Television Projection Reviews / lcd projection tv

Customer Television Projection Reviews

P50G10 Delivers a quality HD experience with extras,The P50G10 50″ plasma hdtv is my second HD Plasma experience, the first being a 2004 Panasonic, which still looks and works quite well. It has found another spot in our home to make room for the new G10 in our family room. When searching for and finally selecting the new Panasonic G10, I was comparing choices against this first experience considering both the manufacturer and the plasma technology. While I have a few smaller sized LCD’s, mostly in the 20-32″ range, I have never been overly impressed with the picture. The seem a bit cartoonish, even in HD mode, so I quickly settled on a plasma as my technology choice. Having made that decision the alternatives in terms of manufacturers narrowed quickly. Wh Pioneer exiting the Plasma business, and considering my experience with my original Panasonic plasma the brand decision was made. Selecting which model from Panasonic boiled down to scouring the 2009 product announcements and available reviews (CNET), and making the trade-offs on size, cost and availability. This all led me to the P50G10, which was a good fit on all points.

I have had the unit installed and working for 4 weeks now, and must say its been an extremely satisfying time. The 50 inch hdtv is a major step up, from my previous plasma, in terms of picture, inputs i.e. 3 HDMI vs 1, and ability to control each picture setting independently. I have tweaked the picture setting on the Standard and THX settings a bit to sharpen and brighten the picture a bit, but most of the other settings are very good out of the box. As the unit is stand mounted, and in a room with mostly indirect and overhead lighting there are no issues with glare or light reflection, from the main glass or its glossy black bezel.

In the process I also moved up to a Panasonic BMP-BD60 (will write a separate review on it) Blu Ray player and the 1080P picture is nothing short of amazing. As these are both Panasonic units they inter-operate with VieraLink which simplifies and automates the way the two units operate together, a nice but not essential feature. I setup a Wireless ethernet bridge (Linksys WET54G) to feed the VieraCast function on the 50-inch plasma hdtv, and it works flawlessly. At this time the amount of content available is limited, but one can see the potential, if Panasonic can bring more content services to this function. The G10 does employ a set of power consumption controls. There are both Input Idle and In-Activity based auto-power off modes to save on power consumption, which is good as plasma’s are a bit power hungry.

To be balanced the G10 does have a few shortcomings. The sound from the onboard speakers is a bit thin. You can mitigate this some by pumping up the Bass control and turning on the Bass Boost, but its just not a rich sound experience. I think Panasonic can do better with some higher quality speakers and a small sub-woofer. I, and I suspect most others, have a surround system connected and utilize it for a better sound experience.

I also preferred when Panasonic placed the additional inputs into a trap door on the front of the plasma, the G10 has these on the left (facing) edge. To me it was more convenient and accessible to have these set of inputs up-front.

All in all, the G10 is a high quality Plasma with terrific features and future expandability. If offers a near perfect picture across multiple inputs and types of content.

Good value; great picture quality,

I’ve been researching flat panel TV’s for about a year now, and thru showroom viewing, friends’ recommendations, online reviews (purchasers and experts), and Consumer Reports, I had narrowed my field down to Sony LCD Z- and XBR Series, Samsung LCD and plasma(550, 650, 750), and Panasonic plasma (PZ-800, PZ-850). The Sonys had great picture quality but were pricey. Samsung also had some good values but I just cannot get past the “Touch of Color” red accents on their mid and upper level TVs. [Call me traditional, but I think TV's look best in black or gray.] The Panasonic sets from last year didn’t look quite as bright in the showrooms (Best Buy, ABC Warehouse, others) as the LCD’s but I just liked the picture quality better–more vivid colors and deeper blacks, better motion handling. The power consumption issue was a bit of a concern, but Panasonic claims that their 2009 sets are more energy efficient. The new 2009 Panasonic G10 Series TVs struck just the right value balance for me–great bang for the buck. I’ve had mine for about two weeks now and I’m thrilled so far except for native sound quality; it’s good, just not as exceptional as the vivid picture. Setup was easy, adjustments straightforward, and the manual is helpful. The remote could be better, as the VieraCast buttons have a needlessly prominent location on the relatively large remote. There are backlit buttons for Volume and Channel, but unfortunately the button to activate the backlighting is small and unlit. Small matter. Anyway, standard Cable, HD and DVD picture quality is really good and BluRay is nothing short of amazing. The SD Card viewer is cool, too. I’m not noticing any significant trouble with screen glare, even though my set’s in a bright room; I was waayy overworried about that pre-purchase. Overall, I’ve been very happy with my panasonic 50 hdtv with no regrets.