Panny 53wx42 - HDTV newbie experience, this set is outstanding (1 Viewer)

[Tod_J]

I received and set up my 53wx42 and RP82 DVD player and thought I would provide a quick summary of my experience. I took a lot out of these forums and it’s only right I should contribute in a small way. I began a few weeks ago with zero HDTV knowledge and after scouring these forums decided on the Panny over the Hitachi and Toshiba, mainly due to price and the thought that I could live with the Panny’s perceived shortcomings. I’ll run them down here:

1.) Crummy stretch mode
I got used to the JUST stretch mode in a matter of hours. It is so subtle (to me anyway) that I have to look close to tell. Now 4X3 looks odd.

2.) Poor picture out of the box.
Apparently this applies much more to the wx49 of last year. My OOTB picture is very good

3.) No DVI.
Yep, sure enough no DVI. The question is, do I care?

4.) DirecTV looks TERRIBLE (not unique to Panny)
DirecTV looks GOOD to me, not great, but not bad at all.

5.) Remote is crummy
Confirmed.

DVD picture with RP82 is outstanding with no tweaks other than SVM off, contrast down, etc. Given the price of

 

[Evan Hartnett]

Just wait until it has had a little break in time... I never really thought there would be a very noticable difference but after a month my 47wx42 looks incredible. I've done a few tweaks but nothing major so far, I can't imagine how good it'll look after I can afford an ISF ccalibration (unfortunately it's going to be a while though).

I agree about the stretch mode, I really don't understand how anyone can say that it's terrible. The only time I really notice it is if I'm watching something like CNN with text scrolling across the screen. I was a little worried about the quality of cable on this set but, just like with an analog set, some channels look bad but some look great - it all depends on the original signal but none are "unwatchable" (well, aside from crap like local home shopping that would even be unwatchable if it had a crystal clear high definition signal).