Any opinions on Panasonic 52" LCDRP - PT52LCX66?

I have an older version, the PT50LC13. In general, I have been very happy with the set. I have had the same problem twice now (first time repaired under warranty, now I'm screwed). Stuck pixels! About 1 year after it was new, 2 popped up. Warranty took care of it. Recently, a red one (not near the middle of the screen) has gotten stuck and they won't fix it. It is annoying and very visible.

On a positive note, the set has not blown a bulb in 3 years and it has all the inputs I need for a full set-up (3 dvd players, 2 game systems, cable, PC, etc.).

Just wait until you get a stuck pixel or two like I did. Right in the middle of the screen, one red, one blue. I used a sharpie to color them black but that made hockey and golf almost impossible to watch. Very frustrating. Get a DLP.

I had the CX65 last year but returned it because it was a little too large for my living room at the time. I thought the TV was great and it had plenty of hookups for multiple devices. If the CX66 is going to be $999.99 on black friday I'm definitely buying. Just a couple of quick questions since you work at CC. Will this be in store only? Is it a first come first serve deal? Does that price include delivery? Thanks for the heads up on the deal.

I just bought a pt-52LCX66 as a second TV for my kids to watch movies with their friends and to play video games. I set it up with Avia. It has very nice PQ. The sound is not great. But, I do not use the TV sound. I always go through a receiver and surround system. It is hard to beat for the price. Joe

I too saw the blackfriday ad scan, and remembered that Circuit City has a pricing protection policy. If an item you buy goes on sale within 30 days of the date of purchase they refund you the difference plus 10%. So I went out and picked up the PT52LCX66 last night., for $1699, when the sale hits I'll just go back and get the difference $700 plus 10% an additional $70, so my cost will be $929, if I keep the unit.

I got it to replace an aging Pioneer Elite Pro 100 in my basement home theater, I have the pioneer built into the wall, so I have space constraints on how big I can go with ripping out the built-ins. Since the pioneer is a 52" 16x10.7 I wanted the biggest unit that would fit into my the opening and that turned out to be a 52" unit. After seeing the black Friday ad scan I figured at $929 it was worth a shot, because I could always return the unit, I bought the TV in Delaware so I didn't have to pay tax either, which was nice. I also have a Sony 40XBR1 in my family room. The pioneer was ISF calibrated, the Sony tuned by eye, and the Panasonic was also tuned by eye, as best I could.

I'm not really sure what I think about the Panasonic, on some of the ComCast supplied HD channels it looked good and on some HD channels it looked OK, same goes for the SD channels, and content from Tivo. On the HD channels when it looked OK the colors were off, it pixelated, and skin tones were unnaturally smooth. On the SD channels when it looked OK it was very blocky and not smooth, same for the Tivo content. The couple of DVD's that I tested looked good. The other odd thing was that parts of the picture looked out of focus, and sometimes the entire picture looked slightly out of focus.

The Panasonic doesn't touch the Sony for HD PQ, and as for the SD content the Sony is in another class. Heck on on some of the SD channels the 7 year old pioneer looked as good.

IMHO, the picture settings are confusing, I'd be changing one setting and I'd go back to the main picture menu and the picture and sharpnes settings had changed, so I'm not enitirely sure that I have the unit performing at it's best. I'm going to see how it goes for the next week or so.

The overall PQ was less and issue for me or my wife, but the inconsistant performance from channel to channel was very annoying. If all the SD channels looked generally the same, and all the HD channels looked generally the same as well, it would be much easier to deal with and I would be keeping the unit especialy for $929, if I can't get the TV to perform consistantly from channel to channel than it's probably going back.

That cannot be right - if so, do you still have to go in during Black Friday to get the price refund?

Are you *sure* this works with Black Friday promotions?

I haven't made 5 posts yet so it won't let me include the url for the pricing proctection, but if you go to the Circuit city home page, and scroll to the bottom of the page on the bottom right you will see a link for automatic price protection, click that link and you'll get the text I've copied here.

Taken directly from the Circuit City web site:
If you've seen a lower advertised price from another local store with the same item in stock, we want to know about it. Bring it to our attention, and we'll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference. If you see a lower advertised price (including our own sale prices) within 30 days of your purchase, we'll refund 110% of the difference.

Our policy applies only to advertised prices. It does not apply to special offers or promotions, including rebates, free-with-purchase offers and special financing. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide price matches online, so please visit the closest Circuit City store to take advantage of our Price Guarantee.

The Black Friday ad for this Panasonic TV is a straight sale, no promotions or rebates. I checked with store managers at two different stores in two different states they must honor the refund of 110% of the difference. I just bought the Sony 400 Disc DVD changer, Circuit City's store price was 399.99, their web price was 339.99, I got it for 333.99, the difference $60 + 10% = $66

Part of the reason retailers try to keep their sales information secret is to prevent people from taking advantage of thier price matching policies, also they want to protect the existing inventory prior to the sale.

Their policy says nothing about time frame regarding the sale price, if you get a run around from the local store manager contact Circuit City's corporate office, and explain the situation. Then they will call the store manager and explain the policy to the store manager for you, make sure to express your extreme dissapointment with the Circuit City organization as a whole when you talk to the people at the corporate office, most likely they will instruct the store manager to increase the refund difference or give you a gift card, just to make you happy.

My suggestion is to take Avia or DVE and adjust your TV. I did mine and it made a big difference. I knew the sharpness was too high. The adjustment was to turn it to zero. The other adjustments were not as drastic but needed tweaking. Good Luck. Joe

I saw that but it says If you've seen a lower advertised price from another local store

That's what I don't get... I thought it had to be a different store.

So, if I go to my local Circuit City today and buy the TV set, when it goes on sale next week do I go in on Black Friday and ask for the difference in price?

Just seems to good to be true...

Just called the 1-800-843-2489 number on their website and asked for store based enquiries - they said they have had dozens of calls about this, but they say they do not match Black Friday deals as they are first come first served basis and are specials.

quoted for truth... you will not get a price adjustment to a BF advertisment. these are 'limitied quantities' or 'special sales' 'one day sales' and all the big box stores have language in their price matching info. that excludes these deals from a price match or adjustment.
BestBuy even specifically states in thier BF flyer that there are no PM to these prices.

that said, you might get a braindead employee or overtired manager to do it for you if you really pushed it, but is it really worth that hassle? i'm going to try to get in on this or the 51f59 BF deal if i can without camping in front of any stores overnight. the prices on alot of these are so low already why go crazy. goodluck!

Anybody have any tips on maximizing the performance of this set?

I just bought one and am completely brand new to this HD world. Picture on HD channels looks great to me, but am I losing something by just hooking up the cable box to standard coax?

Hi, I would suggest you get one of the DVDs to help you calibrate the TV. I have Avia and DVE. Avia is a little easier to navigate and use. I got my copy from Amazon. The thing that affected the PQ the most for me was turning the sharpness down to zero. This is a second TV for us and the first LCDRP. I am very picky about the ability to see any pixelation at all. This helped a lot. The DVD is not expensive and can be used any time you need it. It takes about 1 - 1 1/2 hours to go through it and make the adjustments. The objective, at least in my mind, is to get the PQ as close to real life as possible. Good Luck. Joe

Just been to CC for the 51f59 and two employees were asked about "matching" price next week ad. They said sure just bring the ad in. However, I went to the service desk "after a credit check approval" and asked again same question.
Employee got the manager (not sure GM,asst.) and she and I explained the situation and he said NO. It's a "specific" event and could not honor it because being a "black friday" event.

I also looked at the Panasonic mentioned here and figured that they would most certainly honor their "own" products to be on sale. Now with what I've read here I don't know if I'll have to camp up at the front door or just go ahead and get it and hope for the best.
What thoughts please since this is all time dependent. Really, who wants to find themselves out at 5am and looking at hundreds of customers beating the sales floor as well.

I had the same experience here in NJ. The floor sales person said he thought they would honor it, but he went and checked with his manager and he nixed it. So, I'm debating whether it's worth it to beat the doors down on Black Friday or just spend a little more at Costco or BJs and get one with a stand, and less hassle.

Good Luck with that! I tried it last year on a camcorder and it did not work, at first the lady at the service desk started to give me the refund, but the total amount was more than she could give without a manager's approval. The manager said Black Friday sales were classified as "special offers". They also found a little small print in the black friday ad that said all items in the ad was "special offers".

You may get lucky though.

I really don't want to have to be at Circuit City at 6am that morning, but this deal is sooo hard to pass up. I'm calling ahead of time to see how many of the Panny's my CC will have in stock for Black Friday. Since it's still an expensive purchase for most people at $1,000 I'm hoping not that many people will be aware or willing to plunk down that kind of cash that day. I guess I'll find out!

By the way, it should be at 5am rather than 6am for store opening (CC).

I do have a question on the DVD front and upconverting. I've read the manual and
noticed the component video input are recognized 480i to 1080i.

1) Is the signal from a regular dvd player be upscaled within the TV ?
(that is, being able to select from remote/TV panel)

2) Or do I need to get a dvd player that upconverts and uses HDMI for better performance or shortcoming of TV ?

3) Would a upconverted signal from a player (HDMI) be any different from the component hookup with this model ?

If anyone could explain model (PT52LCX66) performance in this department, I would greatly appreciate it. Especially with upcoming sale.

there wont be a lot of people going to plunk down $1000. Still you need to be there at 5 if you want the deal, because in 2 hours there will be enough people with deep pockets there.

I too am looking at this set. Any input would be appreciated.

You can get this set online right now w/ free delivery at the BF price, or at least you could earlier this morning

I believe its still available online. So many good deals on TVs on black friday, its difficult to hold back.. I'm still using a 27" panasonic SD TV that I bought in 1994 but I just got a projector so I can resist

I wish I would have known they would do these sales online as well. I went to Circuit City and arrived at 5am to about 2-300 people waiting outside the doors. Some girls in front of me waited in line since 10:30pm last night for the $499 deal on a 32 inch LCD. I just rushed right in with everyone else asked where I could buy the 52" Panny and was pointed to a line of about 25 people. An hour later I paid for my 52" Panny but was told the delivery charge would be $50. I figure it's still a great deal at $1099 after tax and delivery. I hope everyone else who was interested picked up the set as well. They had a ton of good deals this morning.

This set does do upconversion, right?

At least for me great news. I went ahead Monday bought it with other "sale" items.
Went back today and NO PROBLEM getting the price adjustments for all items. Took about 20 minutes. Last night when I drove by there were at least 20 in line (11:00pm).
I'm happy as a fox in a hen house. Thank goodness I did not have to wait it out.

However, Best Buy a different story. Went in for a couple Xbox360 games and took 2hours and 45 minutes to check out. Ouch !
Got great deals all around but ESPECIALLY at CC.
Took it home on Monday and waited until today to see what would happen.
Now the house in living room is a wreck installing as I'm writing.
Just had to get the right person and right time for sale adjustment.

On the upconversion. Apparently it's supposed too BUT I went ahead and got the Zenith 1080i upconversion DVD player.

On the HDMI, the model on sale (66) as per the manual is 1 HDMI input and the (16) is 2 HDMI. I figured in time when I'll be adding more HDMI's I would be getting a switch box.

Glad to hear it. I wish I'd done the same thing.

So since you have this set, can you answer my question above? Does this set do upconversion?--> (OOPS, YOU BEAT ME TO IT!) I have a dvd player that outputs 480p and want to know if this set will upconvert to 720p. I'm ASSUMING it will but I haven't seen anything mentioned and the manual doesn't seem to say anything either.

Beyond that, how is the pic quality?

I bought this set online yesterday morning. I was all set to buy a 37-inch LCD for about $700, but happened to see this so I ordered it. It came with free delivery and they'll hook it up to your cable plus cart away your old set if need be. Not bad at all.

Those of you who did NOT order through the 800 number, consider yourself lucky. It's painful to speak with them. It's outsourced to India and their english is terrible.

On the bright side, I found one of those 10% off coupons on ebay and saved $100! I'm really looking forward to getting this monster! (I'm currently using a 36" tv so it's a monster to me)