Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-Inch Plasma HDTV Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this TV a couple of weeks ago and absolutely love it, and I haven't even connected HD yet (Comcast to add HD service next week). The analog stations look beautiful, which is very important since most channels don't come in HD.
Out of the box it's very bright and the contrast is kicked up to the top so it didn't look great at first viewing. I found a legitimate website that calibrated this particular television and recorded the settings for optimal picture quality. After changing my settings to match their findings, the picture looks twice as good. Here they are:
Picture Mode: Standard
Picture: +22
Brightness: +8
Color: -1
Tint: -4
Sharpness: -14
Color Temperature: Warm
Big multifunction remote with easy-to-read keys. The on-screen menu is easy to use and you can rename the inputs to one of several options (DVD, Cable, etc.). Plenty of inputs, including 2 HDMI ports, which is unheard of in this price range.
One final note, if you're sitting close to the TV (6' or less), I would recommend going with a smaller model than the 42". I find that when viewing non-HD programming at that short distance everything looks grainy. Once you step back to 8' or more, everything just pops into place and looks crystal-clear. If your viewing distance is 10' or more, then you might consider stepping up to a larger model such as the 50" of the same line (also a beautiful picture).
I did lots of homework and this was by far the best buy!

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Featuring Panasonic's 9th generation gas-plasma screen, the 42-inch TH-42PX60U features a width-to-height 16:9 aspect ratio similar to movie theater screens, providing a theater-like experience at home. Its maximum of 29 billion colors and over 3,000 shades of gradation provide exceptionally fine detail for outstanding HDTV reproduction. The set's built-in ATSC (DTV) tuner pulls HD signals (480p/720p/1080i) right from the airwaves, and its QAM tuner is fully compatible with unscrambled HDTV cable reception. A standard analog NTSC tuner receives standard-definition (SD) programming. It also includes a Secure Digital (SD) memory card slot, enabling you to take an SD card directly from a digital still camera or camcorder and insert it directly into the TV for quick and colorful photo slideshows.
A plasma screen renders vivid colors like you've never seen before (as in, up to 29 billion in this case), extremely wide viewing angles (wider, even, than those of most LCD screens), and easy placement due to a plasma monitor's slim profile--the TH-42PX60U is a mere 3.7 inches deep, one of the slimmest plasmas around--perfect for desk or wall mounting. Brightness tends to be extremely uniform across plasma screens, which are also impervious to the picture distortion and negative color balances that afflict CRT monitors when placed near lighting or sound systems.
The TH-42PX60U features a 1024 x 768-pixel resolution and an amazing contrast ratio of 10000:1. (The higher the contrast ratio, the greater a TV's ability to display subtle color details and not get washed out by ambient room light.) The 3D Y/C digital comb filter constantly analyzes the three dimensions of picture height, picture width, and picture changes-over-time, to reduce dramatically edge image artifacts while improving transition detail. Other features include V-Chip parental controls, on/off sleep timers, closed-caption decoding, aspect ratio control, and video input labeling.
The TV's internal stereo speakers are powered by 10 watts per channel (for 20 watts of total power). It features the following connection options:
Component (Y/Pb/Pr): 2 inputs (with 2 audio inputs)
HDMI: 2 inputs
Composite (RCA audio/video): 3 inputs (1 on the front), 1 output
S-Video: 3 inputs (1 on the front)

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is a lossless, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface to link any AV source with an audio and/or video monitor, such as a digital television (DTV). HDMI supports standard-definition (SD), enhanced definition (ED), or high-definition (HD) video, plus multi-channel digital audio--all using a single cable.
If a component doesn't have an HDMI connection, you'll also get great picture reproduction using the three-jack component video (Y/Pb/Pr) input, which provides separate connections for luminance (Y), blue color difference (PB) and red color difference (PR). This results in increased bandwidth for color information, resulting in a more accurate picture with clearer color reproduction and less bleeding than you would get with S-Video or composite (RCA yellow video plug) connections. Component video output is available only for DVD playback.
What's in the Box Plasma TV, remote control (with batteries), pedestal base, power cord, printed operating instructions

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