Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G25 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV

Review by L. Pouchet for Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G25 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV
Rating:
I was the proud owner of a panasonic 42 PZ 700, the high-end of Pana. I got to move across the ocean, and I had to buy a new one. As I needed a larger screen for a limited budget, I decided to try the newest G25. It’s a really good choice, with just minor problems.

Pros:

– convincing picture quality. I was actually very impressed for a TV at this price. Black levels and even colors greatly improved since the PZ700

– easy to use, enough setup possibilities

– good upscaling

– “light and cool” design, at least compared to my heavy and hot PZ700.

Cons:

– sound is awful. It’s even hard to distinguish words sometimes. I have to turn on my home theater almost all the time. I don’t know if it’s below or above standard for this price range, but it’s absolutely nothing like the PZ, which had a very nice 2+1 sound system integrated.

– “skype ready” is… only ready in the hardware. For the moment I have a nice “will be available soon” message.

– media player plays only local (that is, SD card) files. It’s not possible (at least for the moment) to make it play content from the ethernet plug

Overall, I’m very happy with this product, I recommend it. But you need an external sound system.

++

Review by carolinawren for Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G25 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV
Rating:
The picture is gorgeous! As noted by tech review sites, the THX mode is definitely the most accurate and looks by far the best. The sound isn’t awful through the TV, but I now have it running through my receiver, so that doesn’t matter.

The Viera Cast Amazon on Demand works very well and the interface is actually better than my Roku when using Amazon. I have it wired through a Airport Express and it works like a charm without buying a single-purpose dongle from Panasonic.

The anti-glare screen coating works beautifully. The TV is on a wall with two large windows facing it and I can actually watch TV during the day for the first time without lowering the blackout shades. The bezel is really a very,very dark gray which is much more attractive that the usual piano black. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this TV that are proving hard to deal with:

1. The buzz on light colored scenes. There is a barely audible buzz on somewhat lighter scenes, but on truly light scenes it is loud enough to be heard over my newish central air conditioner and a pet fountain that is about 25′ away from the seating area. Truly light scenes where the buzz is very predominant include the 1st season of Lost when they are on the beach or in the sun in the mountains, Crazy Heart when he is on the road with the sky and the NM desert around him and all of the ocean scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean. This is really disappointing. Not sure if this is fixable or not, if not it is a deal breaker for me.

2. It definitely shifts slightly to green. Flesh tones always have a very slight greenish tint to them. If I can figure out how to get rid of the buzz I will have it professionally calibrated to see if this is actually fixable.

I hope there is a way to get rid of the buzz, because otherwise this is a great buy for a really excellent picture

UPDATE: I gave up and sent it back to Amazon. The buzz never went away, got slightly worse and drove me nuts! After spending more time watching the TV I also decided that the TV’s SD performance was not good enough. While I have HD cable and a blu ray, there are too many legacy SD shows/movies to have a TV that looks that bad on SD programming. I replaced this with a Samsung PN50C8000, so I will post a review on it with some comparison information. So far, no buzz with the Samsung!

One more note; not about the TV, but the return process. I called Amazon to find out the status of the return and discovered they didn’t have the TV back yet. I called Pilot Freight and they eventually found the TV sitting on the dock. Assuming they shipped it out 2 days later when they said they would, it was on their dock for a week and a half. Beware of this type of issue if you are sending back something within the 30 day return period.

Review by TheoJM for Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G25 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV
Rating:
Get the 50 inch version or bigger, it’s not too large. 😛 Put this in THX mode and it is great. The construction is excellent, picture quality is the best I’ve seen on any TV, menu is very navigable, and the remote control is perfectly adequate. Viera Cast is an awesome feature of this TV. While they still have not added Netflix, the rest of the features are great. Pandora is an awesome service for those interested in music. Amazon video on demand has a large selection and video quality is high(a bit expensive though). YouTube unfortunately defaults to 360p, even if the video has 480p, 720p, or 1080p available. There is no way to manually force it to a better video mode. The speakers are good, but at times it is downright difficult to understand what people are saying. I found that standard definition channels look worse on this TV than on a SD television(maybe this is to be expected, but I wasn’t to this extent). A few SD channels are really really bad, to the point of being almost unwatchable(tennis channel). No 3.55mm headphone connection. In addition, there is no DVI connection either(only resolution limited VGA port). Don’t buy an LCD or LED because you are concerned about this burning in. Burn-in(especially past the first 100 hours) has been made mostly irrelevant with recent plasma developments. However, I did do about 72 hours of break-in slides(from avsforum) to age the pixels evenly, not sure if it was really necessary but I did it anyways. Do NOT buy the expensive Panasonic wireless adapter. If your wireless router is too far from the TV to run a cable, buy a cheap DD-WRT compatible router and install the aforementioned firmware on it. You can then put it into client bridge mode and it essentially becomes a wireless adapter. I installed DD-WRT standard version 13525 on a $35 ASUS WL-520GU. This worked just fine with the TV. Nevertheless, make sure when the TV arrives you have an HDMI cable/flashlight ready to verify there are no defects before signing for it. If possible, watch to make sure that when the delivery person brings it out of the van, it has not been transported facing down(if so, reject it). The delivery guy is usually in a rush, so don’t be pressured into signing before you are confident you have inspected it sufficiently.

Pros:

-Great overall performance and value, no sacrifices

-Black levels and colors excellent(THX), not overbright

-Viera Cast(with future updates it has great potential)

-SD card/Thumb-drive/keyboard capable

Cons:

-SD seems to look worse on this than on a SD television

-Sound quality could have been better

-No 3.5mm audio or DVI connection

-Netflix not available yet/YouTube needs improvement