Woohoo, Panny 53WX42 is on the way (1 Viewer)

[Josh Lowe]

I have to curse and thank Bank of America at once!
Saturday I ordered a Panny 47WX42 from OneCall. I'd been waiting for the 53 to get back in stock for a while and finally decided to just get the 47.
Late this morning I received an email informing me that my debit card had been declined! Grrr! So I called OneCall and read them the # - it was right. After wrangling with Bank of America for an hour they basically came back with a nonsensical answer that implied no debit card can be used for purchases of over $1500 without your being there in person. WHATEVER, I know that's a crock, they're clueless about their own damn bank.
So I call back OneCall and have them check the # again. Still looks good. Then I ask them what the expiration shows. There we go! Off by 2 years. So I tell them what the correct # is.
I get back to work (this all transpired on the cellphone) and check my email - Get this. I find another email from OneCall informing me the 53WX42 is now back in stock! AAAAAAAAAAH! So I call them back AGAIN and have them change the order from a 47WX to a 53WX and pray that the charges go through this time around.
And they do! My TV is on the way. So it all ended up working out for the best, I can't wait for it to arrive. I also ordered a copy of Avia and of course the man himself, Gregg Loewen will be arriving here to do a calibration either in August or October. Can you say "Movie night at my house!" ?

 

[Josh Lowe]

Thanks, Tony, your posts regarding the Panasonic TVs were part of my decision process. I read pretty much every panny-related thread I could find on here, avsforum, hometheaterspot and panny.tv. It really did come down to a coin toss between the Toshiba 50H82 and the Panny. In the end it was the fact I found myself working up an elaborate scheme to use an HTPC to scale my DVD player's output to 540p to get around the Tosh's scaling - the cost and expense of it seemed silly. I'm still building an HTPC but now it will serve as a music hub rather than the main source of DVD. I got an RP91 for that.

 

[Steve_Tk]

Please tell me how you enjoy your Panny 53's. I've been debating over buying one of these or a Sony 51 or Hit 43. I can get the Panny the cheapest and at a very good price, but just have not decided on it yet. I've played with it many times, but in dark scenes sometimes, like on Shrek, I see a shimmer. Not sure how to get rid of it, and if it can be done, please tell me and I will have made my decision.

 

[Tim_B]

Congrats! I am debating between the Panny, Tosh 50H82 and the JVC. Let me know how the Panny looks when calibrated!

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

The Panny 53WX42 is a terrific set. I chose it over the Tosh 50H82, the Sony 52HW40, & similar Mits sets. The main attractions to the Panny are its price, native 480p & tweakability.

 

[Gregg Loewen]

Tony is right about the "full calibration thing".

4 of the 5 WORST TVs I have worked on have been Panasonics. However, they look awesome once tweeked out.

Gregg

 

[JohnnyG]

To be completely honest, if you dont plan on having an full isf calibration, either the Sony or Hitachi may be better as both will look better out of the box.

Absolutely NOT true of the new models. They are very accurate out-of-the-box, especially in terms of colour and tint. The colour decoder is also very accurate and grey scale isn't that bad either.

In many ways, I consider these 2002 sets to be completely different animals from their 2001 counterparts.