FAQ & RULES LINKS_ Plasma & Panasonic Plasma FAQ - Read First! - Page 34

^^^ Good question.

LOL. Sure all that would be nice to have I guess...

IMO, Commercial power delivered to the home COULD produce a spike powerful enough to damage electronic equipment throughout the house. The source of such a spike could be man made or natural and it would have to be in the thousands of volts to arc inside the equipment enough to cause damage. The UPS is isolation and insurance against that. If you feel like having that insurance, spend the money. Personally I think its a waste of money intended only for those who have an excess of it. I have a homeowner's policy that covers that. I wouldn't mind if that happened because I would get to replace my 2 year old 42" 6UY plasma with a brand spankin' new 50' PHD8UK for a $100 deductible. If I get a surge that takes out my equipment, so be it.

As far as the 'bulb' in a plasma. You have got to be kidding. What bulb? There is nothing to cool down. I wouldn't routinely yank the plug out of the wall on an expensive piece of high tech electronic equipment but there is no inherent design flaw that would damage the unit if the power would shut down once or twice in 10 years or so. Its not a PC running MS Windows or anything like that.

As far as a line conditioner goes, most UPS would include that. But what evidence do you have that your commercial power is noisy and what evidence do you have that any piece of equipment you have would be adversely affected by noisy AC? Again, sure it would be nice to have just to guard against that one pixel out of place one time in 10 years, or for bragging rights around the water cooler.

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I do not use a power conditioner and am quite satisfied with the set up of my system - I use a normal surge protector though.

I recently saw that at CC they had a demo of their power conditioner and the 'noise' that needs to be supposedly eliminated. The guy at the store said it was totally authentic and that 'unconditioned' electricity did 'sound' like that. Not sure how magnified that sound was, but after the power conditioner it was gone..... it didn't convince me to get the product though

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Well you can't really buy the 600 (yet). My personal rankings are:

1. 600U (if it is available, since it addresses one of the two major gripes I have with the 60U - aesthetics. The 600U looks attractive from the pictures I have seen, plus has the VGA input. I also liked the 500U. However, not sure if it includes some of the advanced picture controls that the 8UK has.

2. 8UK. I like the fact that you can adjust the picture and get (IMHO) probably the best PQ I have seen in a plasma at a great price! I also like the way it looks - very minimalist with the thinest bezel and in charcoal grey. On the downside you have to pay extra for HDMI and table stand. I like the fact it has no TV tuner or speakers. Very good build quality.

3. 60U. I think this set produces an excellent picture quality and also looks decent when mounted on a wall. But my edge goes to the 8UK because it does not have the advanced picture settings and overall construction and aesthetics is inferior to the 8UK (JMHO). Best value for price in plasmas (if you can get past the plastic) by quite a margin!

Yes!

A good clue would be his statement about the "bulb."

Your present surge protector should be just fine. If it makes you feel better, a "upgraded" one wouldn't hurt. It's just not necessary. The same applies to a line conditioner.

I suppose if you are determined to keep watching TV through a (short) blackout, a UPS might be worthwhile, but most people get along fine without them. Admittedly, I've considered one for my TiVo, but it's a low priority.

Essentially, these things might be worth buying if they give you enough peace of mind to justify their cost, but most of us have better places to put our money.

Thanks Elemental1. Lemme know how it looks and if you had to adjust the colors to tone down the red.

Just a big thank you to everyone here... got my first plasma, 50PHD8UK, initially set-up today. The choice was made primarily upon input here at AVS forum.

WOW!!

I've got a lot of setting up left to do, having gotten some new A/V gear as well. You can be sure I'll be posting stupid and hopefully-not-so-stupid questions along the way.

BTW, one more thank you for Visual Apex... a pleasure to deal with. Due to some drop-shipping luck, the panel got delivered within 72 hours of my order!! Unfortunately, the stand came separately and SIX DAYS later, so I stared at a big box for almost a week. :lol:

PLEASE ADVISE:

I have the 42px60u and love the picture but for some reason on dark shows or movies (expecially HBO-HD), I see rainbow colors on occasion. What is causing this. Should I adjust something in the settings, i.e. picture?, brightness?, color?, tint?

Need help.

Visual Apex and an commercial Panny monitor. A great combination! Enjoy.

I hope to have a long enough cable today

Sounds like you have your speakers too close to the screen. Are they shield? I know that use to be a problem with the older sets but still something to check into. Just a thought. Good luck.

???

Plasma displays use thousands of glass sealed chambers containing a mixture of neon and xenon. The chambers are in front of coloured phosphors. Each chamber has three phosphers, one red, one blue and one green. When these chambers are in use they emit invisible UV light that excites the phosphors on the rear display glass enabling them to produce light that can be seen by us. Since there is no electron beam they are not affected by magnetic fields caused by speakers.

Learn something every day. I'll stick to air conditioning. Thanks for the info.

I had experienced a similar situation 2 yrs ago with a 35" RCA Proscan (non plasma) where due to space restrictions I had to have my BW tower speakers directly adjacent to the tv. and there were colors & distortion appearing on the screen

By changing the speaker direction ever so slightly by shifting the speakers just interms of orientation, the problem was resolved.

While the speakers may not have been the cause, something/somehow did impact on the reception. And the slight adjustment did the trick. Not sure in terms of the electronics, maybe just the tv and audio gods were in a huff

..Mark

Yep. Speakers too close to a CRT will really mess it up.

I connected a VGA cable to my Dell XPS Gen2 and the 500u and it looks sweet. No weird color...no crooked picture....no overscan. I just sent 1024x768 to it which worked. Then I tried 1280x1024 which, to my surprise, also worked fine. No overscan, nothing wrong. I then tried to go higher and no luck
Well, seems like my 500u is not so picky about the signal. Since my laptop is an XWXGA+ system, I wonder why it doesn't have many choices for resolutions. I will have to tweak later but I refuse to use that peice of junk called powerstrip.

Hey thanks Elemental1. Yeah, I got no overscan issues, text are easily readable and everything looks almost as it does on a normal monitor. Only problem I have is that some colors are too bright (especially red). I also connected through a VGA cable. Can you please post your plasma settings when using the VGA port. I know you could only change Picture and brightness but it will certainly help me since I find some colors just WAAAAAY too bright for me. Thanks again

I see. I will check it again.
I am sure you can adjust color on the PC output for the plasma screen only. I didn't notice any overbright colors just looking at the desktop and IE. I will take a screenshot for you showing a range of colors. I have not adjusted any color with this yet.

Just got my 50PHD8UK from newegg. Shipped on Monday, got here (AZ) on Friday. Good times. Arrived in perfect condition. Working flawlessly.

Picture is not as good as my old XBR sony HD tube but I'm new to plasma so I guess this is all we can expect.

Breaking-in now....maybe after i run the AVIA

Q4 and Need4Speed MW are just jaw dropping cool....

Well...I did a little more VGA testing and posted the photos in the gallery. Here is one.....

The wife just gave me the OK to pull the trigger, so now what?

I wonder when the next generation industrial pannys will be out

Now what? Go out and buy a plasma before she changes her mind!

You're not the only one. Anyone have any input. That's why I'm waiting, how long should I wait?

As discussed previously Panasonic generally releases their industrial line in Late Summer/Early Fall. Expect the August to September timeline.

Well, after weeks of research and a lot of soul searching, I pulled the trigger on a 42PWD8UK. It replaced my 1996 era Sony 25" CRT. While it is the ED model, it looks amazing. I currently don't have HD Dish, so for a lot cheaper, I got a really nice display. Just got it all dialed in tonight and it looks great. Bought the Sony 75H DVD as well. Got the screen and wall mount from TV Authority and it went pretty smooth. I would recommend them to anyone shopping for a plasma.

Now comes the enjoyment of the new toy. Thanks to all the folks on here for posting the good and bad about the various models. I feel really good about my choice.

JMAC

Well...I am having PQ problems on my 500u since hooking up my laptop. I will let you know what I find went wrong but I have halos and dithering PQ problems. It seems to affect SD most, then DvD...then HD but with HD, it is almost not noticable most of the time.

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Elemental1, what you are describing is instability of the picture since it effects all your input sources. I would do the usual:

1. Unplug the set for 30 seconds at least

2. Reset/normalize all picture settings

If you still see Halos/dithering I would get on the phone with Panny tech support.

Let us know if you are able to fix with without tech support. best of luck...

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I just thought about it. Did you try connecting your laptop again and changing the resolution down and see if you still get this effect. In our office we have plasmas in several conference rooms and sometimes connecting certain laptops impacts the picture, where it starts flickering. It depends upon the resolution of the laptop, the graphics card and the settings on the laptop. The problem is fixed by reducing the resolution, or resetting it to factory settings. I am not sure how to do that with the 500U.

You could be right and I will be trying that later today. The first time I hooked up the laptop, I did not have this problem but this time I did some tweaking and I guess it is somehow altering the set's abilities even when not hooked up.
I don't like the fact that the PC input can have this effect on everything. It should be totally separate.
On some SD channels, it really has a problem displaying all the colors and the halos are very noticable. It's almost like VGA 16 color mode on a PC but not that extreme. Makes me think of bad covergence on a tube TV.

Edit: Ghosting is also a good description.