Do I need firmware upgrade?

You don't have the "Clay Face" firmware. You have 1.21, and the most recent is 1.25.

You can tell your firmware by looking at the second, fourth and sixth numbers on the "TV" line.

Just curious, I'm a Philips owner Does the upgrade cure Clayface? If so, I wish Philips would do the same. I only see it occasionally but would rather not see it at all.

I believe you have firmware 1.02 (the other poster may be wrong). I was told you read the firmware backwards, disregarding the first and third digits (and the hyphen). Someone else will be able to confirm this.

I upgraded my firmware, believing that newer is usually better. The picture was great before the upgrade, it's still great after the upgrade. No harm, no foul.

I have the same rev firmware and when I looked at the FW install guide,
the little arrows indicate start reading from left to right with the second digit.
And read ever-other digit. The manual shows ver 1.25 and how to read it.

I have 1.21 (and 1.25 sitting in my PC waiting).
But, I don't want to flash it up, unless it does something good.

I have noticed that the Blacks are super black and there isn't much
in the way of 'shades of gray' to be seen..

I wonder if anyone that has seen 1.21 and 1.25,
have noticed an improvement in the black levels?

FYI, my model # is TH-42PD60U (it's an EDTV)..

Thanks,
Rich

When in doubt... check the FAQs:

Panasonic Firmware Upgrade Downloads / Check the Software Version.


My advice is to use Panasonic's SD-Card Formatter utility first and then download the: SDDL.SEC firmware image directly to (right-click, select: Save Target As... option) the SD card, bypassing the save-to-disk step.

PX60_GenX_V1-25.exe (467KB) DG-Board EEPROM GenX Firmware update resolves:

-Poor picture details
-Faces appear as "Clay Faces"
-Excessive brightness with no details in the black level

makes sense to me.

You probably need the tuner upgrade as well. (SDDL.SEC). It fixed a problem I had getting digital channels on the scan.

Panasonic typically releases one or two firmware updates for each generation of PDPs they make. After that, you're PDP is as it good as it gets.

I upgraded my fathers 60u and while I did not notice a big difference, he said thanks for fixing the picture.
So I guess it does help.

I already had the Panny Format program, so I plugged my wife's camera
into the PC (saved her pics) and formatted the 1GB card in the cam.
I checked all the Panny format modes, and only the default (quick format) seemed
to work okay. The other format modes hung up.

I clicked on the firmware (zipped) file and told the unzipper to place the
files on my F: (removable drive is really a Nikcon camera) and it worked fine.

Turned on the TV, plugged the SD card into the maintenance slot and it
did it's thing. (On the TH-42PD60U, the slot in on the back of the panel).

Once done, it says 'Please turn off TV'. I think you should wait about
30 seconds and then press and hold the power button for 5-10 seconds
and it will go off. Just a quick 1 second press won't do it.

Before:
TV 0142-0110 (1.21)
After:
TV 0142-0510 (1.25)

Had to redo the time and date etc. But the darker areas of a picture seem
to have a bit more texture.

My wife kept saying that the news people were wearing too much makeup.
I think it wasn't the makeup, but clay face effects. Seems to gone now.
I'll keep watching for it. Got to tweak the PQ settings a little more now.

Hi all Im a noobie to the plasma game,I just purchased a demo 37px60 with a 30 day return option and would like to find out the firware version and hours of service.I tried the volume + on remote and TV mentioned in the link to Bruzzis info but no info appeared .
Thanks for your help.

For the 1.25, it had to be unzipped.. But like you say, this is a plain file..

Just put it on the SD card by itself and the TV will upgrade itself??

TIA,
Rich

Edit:
That's exactly how it works. Just use the panny format for the SD card,
copy over the appropriate SDDL.SEC file to it,
turn on TV, plug in SD card, program runs, It tells you when to pull power cable out
(don't forget to remove SD card).

Just curious, as a Philips owner I've noticed that Jay Leno has Clay-Puss, although others on his show don't