Double Journey

Now that I wrote all the things I love about the Panasonic 50PZ800u, I figured I would write the things I don’t like about the TV.  The good thing is that most of the things that I don’t like about the TV are small and minor.  The good definitely outweighs the bad in this case.

•  The Remote - I absolutely hate the remote.  The most annoying thing is that the Channel and Volume are on the opposite sides of where they normally are found on other remotes.  I constantly find myself changing the channel when I want to increase the volume.  This is especially annoying because I use DirecTV, and changing the channel on the TV will force the TV to go to the internal tuner, and away from my DirecTV feed.  I’ll talk more about this later.  I also hate that the TV doesn’t control my HD DVR very well.  It doesn’t do the skip correctly.
• Can’t disable the TV option - I don’t use the internal tuner, but there is no way to disable this from the tv input menu.  Therefore, I have to travel through this setting every time I’m trying to change inputs.  It is annoying.   I should be allowed to treat this input like every other input on the TV.
• The upconversion of standard def media is so so - Standard TV doesn’t look so great, but that is to be expected.  DVDs look OK but not great.  I have a media center PC, and the upconversion it does is noticeably better.
• CATS is useless -  It has a feature to brighten the TV when it is lighter, darken it when it is dark.  The dark setting is way too dark though, so I disable it for everything.
• 24P playback is questionable - People complain about the flicker that the 48HZ feature of this TV.  I don’t see it, but my girlfriend does.  Your mileage may vary on this one.
• The settings for each of the different picture modes, other than custom, are across the TV set - So change the brightness of one input in that mode, it changes it for all THX setting across all inputs.  Kind of annoying, it should remember
• Volume is the same across all inputs - minor annoyance.  Don’t know if any TV does this, but my different input sources all have different volume levels.  When I change inputs, sometimes it is way to high and I almost lose my hearing
• Anti-reflective isn’t that great - if you watch this TV in bright daylight, you are going to get glare.  If you can’t control the light you are getting into the room, you may have to deal with glare.  This is probably no worse than other plasmas, but it is there.

Despite the rather long list above, I love this TV, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking to get what is, in my opinion, the best TV out there for the money.

So I’ve had my TV a little bit over a month. I am going to write up my review in two parts. The first part will be all the things I love about my new TV. The second part will be all the things that annoy me about the TV.

Let me start off by saying that I love this TV. I am extremely happy with my purchase and I don’t think I could have bought a better TV for myself. I had a big party last night for the Fourth of July, and had a lot of people over watching lots of different source material and everyone really enjoyed it.   We watched a few different things.   We watched Ratatouille, National Treasure, and Planet Earth all in HD, and the picture looked fantastic.  I think it even convinced one of my friends that it was time to buy a new TV.

My setup is not extraordinary.  I don’t yet have a stereo system hooked up to it, so I’m using the TV’s onboard speakers.   They actually sound pretty good and I can’t really complain about them.  I have a Wii and a Standard DVD player hooked up over component cables, a MediaCenter PC and the DirecTV box hooked up over HDMI, and an old Xbox hooked up over the Composite connections.  On to my review.

Picture Quality - Admittedly, this is my first HDTV.  The step up from regular TV is gigantic so if you haven’t had a HDTV yet, you won’t be disappointed with this as your first one.   That being said, I’ve seen a lot of my friends’ TVs and I think mine stack up well against all of them.  It’s hard to really compare TVs without a side to side comparison, so I won’t even try it, but all I can say is that I’m very happy with the set.  The movies I have seen are all fantastic.  You watch Planet Earth on this thing and it is unbelievable the detail that you can see and how great the picture looks.  If you are like me, and watch a lot of sports, you won’t be disappointed.  I watched the NBA finals on this TV and was just watching the Wimbledon Finals right now.  The experience was fantastic.

All of the sources I have on the TV look good.  The connection to the computer the, DirectTV feed, and the OTA antenna, being the only true HD sources I have,  look fantastic.   The Wii and the non upconverting DVD player look good but obviously not as sharp as the HD sources.

People like to break down this category into things like black levels, color accuracy, etc.   I say that’s rubbish.  Judge with your own eyes and taste.  All I can say is that for me, and pretty much everyone else who has watched the TV, this TV will suit you no matter what your taste may actually be.

Price and Shopping Experience - I bought my TV from Amazon.  Like most would be, I was a little nervous about buying such a high price item online.  However, when I was only paying about $2280 for this TV with delivery included, it was too good of a deal to pass up.  Considering that the step down version of this TV, the 50PZ85U retails for $2300, and this is a significantly better TV than that, then it was a no brainer for me to go to Amazon.  The delivery was when it said it would be, albeit slower than I would have liked.  But it was delivered safe and sound and with no problems whatsoever.  If I had to do it all over again, i wouldn’t hesitate to buy my next TV through Amazon.

THX Setting -  This is the big feature that accounts for the price difference between the 85u and the 800u.  Is it worth it?  Hell Yeah!  This is the setting I watch most of my programming in.  The colors look realistic.  Some could say that it looks a little duller, and it wouldn’t be totally inaccurate.  The colors are not over-saturated, and a lot of people like the over-saturated look.  My girlfriend for one.  But I love the look of THX.  It makes colors look like Colors are supposed to.

Design -  I know not a lot of people care about this aspect of their TV since they just want something that will produce a good looking picture, and not necessarily look good in a picture.  However, I have a girlfriend who has dreams of being a designer.  And so it is important that the TV looks as good as the pictures it can produce.  I thing this TV looks great on or off.  The “one sheet of glass” design is nothing to get too hyped up about, especially since they put on a plastic bezel around the edge.  But it still looks fantastic and one never even notices the bezel.  The girlfriend couldn’t stand the fat lip under the 85U, so she almost made me get the 800 on this fact alone.

So overall, on a scale of one to ten, I give it a 9.  No TV is perfect, and I have a few problems with some things, but I’ll get to those in my next post.  Overall a great TV, and if you are willing to spend the cash, it seriously is the best bang for your buck.

The Panasonic 50PZ800u service menu is easy to get to.  For the most part, you should not access it.  Doing so can supposedly harm your TV in many bad ways if you don’t know what you are doing.  However, a lot of new owners want to know how many hours their new Plasma TV has.  You can either keep track of the number of hours you have on the TV, or you can find the information in the Service Menu.

It took me a while to finally find out how to access it to determine this, but here is how.

1.  On the TV itself, hold down the “Vol -” Button
2. While holding the volume button down, press “info” on the TV remote three times.  Wait.  Depending on what mode you are in, you will notice the display change.  Two blue windows will appear in the upper left portion of your screen.  This is the service menu.  Keep reading if you want to know how to determine the number of hours on the set.
3. Now press the “2″ button on the remote.  This will pull up a window with the word “SRV-TOOL”
4. Press the “OK” button on the remote.  A light blue grid will appear.
5. On the Grid, cursor down (using the remote down arrows) to the row labeled “PTCT”
6. Cursor to the right.  It should be an empty box.
7. Hold MUTE for 3 seconds.  The amount of time the display has been on will be next to the word “TIME”  this is in hours and minutes.

To get out of the service menu, I just power cycled the TV by holding the power button down on the TV itself.   I hope this helps some people.  It took me a while to find this and actually figure out exactly what I needed to do.  If it helps you, leave a comment!

DirecTV + Panasonic 50PZ800U = WOW!

Before I go more in depth in this, wanted to say sorry for all the post about my new TV. I don’t have a lot of time outside of work, and most of my time this past week has been playing with my new toy, so I haven’t done a lot of thinking about things outside of work and this TV.

So today the DirecTV guys came around to install the system. I got one HD+DVR (H21) receiver and I got one standard receiver for the bedroom. They hooked up the H21 to my Panasonic via HDMI and fired it up. It took a few minutes for the receiver to do what it had to do and it was up and running. I started scanning through all the HD channels that are part of my basic package, and there are a lot of them, and was amazed by how great everything looks.

Not everything is roses. I’m not in love with the response time of the receiver. I don’t like it when I hit the button on something and there is not an immediate response. I also HATE the way you have to set up the channels on HDTV. This normally involves unselecting a bunch of channels that you don’t actually get or removing channels you just don’t want to watch. Not sure why they haven’t found an easier way to do this yet.

So I’ve spent the day with my plasma, and I grow to like it more and more.

The TV got its first major test today, as I watched Game 3 of the NBA finals.  One of the major reasons I got this TV was because I watch lots of sports, and I can’t stand watching fast action sports on LCD TVs.  I have to say, the set looks fantastic.  I’ve been watching the games on my 24″ LCD monitor, which is actually pretty good.  Now I don’t want to compare an LCD monitor to an LCD TV, as they are different beast, but nevertheless, I didn’t know how great the game could look having never really watched a true HDTV in the comfort of my living room.

Every Kobe drive and all of Sasha’s Daggers were brought to me in crystal clear High Def.  The TV produces an unbelievable picture with amazing color accuracy.  The dish installation comes on Thursday, so I will have to wait a few days to get dozens of HD channels, but the OTA broadcast is pretty good.  Not much beats a Lakers win, the only thing that might would be watching a Lakers win on this HDTV!

Once you get HD, its hard to go back.  I only have two true HD sources, OTA broadcast and a few 1080P films I have on my computer.  Other than that I only have my DVD player, my Wii, and my old Xbox, none of which will output a true HD signal.  The TV does an adequate job of upscaling the picture, but compared to HD it just isn’t the same.  Pictures are of course noticeably softer, but what else can you expect?

My Panasonic 50″ Plasma, the 50PZ800U, arrived today., right on schedule.  I was very anxious to get it and despite the fact that it arrived early in the delivery window, It still seemed like it couldn’t get here fast enough.  The delivers brought it in the door, unpacked it, set it up, and put it on my console.  Overall, a fine experience.  Didn’t like that it took almost a week to get here, but really you shouldn’t expect much more when ordering something like this online.

My first thought when they placed it on my console was, “Wow, this is a beautiful TV.”  My second thought was, “Wow, this thing is huge!”

I’ll have to post my thoughts on the TV in a little bit when I get a chance to really put the TV through its paces.  But here are my initial thoughts.  Keep in mind that this is my very first HDTV, so my perspective is one of a neophyte.

 TVs don’t look the same as they do in the store - Seriously, it’s like night and day.  I looked at this TV A LOT in the store and my opinion of it is very different than now.  I read all the forums, and everybody would say that you shouldn’t judge a TV by how it looks in the store.  It was really hard for me to do this.  The bright fluorescent lights completely distort the picture.  Most of the time, TVs are set to “vivid” mode which makes the picture extremely bright and over saturates the colors.  In the store it looks great.  At home, it looks like everyone has bright orange skin.  This TV has a THX mode which is supposed to make the picture extremely accurate.  In the store, the picture looks washed out.  At home, it is by far the best setting.

 HDTVs need HD material - Don’t get me wrong, the Standard Def material I have seen looks OK, but it doesn’t look great.  I have played several different sources on this TV.  The best sources have been of course Blu-Ray Movies and over the air HD signals.  The TV looks fantastic when using these high quality sources.  SD sources like  SD TV and standard DVD look OK.

I did have a little bit of a scare.  It seems the TV doesn’t like it when I connect my PC via HDMI.  The TV refused to power on and the little red light in the front blinked at me seven times.  I had to dig around the AVS forums to find an answer.  I was forced to unplug the HDMI connection and power cycle the TV.  This bothers me a little bit but it is something I can work around.

More thoughts after I get a chance to use the TV a little more.  But so far, so good!

The TV arrives on Monday, already have the delivery scheduled.  I’m anticipating the thing so much, I almost want the weekend to end so I can get the TV.  Yes, I’ve finally reached a new level of craziness.

It had arrived in LA early Friday morning.  I was a little disappointed that they couldn’t deliver it before Monday so I could enjoy it over the weekend.  In good news, the TV has all of a sudden become much more expensive on Amazon.  It’s about $100 more than where I bought it, and about $200 more when you consider the rebates Amazon gave me.   I was hoping the TV would continue its downward price slide so I could continue to cash in on rebates, but it doesn’t look like its going to go below my new base price anytime soon.

I’ve discovered what the biggest scam in the world is. But I’ll get to that in a second.

I’m still eagerly waiting for my TV. I’ve grown really impatient, and now part of me wishes I just went into the store and haggled it out with the people there. I watched the NBA finals on my computer and kept thinking to myself how much better it would look on my new 50″ Plasma TV. The hardest part of the wait is that there is no new update where the TV is. It got to Columbus and the it seems to have stalled. For all I know, it is close to LA and they just haven’t updated the status. Not knowing where it is sucks.

So what is the biggest scam? It has to be HDMI cables. Seriously, I just don’t get it. Go to any store and try and buy a HDMI cable. I guarantee you won’t find one for under $30 and most likely will have to pay $50 or $60. If you buy a Monster HDMI cable, it will set you back $100 or more.

Here is the thing though, it really doesn’t make any sense to buy one of these cables. HDMI is a digital signal. Long story short, either the signal gets there or it doesn’t. So long as the signal gets there, you are going to get a crystal clear picture. The chances of you losing the signal on a short cable length are not very high. Some argue that the better cables give you more bandwidth but really this is a bunch of lies and most consumers will never know the difference.

I bought my cables from a company called Monoprice. They had a good selection of cables, their prices were excellent, and their service was fantastic. I got my cables in a few short days from them and paid only $6 for my 10″ HDMI cable. Same cable in the store would have easily cost me $50 anywhere.

The thing that perplexes me most though is that I have never seen a cheap cable in a store. I’ve seen them all over the place like at Monoprice and at Amazon, but have yet to see a cable for around $10 in any retail outlet. It’s odd. Simple economics would tell you that retailers shouldn’t be able to charge these exorbitant amounts when a cheap alternative so clearly exist. There is clearly a demand for these types of cables, but yet nobody has yet come in and offered a cheap cable. It may be that HDMI is still not as standard as some of the other cable types, since HDMI is only available on higher end TVs. But still, I find it odd.

Any thoughts on what is going on here? What do you think is the biggest scam out there?

Like any good obsession, I’m watching very closely where my TV currently is. Unfortunately for me, my TV started all the way on the other side of the country in Harrisburg, PA. It is slowly (very slowly) making its way across the country to me. It currently resides in Columbus, Ohio, where it is resting before continuing its journey westward to L.A.

TV is “estimated to arrive” on June 11th, which gives it another week to make the rest of the journey. This is most definitely one of the reasons to buy your TV in a brick and mortar star, instant gratification. I’ve already paid for the TV, I would like to be enjoying it right about now, but I wait. Considering I got it for almost $1000 off MSRP, I suppose its worth the week+ wait, but it isn’t easy.

I decided to pull the trigger on my big screen TV purchase and have discovered one of the better under-publicized features of Amazon, their 30 day price guarantee. One of the anxieties of buying any big ticket electronic is that prices are always dropping and you just know it is going to drop the minute after you make your purchase. There wasn’t a more perfect example of this than this. More on that in a minute.

On Friday, Amazon showed that it had my TV in stock. Funny enough, they delayed the “In Stock” date yet again the day after my original post about Amazon teasing me. So I had to wait another day before I felt comfortable ordering it. I got in on Friday morning to see that they were showing the item in stock, so I decided to go through with the purchase and just order it. I wanted to get the TV as soon as possible since the NBA finals will be starting on Thursday, and the Lakers are in it. It is going to be a classic match up between Los Angeles and Boston so I wanted to catch as much of it as I could on the new TV.

I ordered the TV at about 10:00 a.m. PST. The price of the TV when I ordered it was $2368.86. I felt fairly comfortable with the price and truth be told I would have been happy to pay that amount. But wouldn’t you know it. I obsessively checked the status of my order at noon and noticed that the price had dropped more than $50 to $2313.96. I could only laugh as I found the whole thing pretty amusing. You expect the price to drop sometime after you buy it, and that’s just life. There is no point in always holding out for a lower price because you will never get what you want. But dropping by $50 just two hours after you have bought it? Now that’s just irony.

Now I have read that Amazon has some pretty sophisticated albeit strange pricing algorithms. It could very well be that my purchasing of the TV actually caused the price of the item to go down. As the margins on these TVs are pretty good, and I’m sure they don’t sell them in as much quantity as say a DVD, it is very likely that my actions had an affect on the price, and therefore the price dropped. Of course this would fly in the face of traditional supply-and-demand principles, but who am I to tell them not to give consumers a better deal?

However, Amazon has a 30 day price guarantee that is good until 30 days after the item is shipped (my item hasn’t even shipped yet so I think I’m getting an even longer window). All you have to do is go to the customer service screen which should list all your recent orders. You should be able to click on a button to e-mail customer service. If you e-mail them with the price that you saw listed on Amazon, they will refund you the difference with a credit to your credit card.

But it gets better. You can do this as often as you like in your 30 day window. Quite literally, another 3 hours later, the price dropped yet again to $2286.86, a total of $82 less than my original purchase price. I e-mailed them again to get the new price difference and yet again they credited me the money.

Wait, it still gets better. There is absolutely no hassle about it. It really couldn’t be any easier or faster. Each time I got a pretty standard response saying they looked at it, and they agreed they had it at a lower price, and they would credit my credit card the amount. And they did this all within a few hours after my inquiry (even though today is a Saturday).

So far, so good. Now all I need is for the TV to show up …