Buy Panasonic TC-P42U2 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV Sale, Panasonic TC-P42U2

"Fan F _ _king tastic", 2010-08-30

This is my second Panasonic plasma. The Picture is great and it runs a lot cooler than my older one.I would buy more if I had noting else to do with my $$$.$$
btw I also bought the BD-85 Blu-Ray, It is a perfect match

"Love it", 2010-07-07

This is my first HDTV purchase and I'm very happy with it. A friend suggested I go with Panasonic as I'd get the most bang for my buck, and she was right.

The stand was easy enough to assemble and the set looks and feels well-constructed and appropriate for any room decor. The menus are user-friendly and initial setup was a breeze; an explanation is shown for every available option, so people who aren't familiar with funny acronyms don't need to look through the user manual.

The video quality is outstanding. I tested it first with my PS3 (my main reason for buying a tv) and the colors really pop out at you. I was worried that the plasma would be too dark, but it handles both bright and dark colors exceptionally well. Nothing looks washed out or too black. The only complaint is that the screen brightness can be overpowering with the Game and Vivid settings (I'm more a fan of the latter, but it depends on the game), but the brightness can be adjusted and the adaptive lighting seems to work well enough. I would have liked an overall gamma setting, but you can tweak the video to be nearly perfect with the tv options and the video source's settings. Also, the anti-glare works well enough that I can keep one set of curtains open while viewing and the picture doesn't suffer.

Next, I connected my laptop through its HDMI output (most customers probably don't have this but I'll mention it anyway). 1680x1050 resolution seems to work the best as 1920 left the desktop looking too small and making it easier to notice the pixels, and anything smaller doesn't fit just perfectly. I think these are issues with my laptop giving the tv strange resolutions that it's not used to, but these aren't enough to detract from the quality of the tv. I tested a few games at 1280x960 and they looked better than they do on my laptop's screen (anything less than 1680 on my computer is fuzzy). As mentioned before, small portions were cut off of the left and right sides but it was only enough to notice while on menus. I'll definitely be using this tv as a monitor for schoolwork. Movie quality is great with compressed video files, so I'm sure the blu ray will be amazing.

The speakers are sub-par, but they're not terrible. I was still able to enjoy the games without the extra oomph of a solid set with a woofer, but my next priority will be audio.

I'm satisfied with the connections in the back of the tv. I'm only using it for HDMI and occasionally the RCA at the moment, but the optical audio out is convenient if go that route for speakers (I'm not sure if this is standard now but I like it).

Overall, I'm very happy with the tv and would buy it again. The price you pay is well worth the quality you get out of it. Aside from a few minor issues and poor speakers, it's a great HDTV.

"Ok for the price", 2010-06-13

Not a bad picture, but be prepared to tweak it until you're happy. The other reviewer is correct about the brightness. I saw this in the shop, and they had it pegged to almost max. Understandable with the flo lights they have in the store. Reviewer number two is missing the point on his purchase. You don't buy an HD based on it's audio quality, and you don't buy it for S-Video. This is like saying your surround receiver doesn't have good audio in mono.

is this a top notch set. Nope, but considering what I paid compared to what I could have paid a year ago, I'm quite happy with this as my first HD set.

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Panasonic VIERA S1 Series TC-P42S1 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV, Panasonic TC-P42S1

"Great hdtv for the price", 2010-04-23

Alot of people complain about the picture quality,but if you go to C-NET & use their recommended settings it looks amazing.I absolutely love this tv!

"Plasma TV a great buy.", 2010-04-07

I have had this 42" Panasonic Viera Plasma TV for nearly four month's now; I upgraded from a 21" Panasonic CRT. This is a really great TV at a reasonable price. I chose plasma because they got great reviews and seem to have less issues with backlighting and were a bit cheaper than current generation LED/LCD's. I opted for the S version over the X version because I don't have broadband. We get 20 odd channels over the air with an antenna, PBS which has a lot of HD programming comes in beautifully. We joined Netflix about the same time and have really been enjoying the home theatre experience. My TV room is narrow less than 12' so I made cardboard cutouts while deciding between the 42" and the 46", in hind sight I could have gone with the 46". I was worried a 46" from 7 feet away would be too big or grainy, the fact is you could be 12" away with HD before it starts to pixilate, and the picture is so good, bigger is better once you experience the feel of home theatre. I added the Blu-ray DVD player, have yet to try a Blu-ray disc, but we're ready for them. I already had an Onkyo 7.1 surround sound receiver, added a motley collection of speakers, a pair of old KLH's, some home built rear and recently added a BIC 12" sub woofer, now we can get all the sound effects and deep base we can handle. I used the HDMI connections for the Onkyo, Blu-ray and TV; these are a must to get the HD experience. Needed the composite hook up for a somewhat antiquated VCR, and a digital optical input for the best sound from the Home Theatre Amp. The message here is DON'T FORGET TO ORDER CABLES ALONG WITH THE TV. The sound out of the TV itself is OK, not horrible but far from a surround sound experience. I have never adjusted any of the picture settings, colors are rich and accurate, occasionally a bit dark but this can be adjusted by opting for the theatre experience which enhances the picture abit. Controls and adjustments both on the TV and the Onkyo require studying the manuals and carefully selecting from multi-layer menus. Not always clear what you want or how to get it, since we don't do this everyday, adjustments require revisiting the manual. Once you are happy with what you have great, still need 3 remotes, haven't been successful using any one as a universal though all claim it's possible. Overall a huge upgrade from the old TV, enjoying it!

"Good value, but there are a lot of areas for improvement", 2010-03-17

This review is going to be biased.
Info: I live approx. 6 mi from the TV transmitters in my area.
Previous TV for comparison: JVC D-series 27" CRT w/ Insignia SD tuner box
Other equipment: B&W speakers, Pioneer Elite receiver, Oppo BluRay player
Tech level: High. I read AVSForum, listen to tech podcasts, and program computers for a living.

Also note, this is my first HDTV purchase, and I made some mistakes in the process, so I'll share them with you so that you can perhaps avoid them.

Advantages:
-The fact that you get a performance plasma for a low price means this unit is a great value. You'd be hard pressed to find another plasma that has the performance/price ratio this one does.
-It *is* a plasma. As such, you get spot-on motion resolution (very natural!), wide viewing angles, and good black levels. It produces a very nice, non-fatiguing picture, which many LCDs simply can't compete with, at or above this price point.
-Optical audio output works very well; it can even put out 2-channel audio from HDMI input sources out over optical.
-I thought I would hate the glass face (potentially reflective), but I found that if you don't have lights back where you sit, it actually brings the picture out and makes it look better.

Disadvantages:
-The color performance on this display is so-so. People, in general, tend to look pale and bland (too green), especially with DVD, SDTV material on TV after using a calibration disc. Out of the box it was too yellow. It's kinda boring to look at, perhaps like you're watching a lake with a mild algae infestation. Most of the Panasonic THX plasmas (G10, V10) above this model aren't this bad, so you may want to spend more if you don't like the color on the S1. Note: With truly HD or BluRay material, I've found the color doesn't bother me as much and I'm okay with it. I'm not sure why, maybe its the way the S1 does color conversion. In short, this HDTV cannot provide a picture that's remotely close to reference, even with significant tweaking. It's better than many of it's peers, but it still falls short.
-Calibration controls for this set are few. There is no 11-step gray scale adjustment, or any color management system. Because of this, you really can't fix the color decoding issues without expensive external hardware. Even the service menu controls are limited, which means even an ISF calibrator would be hard pressed to fix these problems.
-No VGA/PC input. Thought I wouldn't care too much about not having this, but discovered that I do. There are so many times where I wish I could hook up my laptop to my TV (streaming video, playing video games, etc) that I wish I had this. YMMV. I could get a VGA to HDMI adapter, but that actually costs more than moving to a 42" G10 with the VGA input.
-The ATSC tuner is very bare-bones. You can't see extended show information, what's coming up next, no guide or anything other than the title of the show from show metadata. The tuner is also not very sensitive, I find I need to tweak the antenna a bit more to keep the station coming in well. (I'm comparing to an Insignia SD tuner box I used previously; LG made it and use a similar ATSC tuner system in their TVs, I believe; much better IMHO).
-After I got it, and had it in the room, I realized that yes, I could have gone 50" and it would have made a big positive difference. If your'e hunting for a TV, you may want to think about getting one size bigger than the size you want.

Conclusion: while this display met my budget requirements, and while it is a pretty good display for the money, if you are kinda picky about picture quality you may be disappointed. I learned, after this purchase, that I should have saved a bit more and gone for a G10/V10, even if I had to mail-order it. I'll make a better decision next time.

"more than surprised", 2010-03-15

I bought the Panasonic after much research & comparison. I was waiting for the earlier issues of plasma TV's to be resolved. I knew that the color was more vibrant than any LCD I had ever seen, but was worried about all the things that would sour my eventual purchase. Price, viewing angle, power consumption, screen burn-in, heat, weight, contrast ratio, ease of operation, etc. As time passed one by one every concern I had about plasma was resolved to a more than acceptable level. The TV has the easiest set-up menu I have ever seen and within 20 minutes of dragging the box in the door I had assigned the TV inputs to my SAT HDMI, my Blu-Ray to another input, my outside antenna to but another, and was watching HDTV. If you are someone who isn't real handy with technical babel I highly recommend this TV. The picture is amazing, and I was very surprised to how well the 'on-board' speakers sound. It was a great deal, super fast delivery to my door by UPS, easy to set-up & use, and has been an absolute joy since I got it. If they had a sixth star I would rate it six out of six!

My son who has been leaning towards the new LED TV's came by to see mine and after about five minutes of being completely blown-away has since ordered a 58" Panasonic plasma for himself. The 2,000,000 -1 contrast ratio really makes a difference in the sharpness & the blacks etc. For fast moving sporting events this plasma is the best I have ever seen & I have been staring at plasmas for five years waiting for all their quirks to be improved. Amazing TV and better than the Samsung that cost a thousand dollars more.

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Buy Best Panasonic TC-P42C2 42-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV, Panasonic TC-P42C2

"A Fantastic TV...Once You Adjust Its Settings", 2010-10-08

I've wanted an HDTV for a long time. When Flat Screen HDTVs were just starting to become more mainstream, I was, unfortunately, a newly graduated IT Student...and dead broke. After moving to the East Coast and back again, and owning two beautiful JVC CRT sets (a 27 inch and a 32 inch), I finally, finally, FINALLY managed to amass the capital needed to go flat and hi-def for real (thanks in part to a decent paying job and putting off buying a car when mine died for an entire year). Was it worth the wait all these years? Oh yeah!

First of all, after a lot of thought and effort, I decided to go plasma instead of LCD for several reasons. First, you can buy a 42-inch plasma for about the price of a 32 inch LCD (give or take). Second, the stuttering of LCDs is noticeable and unpleasant to me, and plasmas handle motion with greater fluidity. Thirdly, the black levels of plasmas are better (though they do require lower light to look their best, which is no problem as I'm a low-light kind of guy who lives in the dark overcast Northern West Coast).
I had initially tried to buy a Samsung from Amazon using their slightly-used-like-new Amazon Warehouse, but after more than a week the TV was delivered shattered. I returned it, sending an email to Amazon requesting they simply replace it rather than give me a refund...and my email was ignored. I was given a refund instead of the TV I had ordered. Starting to lose my patience, a friend from work helped me get a great store deal for this beauty. $450.00 with no tax (no sales tax in my state). Nice.

When I took my TV home and unpacked it one of the first things I noticed is the fact that not only would it not fit in my parents' TV cabinet in the living room, but it wouldn't fit in my room either. I had to completely re-arrange my furniture to make room. When I first hooked it up to my ridiculous home setup (Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Saturn, VCR, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Computer) I was slightly disappointed to find that it only has two HDMI Inputs (if I buy a PS3 I may have to buy an HDMI switchbox). On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can hook analog sound input into the component in, and it will play through the TV while using the corresponding HDMI (you don't have to have an audio signal on the HDMI so you can use your computer's analog out and a DVI to HDMI adapter for PC output. The only real downside to this is that the edges of the PC video in are cropped. Oh well, it beats analog video input an day.
The picture on this TV is absolutely outstanding, but you will want to adjust it to your liking in all probability. First of all, by default, like the iPod Touch, the screen dims with the ambient lighting. What this means is that when you have the room nice and dark as you should for optimal viewing, the screen will be so dark you can't see it. You will have to go into the menus and turn off C.A.T.S. if like me you can do without that "feature".
Some people like to adjust the color temperature or fidelity to make the picture warmer, but personally I like white to look white, not pink. And while the cinema mode certainly is bright it makes image artifacting and pixelation stand out, so I prefer to leave colors and brightness on the standard settings.
Personally, I like my image to appear softer as opposed to pixelated, so I set both MPEG and standard noise reduction to on, and set my Xbox 360 (which I use as a DVD player) to output 1080p signal. This results in the image being up-sampled and then down-sampled, smoothing edges and making DVDs have a more "film-like" appearance.
With those settings changed, this display went from good to absolutely amazing. The richness of the colors, outstanding contrast, and overall image smoothness and clarity made video games look outstanding (I actually decided to keep a game I was going to trade in because it looked so much better on this TV), and animation is draw-dropping. Well-mastered DVDs look as good as they possibly can, and I can't wait to get a PS3 so I can try out the Blu Ray discs that are sitting on my shelf.
The sound on the TV is actually very good for a TV once you break in the speakers, and the only real downsides to this TV overall are that it produces a lot of heat, it has bad glare in direct sunlight, and you might need to be a LITTLE more careful than with a CRT about screen burn-in (the TV has a mode to clear after-images, pixel shifting, and a screen-saver, but over the long-term it's probably best to try to wear the screen evenly by not over-doing 4:3 and content with black bars on the top and bottom).
And last but not least, I love the aspect ratio abilities of this TV. The standard aspect ratio is academy flat which is perfect for wide-screen TV programs (including wide-screen anime), and if you want to watch 4:3 content stretched (as I very often do) there are two modes to do so. The justified mode condenses the center of the screen so that character in the center look less stretched. I watch pan-and-scan content and old anime in this aspect ratio and it looks outstanding.
Flat-screen plasmas have been around a long time, but I am very glad I waited to get mine. The current generation handles wide-screen and regular content well, have a digital tuner built-in, and the contrast, color, and overall image fidelity are magnificent. The black levels will probably fade over time, but around the time this TV dies I will probably be getting a 3D TV that doesn't require glasses, or spending my time in the holodeck... Overall I could not be more pleased and would highly recommend this TV to anyone looking to go hi-def and flat.

"Love it!", 2010-10-08

We purchased this TV last weekend. We initially went into the store knowing a general idea of what we wanted, but not sure what we could get with our limited budget. We were very impressed with this TV in the store, and I'm glad to say that it has continued to impress at home. We also purchased a Panasonic Blu-Ray player at the same time. I absolutely love how easy it was to hook everything together. We basically took the TV out of the box, plugged it in, plugged in the blu-ray and Wii, and we were ready to go.

I love the picture quality with the blu-ray and this television. My children played wii bowling a few nights ago, and it was a totally different experience than what we had on our 36" crt. At first I was worried because this television seemed so much smaller than our crt, but I realized it was because our old TV was so bulky. It fits in our room just perfectly.

We have been thrilled with this purchase, which is a good thing because it is our Christmas present between my husband and I. We searched around for the best price, and the store we went to was willing to match the lowest price we found, so we paid $499 for this television. We love it!

"Having Regrets", 2010-10-06

I saw this for less than four hundred dollars. Although I knew it wasn't 1080p, I had no idea it wasn't 1080i at least. The most you get is 720p, and it's a very soft, odd-looking version at that due to its 1024 vertical lines. The picture looks soft and the text is not crisp. It's bothersome. It's like a giant regular TV; any edges that move are a parade of fluttering pixels, fighting for their turn to display. This TV even makes 480 broadcasts look poorer - I'm not exaggerating. I was initially impressed with the color and smooth gradation but the image quality gets to me.

This set's info menu shows the current program's title without a program description. It would be nice to know what's on next, but that's not happening here. It also displays the resolution of the signal coming in such as 1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc.. It's just a shame it's not capable of displaying the 1080i or higher resolutions.

I wish I didn't take my 22" Samsung LCD back that I got for a great price; it was a small TV but the image was sharp and captivating, and now it costs $75 bucks more.

There's nothing beautiful about the images displayed by this set. This TV would be great for someone whose eyes aren't what they used to be, but for anybody wanting high def, this set may wow you for fifteen minutes, then disappoint you for having gone to the trouble of setting it up. I'll try to like it, but I'm really feeling like I'm missing out. My Blu-ray movies are nowhere near as compelling as they used to be. When you squish the other 342 vertical lines in with the already insufficient 1024, it really makes for a highly inferior viewing experience.

I give it three stars because it's affordable, but I've come to this conclusion: I would rather have a small, high-quality picture than a large crappy one at the same price.

FINAL EDIT: I've bumped it up one more star. For four hundred dollars it tends to keep me satisfied when I consider that truly breathtaking sets hit the thousand dallar mark. If you're not going to get an outstanding set, then why spend mid-range money? I have not changed my mind about what it lacks in picture quality, but to be more fair based on the way I rate products, by the value for the money, I think this set deserves three stars. Watching action on a 42" screen is pretty cool even if it's not sharp and beautiful, and for the price the TC-P42C2 is a good value.

"Steal of a Deal to upgrade to HD!", 2010-10-05

I have had this HDTV for almost 2 weeks now, and couldn't be more pleased with it. I was able to get it on sale for $400 plus tax. This HDTV replaced a 27' SDTV. I feel this is the perfect TV for anyone who is on a tight budget and looking to upgrade to HD without adding a home theater system. I have my HD cable box, and my upconverting DVD player connected via the 2 HDMI ports. I love the look of the plasma glass like picture versus the flat LCD picture. MLB and NFL really pop on this set compared to my 4 year old 46' Sony 720p LCD. I have not noticed any motion blur, and the blacks and dark scenes look great. The HD channels look great, the digital channels look good, and the SD channels look okay. This set offers options to fill or stretch the screen for non HD programs and SD channels. I haven't really fooled around with these options, as I now have about 100 HD channels. If a program comes on one of these HD channels that isn't HD, I just watch it with the bars on the side. The sound on the TV is good enought for me, I have not had to turn the volume higher than 30.

This HDTV is in my living room, which is bright during the day. You will get reflections on the screen if you can't shut any blinds or curtains. At night I usually keep the light on in the corner on the side of the TV. Even with the blinds open during the day, or more lights on, you are still able to watch the TV with the reflections. The seating distance in my living room ranges from 6 feet on the sides and about 10 feet in front. The viewing angle from the side is very good, and much better than a LCD TV. If you can get a good price on the 50 inch model, I would go for it. I was happy to get the 42 inch model, as it fit in to my Jeep without a problem, and was not too heavy or big for one person to carry and unpack. The base stand that comes with this TV is very easy to put together. The remote control is good size and simple to use and the owner's manual is very helpful. The on screen set up of the TV only takes a few minutes after you have it connected to your HD source. There are enough options to fine tune the picture and sound. You can go to the AVS board to get more info on settings. This TV is very quiet and is not hot to the touch. The all black finish matches perfect with the black stand and HD box.

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Samsung PN42A450 42-inch High Definition Plasma TV

The Samsung PN42A450, 42 inch HD PLASMA TV with an exclusive 3D accessory kit, this one also sports a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, 100,000 hour panel life, 18-bit color processing and a trio of HDMI-CEC connections. FilterBright anti-glare technology provides deeper blacks and a higher contrast ratio with reducing annoying screen glare.

Note: 2% off price of Plasma TV if payment made via bank wire or cashiers check.

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