Patrick Sun
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 1999
- Messages
- 39,670
After many months of reading all sorts of reviews and testimonials on all different types of TV technology, I finally settled on the Panasonic TH-50PX600U, which is a little more expensive than the standard TH-50PX60U model, but for the added expense, I got the PC VGA input I wanted, and Split Screen (Picture-next-to-Picture), which is something I'm used to having (P-i-P), and it was worth the extra cost over the 60U model. It has a slightly better speaker system (more speakers, fuller sound). It has a Cablecard slot, and TV Guide Program guide (extras I probably won't be using).
I went with plasma over LCD due to expense, size, and better black level performance, plus LCD brightness/backlighting just seem to fatigue my eyes in prolonged viewing times, moreso than plasma.
I went with plasma over rear projection LCOS/DLP due to viewing angle consideration, bulky thickness, bulb burn-out, and SSE (I am more susceptible to the silk-screen effect, and it bugged me for most of these types of TV sets). But if you want more screen for the buck, these are your best options, just know that you give up other things for a bigger screen.
After placing the order for the TV, I suffered a water heater-related flood in my house a week later, so my house is in shambles at the moment, but 2 days after the flood, my new TV was delivered, and had been sitting in my garage for over 2 weeks before my curiousity got the better of me last Friday night, so I finally brought the entire box into my house, and proceeded to unpack it, and install the mounting base onto the TV itself. It's possible to do it with one person, you just have to use a bed to support the TV in various positions while you mount the base and screw in the screws for the mounting posts.
So I finally got the TV mounted to the base and positioned on the TV stand I made, and wheeled it into my living room. Most of the house has the carpet ripped out until the new carpet shows up in a few weeks, so it's plenty ugly. I also did finished up a project to put wheels on the vertical rack that holds all my HT components, and now I can wheel the HT rack into the closet next to the TV if I so choose.
Here are the before and after shots of wire management for my HT rack. I flipped all my components 90 degrees to the right on each shelf, which allowed me to fit the rack in a width just over 17" wide. The wire shelves allows me to snake cables up and down in a more organized manner. I had to fit my 5-channel amp underneath the plasma since it was too wide for the closet, but then I was able to slip in my subwoofer's amp in its place on the rack at the bottom shelf, underneath the shelf with the power outlet strips and UPS.
Currently, I'm in the 100-hour bland video settings burn-in phase for the new plasma TV set, which has muted the image a bit, and I can't wait until I can really adjust the picture quality to my liking. But even so, the OTA ATSC HD image is very crisp and watchable. My typical viewing distance is about 9.5-10 feet away, and the image looks pretty tight and clean. At that distance, I definitely can't resolve enough detail to see the SDE (screen door effect) from the resolution of 768x1366 for this display. If I get a little closer, sure, you'll see the SDE, but for my setup, it's not an issue, and I don't regret waiting for prices on 1080p plasma sets to fall before taking the plunge into 1080p displays.
The HD DVD playback (from a Xbox 360 HD DVD drive via component video) is very nice and smooth. I watched Superman Returns on HD DVD on Sunday, as well as a lot of the supplemental material, and it all look very good. Madden 2007 via the Xbox360 on this plasma looks really good, too. I will be trying out the PC VGA input with the Xbox360, so I'll add more comments after I evaluate that input scenario.
Currently I have my Nintendo Wii connected via composite video, but will be moving it over to component video soon. I am loving the expanded viewing angle of plasma because I can now stand up while playing the Wii and not have the video image compromised by the viewing angle.
SD (standard definition) is a matter of the source material (garbage in, garbage out), and LD looked okay on it, and analog Cable TV looks decent when the signal was good for segments of channel groups dependent on channel frequency and my cable hook-up at the moment. The same goes for my VCR and ReplayTV playback. I didn't suffer a step back in image quality for SD when comparing to my older 1080i HDTV set by going with the plasma set, just image size (since I had a 56" 4x3 HDTV set previously, so the 4x3 SD material looked bigger on the older TV, but 16x9 material is pretty much the same as the 50" plasma).
Xvid/MPEG playback from my Philips 5960 DVD player (via component video output) was quite acceptable, that was a pleasant bonus/surprise. What I like about the Phillips 5960 is that you can load up a USB memory stick and connect that to the DVD player, and it'll play files right off the USB memory stick. I will be testing the Philips HDMI video output by feeding it to the HDMI input for upconverting consideration soon.
DVD playback with my Panasonic RP-91 (upscaled by the plasma) via component was a little better than my previous TV in terms of solid-ness of image. I only watched 480i DVD output, which was more than acceptable, but I haven't done 480p with the RP-91. I'll be doing more testing of DVDs in the future.
I really like the split-screen feature (2 inputs shown side-by-side, only HDMI inputs can't be split-screened), and the ability to toggle one input's image larger than the other input is cool.
I also liked being able to push the input button on the remote and then click on the number associated with the input to select the input, instead of having to click up or down the requisite clicks to select the input in question. For example, if input 5 was the desired input, I'd click "input" and "5", instead of "input" and "down" button 4 times.
There are various aspect modes, some of which can be used when needed, to avoid uneven phosphor burn (stretching 4x3 to fill the screen, and stay away from the grey bars) when possible.
So, for now, I'm pretty happy with my purchase, a very versatile model, and look forward to having my house back in order so I can really relax and enjoy the plasma even more.
--------
Here are a few quick shots of the plasma in its new location in my living room. Please forgive the non-carpeted mess.
Photo 1: a wide shot with most of my HT gear in the process of being wheeled into the closet behind the plasma. The left/right speakers are really my rear speakers that are being used as front speakers for the time being until I get my house back in order.
Photo 2: a wide shot with the closet door closed and hiding the HT rack. I will need to figure out how to tidy up the cables that are coming out from under the closet door. The rack behind the plasma that primarily holds up my center channel speaker is something else I'll need to deal with. I'd like to shorten up the legs, and remove those 2 wire racks above the speaker. We'll see what I come up with in the future.
Photo 3: Not the greatest screen shot, but I used no flash, and a shutter speed of 1/8 second, which explains the blur, but otherwise, the OTA HD is very much high-def looking and clean. I'll try to post some paused screenshots later from less "live" sources.
I went with plasma over LCD due to expense, size, and better black level performance, plus LCD brightness/backlighting just seem to fatigue my eyes in prolonged viewing times, moreso than plasma.
I went with plasma over rear projection LCOS/DLP due to viewing angle consideration, bulky thickness, bulb burn-out, and SSE (I am more susceptible to the silk-screen effect, and it bugged me for most of these types of TV sets). But if you want more screen for the buck, these are your best options, just know that you give up other things for a bigger screen.
After placing the order for the TV, I suffered a water heater-related flood in my house a week later, so my house is in shambles at the moment, but 2 days after the flood, my new TV was delivered, and had been sitting in my garage for over 2 weeks before my curiousity got the better of me last Friday night, so I finally brought the entire box into my house, and proceeded to unpack it, and install the mounting base onto the TV itself. It's possible to do it with one person, you just have to use a bed to support the TV in various positions while you mount the base and screw in the screws for the mounting posts.
So I finally got the TV mounted to the base and positioned on the TV stand I made, and wheeled it into my living room. Most of the house has the carpet ripped out until the new carpet shows up in a few weeks, so it's plenty ugly. I also did finished up a project to put wheels on the vertical rack that holds all my HT components, and now I can wheel the HT rack into the closet next to the TV if I so choose.
Here are the before and after shots of wire management for my HT rack. I flipped all my components 90 degrees to the right on each shelf, which allowed me to fit the rack in a width just over 17" wide. The wire shelves allows me to snake cables up and down in a more organized manner. I had to fit my 5-channel amp underneath the plasma since it was too wide for the closet, but then I was able to slip in my subwoofer's amp in its place on the rack at the bottom shelf, underneath the shelf with the power outlet strips and UPS.
Currently, I'm in the 100-hour bland video settings burn-in phase for the new plasma TV set, which has muted the image a bit, and I can't wait until I can really adjust the picture quality to my liking. But even so, the OTA ATSC HD image is very crisp and watchable. My typical viewing distance is about 9.5-10 feet away, and the image looks pretty tight and clean. At that distance, I definitely can't resolve enough detail to see the SDE (screen door effect) from the resolution of 768x1366 for this display. If I get a little closer, sure, you'll see the SDE, but for my setup, it's not an issue, and I don't regret waiting for prices on 1080p plasma sets to fall before taking the plunge into 1080p displays.
The HD DVD playback (from a Xbox 360 HD DVD drive via component video) is very nice and smooth. I watched Superman Returns on HD DVD on Sunday, as well as a lot of the supplemental material, and it all look very good. Madden 2007 via the Xbox360 on this plasma looks really good, too. I will be trying out the PC VGA input with the Xbox360, so I'll add more comments after I evaluate that input scenario.
Currently I have my Nintendo Wii connected via composite video, but will be moving it over to component video soon. I am loving the expanded viewing angle of plasma because I can now stand up while playing the Wii and not have the video image compromised by the viewing angle.
SD (standard definition) is a matter of the source material (garbage in, garbage out), and LD looked okay on it, and analog Cable TV looks decent when the signal was good for segments of channel groups dependent on channel frequency and my cable hook-up at the moment. The same goes for my VCR and ReplayTV playback. I didn't suffer a step back in image quality for SD when comparing to my older 1080i HDTV set by going with the plasma set, just image size (since I had a 56" 4x3 HDTV set previously, so the 4x3 SD material looked bigger on the older TV, but 16x9 material is pretty much the same as the 50" plasma).
Xvid/MPEG playback from my Philips 5960 DVD player (via component video output) was quite acceptable, that was a pleasant bonus/surprise. What I like about the Phillips 5960 is that you can load up a USB memory stick and connect that to the DVD player, and it'll play files right off the USB memory stick. I will be testing the Philips HDMI video output by feeding it to the HDMI input for upconverting consideration soon.
DVD playback with my Panasonic RP-91 (upscaled by the plasma) via component was a little better than my previous TV in terms of solid-ness of image. I only watched 480i DVD output, which was more than acceptable, but I haven't done 480p with the RP-91. I'll be doing more testing of DVDs in the future.
I really like the split-screen feature (2 inputs shown side-by-side, only HDMI inputs can't be split-screened), and the ability to toggle one input's image larger than the other input is cool.
I also liked being able to push the input button on the remote and then click on the number associated with the input to select the input, instead of having to click up or down the requisite clicks to select the input in question. For example, if input 5 was the desired input, I'd click "input" and "5", instead of "input" and "down" button 4 times.
There are various aspect modes, some of which can be used when needed, to avoid uneven phosphor burn (stretching 4x3 to fill the screen, and stay away from the grey bars) when possible.
So, for now, I'm pretty happy with my purchase, a very versatile model, and look forward to having my house back in order so I can really relax and enjoy the plasma even more.
--------
Here are a few quick shots of the plasma in its new location in my living room. Please forgive the non-carpeted mess.
Photo 1: a wide shot with most of my HT gear in the process of being wheeled into the closet behind the plasma. The left/right speakers are really my rear speakers that are being used as front speakers for the time being until I get my house back in order.
Photo 2: a wide shot with the closet door closed and hiding the HT rack. I will need to figure out how to tidy up the cables that are coming out from under the closet door. The rack behind the plasma that primarily holds up my center channel speaker is something else I'll need to deal with. I'd like to shorten up the legs, and remove those 2 wire racks above the speaker. We'll see what I come up with in the future.
Photo 3: Not the greatest screen shot, but I used no flash, and a shutter speed of 1/8 second, which explains the blur, but otherwise, the OTA HD is very much high-def looking and clean. I'll try to post some paused screenshots later from less "live" sources.
