage our local reception forum, but I thought this might be specific to this set since there was nothing different as far as transmissions go as indicated by my other tuner. I wonder if this set's tuner is affected by station changes even when not viewing the channels and watching a different input altogether.
In any case, the program list still had the channel in memory and yet when accessed said too weak of a signal, while at the same time with my other tuner (on the other splitter output) said 88% strength and all was good. It also happened on 3 out of my 6 local channels at the same time. These are channels coming from different towers and/or transmitters (though located in same place). Very odd.

Opps...


Assuming that I'm reading this right and you are talking about the set's internal tuner and signal strength display, that's exactly how mine registered, although only one station was involved. It went on for two days, then fixed itself, somehow.

This happened a week or two after I got my 42PD25U but hasn't since. Hope it works out equally well for you.

A few points:

1) the 42" Onyx number of 357W is for the panel; the separate media electronics use an additional 46 watts.

2) My slightly educated guess (I'm an EE) is that the drive electronics, tuner, etc, account for no more than 10-15% of the overall system power in a plasma (but all of the standby)

3) Nearly all of the max power reductions would come from the glass, where the critical improvements the last few years are making more light from a given power per pixel.

4) The number of gradations and other improvements (and most if not all of subpixel control) are in the drive electronics, not the glass.

5) the maximum power requirements can be as much a regulatory thing as an actual measured power draw. To get UL, CE, and other regulatory approval, you have to state a doesn't-exceed maximum, but the actual maximum and average may be well below that. The Onyx 357 watts sounds like an actual measurement, the PD50 390 watts, not so much.

6) The PD50 is said to have an "eighth generation" panel. This might mean anything. It's as likely to be an ease of production/increased manufacturing yield improvement as reduced power, longer lifetime, etc, or it could be a mixture of all of those things, and it could mean something different for the 42" ED panel and any other. Barring technical details from Panasonic or somebody ripping their set apart to reverse-engineer it, it's tough to say. I'm not volunteering for the latter! :-)

Actually, I meant my other tuner registered 88% so I didn't see why the 50u was claiming it was weak. I re-scanned before I thought to check what the 50u was reading. I'll do this next time if there is one.

I can hardly believe what I just experienced at the BB in little Columbus, GA ... I went in there with little expectation of seeing either set, but wanting to compare the Panny PD50 with the brand new Sammy R4232. Neither set was on the floor, but Ryan took it upon himself to go into the back room and after some searching found BOTH OF THEM IN BOXES !! He proceeded to bring them both out and set them up side by side in the aisle, and we compared them to each other and to the previous year Sammy and the previous Panasonic.

Let me just say that I am not an expert nor a videophile, but PQ is the most important thing to me and I do know how to adjust a set to get the picture that I want. The most obvious thing..."Sub-Pixel Control" is most definitely NOT a marketing gimic...it is real, it is a marked improvement and it IS in the PD50! The first thing that we noticed about the Panny as it sat in the aisle, using the box as a base, was that the factory preset was in Vivid and the colors were definitely VIVID and bright and gorgeous. It was a standout picture without any adjustment whatsoever. The comparison with the Samsung 4231 (last years ED) right behind it was striking. It even had more snap than the PX25 a few feet away. Ryan let me put the remote together and adjust it to my hearts content, and I reduced the color saturation, the brightness and contrast and got what is to me a much more natural looking picture, especially the flesh tones and greens in the vegetation. He fed it a 1080i, 720p, and a 480i, and I couldn't tell just a whale of a lot of difference in any of the feeds (component cabling), but to my untrained eye the 1080i signal was a slight winner. By the way, Feb '05 build, Osaka, Japan.

In just a few minutes he appeared with another box, containing the new Sammy, and he pulled it out on its stand and set it up right beside the Panny (Mar '05 build, Mexico). The Samsung has a black, slightly shiny bezel that is about the same width as the silver bezel on the Panasonic (2"), and I must say that I preferred the black surround. The Sammy is an improvement on the 4231, in that you can see better black level, more contrast, more brightness, just a little more of everything. The 10,000:1 contrast ratio was not evident, but I was able to adjust the picture so that it looked VERY CLOSE to the Panasonic. I could not tell any difference from the 12 bit processing and the increased gray scale, although I'm sure that someone with the right material could demonstrate the difference. Both sets had a beautiful picture, however the Panasonic looked like a more natural color pallette to my eye, it was smoother, with more detail in both dark and light areas of the screen. I attribute a large part of this to the SUB-PIXEL CONTROL feature. It was obvious to everyone that the Panny looked smoother, more like the HD sets than the ED sets, and MUCH reduced SDE...I could see the SDE on the new Sammy quite easily at eight feet, but had to get within about six feet of the Panny to really notice it. To my eye the picture was so much better than the Sammy next to it that I may just have to live with the silver plastic. Congratulations Panasonic...the new PD50 has the best picture that I have yet seen on an ED plasma, and with the reduction in SDE I have no hesitation any longer about purchasing an ED plasma. And to BB in Columbus, and to Ryan and his fellow sales persons, thank you for the extra effort and for the great experience. To all of you, like me, who have been waiting for the next step in PQ, I hope that you get the opportunity to see the PD50.

This bodes very well for the PX50 and the PX500 which should benefit just as much from the SPC feature, for those of you who will be sitting closer to the screen than I will.

Tomboyter, I was also able to see the PD50. I viewed the PD25 several times over the last year, and I must say the PD50 is a great successor. I couldn't get further than 6-7 ft., but I agree about the SDE. Far less evident.

Another thing is that it "appears" larger than the PD25. I don't know if it's the speaker placement or just the single-color bezel, but the thing looks HUGE!

I'm still waiting on the 37" HD. Any word on when they'll be shipping out or in stores?

I Wish coscto carries this.. cant wait to exchange w/ VIZIO P42HDe

The PD50 is now at cc. They were to set-up today.

It now also is listed on Panasonic's website.