Official Panasonic 37", 42", 50", 58" & 65" (60, 600, etc)- Questions, Sightings, Etc

I have one thing to ask...58"?! Don't make me come over there!

How did I know that was what you were going to ask?

haha. well some people are questioning if it even exists. it does. i spoke to a panasonic exec right before he went to CES and said there will be one. we just have to wait for all the plasmas to hit the website which im going to guess is very soon now.

LOL... lotsa people waiting on this one

I am in MA just over the RI border and just checked out the local best buy today. I had them check the computer and we found the TH-50PX600U had been removed from the computer. The guy told me it was in the computer earlier. The TH-50PX60U was showing a delivery date to the store on March 18. I had them call me when they do get them in. He said I was the first one to do so at that store.

[EDIT:] The new info about the improved scaler has me excited. It does indeed appear that the new tv will deinterlace 1080i to 1080p and then downscale to 768p. That should make a noticeable difference in picture quality compared to the conversion to 540p and then upscale to native resolution.

I can not wait for a review from loki. I am sure it will be very helpful to all of us.

Anyone spoted a 37PX-60U, or 42PD-60U? What is the MSRP on those supposed to be? That brochure posted in the other thread also showed a 37PD-60U, are they really bringing back a 37 ED model? I would be really interested in one of those if the price was a bit lower than the 42 ED.

2000 for the 37px60u, 2500 for the 42px60u, 1900 for the 42pd60u is what we saw at the panasonic website. please correct me if im wrong.

im pretty sure the 37 inch ED is not for this country though. weird having a 37 inch ed though right? you get it so you are far back from it so you cant really tell its ed but the size is pretty small for sitting far back.

well I was thinking about it for a bedroom tv. I don't realy have room for a 42 or 50 in the bedroom, but a 37 with HD is overkill for resolution at the distance the bed will be. I was thinking LCD maybe, but in the bedroom there will be a lot of viewing with low lights so plasma is ideal.

Yes but... It looks excellent even for those sitting around 7-8 feet.
The smaller pixels on the 37" ED make a differences in the PQ for closer viewing distance.


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ATTENTION: The New Domain for BruZZi's Plasma FAQ is bruzzi.ws
If you have a direct link to the site please uptade to the new Domain Name.

Hi,

You guys really got my attention with the 58" What do we know about it so far? What range of viewing distance do you think we're looking at here?

Saw a sign at BB today. New Pannys available for pickup on March 22. MSRP same as previous models. I thought they would be $300 cheaper. Oh well!

As I said in my other thread the one I ordered from the BB store is comming this Wednesday the 8th.

the BB in paramus, NJ, had 130 of the 42PX60U's available from the warehouse for delivery "within 5 days". none in store. the 50PX60U was in the computer, but none available yet. the 600s were not in system...


ps- any opinions on Monoprice vs BlueJeans for HDMI cables? same diff? thanx...

I hear they are both inexpensive and wonderful in quality. Can't go wrong with either.

Ya think?

The bad news for Panasonic is... if they come out with a 58" PDP... I may buy that instead of their upcoming 65" plasma TV I had my eye on...

decisions... decisions...

I would buy a 75 if they came out with that
Actually, I think that is a great size too.

- Rich

They better not come out with a 37ED again. The bedroom is not currently slated for a flat panal (key word is currently). If they make a 37ED model that would throw my whole gameplan into a state of discombobulation! Jeesh, if it had a CableCard... don't gert me started!

That's a completely different subject - search this forum for WARRANTY or EXTENDED and you'll find a dozen threads about extended warranties.

Gotcha!

Here are some initial impressions of my 42PX60U.

First let me start off with some background info. I am not a videophile by any means. I don't have any fancy equipment to measure brightness or contrast so you will not find any numbers in this review. But I try to obtain the best picture quality within reason. This is my first plasma TV so I will not be able to make a good comparison with other plasmas. My only experiences with plasmas comparisons are in store demos but those are difficult to interpret because the factory settings are always way off. This plasma will be replacing a Sony HS500 which is a 32 CRT HDTV I bought almost 4 years ago. I also have a Benq PE8700 a 720p DLP projector with a 106 screen which I use primarily for movies. Therefore, this plasma will only be used for DIRECTV viewing and gaming on my Xbox 360. My viewing distance is approximately 10'.

I bought this TV based purely on Panasonic's reputation in plasma displays. I have seen the 50u sets. I was about the buy the Samsungs based on price and availability. But after reading this forum I quickly change my mind. I was at my local Bestbuy to pick up my HD DVR and to look at the Toshiba plasmas. While I was there I overheard a salesman mention 60u to another customer and I quickly inquired about them. As soon as I was told they have 150 of them and can delivery them to my house in 2 days I was sold. I paid a little less then the new MSRP that has been reported. I was on the market for a 42 and 50 but they only had 42's in stock so I got 2 42's.

I took delivery of them about 9am yesterday. I took some pix of them that can be found in the other 60u thread for those who haven't been keeping up with that long thread. I hook it up to my HD DVR via HDMI and to my Xbox 360, Denon DVD-5900, and PS2 via component through a 4x2 switch. I have the HD DVR set to output at 720p because most of the HD programs I watch are in that format.

The first show I watch was the review of the CES on HDNet. Watching that show with all the new displays being introduced instantly ruined my excitement of my new toy. But none the less I was impressed by the picture quality. I did notice that the picture settings were way off. I went in to the picture menu and change the picture mode from vivid to standard which made things a little better. The difference between vivid and standard was -10 (from 30 to 20) in the picture setting and -5 (20 to 15) in the sharpness setting. The other settings available in the menu are brightness, color, and tint. There is no advance menu with other setting to adjust like most of us were hoping for. I didn't want to calibrate with Avia just yet because the lighting in my room at the time was very different, due to a skylight, than my normal viewing environment which is in the evening.

So from then until the evening I was pretty much in front of the TV the whole time. I watched some of the 76er's/Pacers and Suns/Mavs game on ABC in HD. The games look pretty good overall but I saw quite a bit of compression artifacts especially when there was a lot of motion. They were there before but the bigger screen just made them so much easier to spot. I watched the Doral Champion in standard definition so that gave me the opportunity to play around with some of the aspect ratio settings. The new H-FILL ratio looks like a combination of stretching and cropping. The others are zoom and 4:3, which should be self explanatory, along with full and justified. I could figure out what the difference was between full and justified from the picture or manual so I settled on full.

When it was finally dark outside, I popped Avia into my Xbox 360. After I went through the test patterns it confirmed my initial assumption with the settings. The default settings in standard mode were Picture +20, Brightness 0, Color 0, Tint 0, and sharpness +15. After calibrating with Avia the settings came out to be Picture +11, Brightness -5, Color -4, Tint -5, and sharpness -3. In the color decoder test pattern I did notice that blue was a little off towards the low side so I will try to poke around the service menu to see if I can adjust it in the next couple of days. Why did I calibrate with my Xbox 360, you may ask. Well it is because I don't know when the test patterns from DIRECTV come on and because I will not used this display for movies so I didn't calibrate with my Denon DVD-5900. I currently have the DVI port on the 5900 hooked up to my projector but I will hook it up to the Panny's HDMI port in the next couple of days to check out the picture quality and to check the picture settings. Too bad this display doesn't store individual picture settings for each input like my projector.

So after the calibration I put Spiderman in and went to the bridge scene at the end of the movie. It is scene 26 I believe. I used this scene to check my projector settings too so I am very familiar with it. There are a lot of subtle details, like the ripples on the surface of the water, in the scene that can be lost if black levels are set too low and the scene can look very foggy if they are set too high. All I can say is that blacks look very, very good. Obviously, they are much deeper then my DLP projector and it rivals that of my Sony CRT. I was some what surprised at how deep the blacks look based on plasma reviews in the pass. I was really expecting to give up a lot here to the CRT but I am happy to see that it isn't much. I am really satisfied with the black levels. I finished the day watching the Academy Awards in HD. I didn't get a chance to do any gaming yet so no comment here yet.

I read a post in the other thread with concerns about the fans in the 60u's. Apparently, the previous models did not have them. So I just want to report that the fans are not an issue. I can only hear them if I put my ear right next to the screen. In fact, the fan in my HR10-250 HD DVR is much noisier and it drowns out the fan noise of the display. That is with the display on mute. Even if all you watch are silent films you will not have to be concerned with it.

Overall I am really happy with the purchase. This display really exposed how choppy DIRECTV HD is. I only wish BB had the 50 but maybe that is a blessing in disguise since I may see even more DIRECTV compression artifacts. I am still considering the 50 if they get them in stock within my 30 day return period.

I wonder if BB having the price at $3000 had anything to do with Panny pulling their details (and listed MSRP) of their website?

I remember it was there like 1.5 weeks ago.

I just checked Panasonic's website for Consumer Television Products and they still have the 50U & 500U product showing. Since they are shipping 60U (42" anyway) one wonders how long it will take them to update the website? Lazy American workers......?

Bummer... I was hoping for this.

It was on their a week and a half ago (details on the 60U) but they pulled it for some reason (Complete with listed 2500 MSRP).

Wasn't Alan trying to put together a power buy on the Panasonics?

they have all the pages ready for the 60u models. i just confirmed this with someone here but they are waiting for an official launch to put them up on the site. i dont see why though. people dont want to see the 05 models anymore. i said maybe you can put them up but leave out the "preorder" button but he said they we really have to wait. no timeframe btw... hope its real soon and i think it is.

The link to the page on the Panny site as posted by someone in the "other" thread that describes the 42px60u still works.


panny

...mike

Alan had requested before that we not discuss this in the open forum until he got some status back to us. Earlier today, I had sent him a PM to let him know we had switched to a new thread, and asking if there was any additional status he could share. Let's wait to hear from him on that.