Panasonic VIERA TC-P65VT30 65-inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV, Black

Best TV currently on the market., July 12, 2011

I had researched for about a year or so before placing a pre-order for this set. In 2010 I purchased a 55 inch Samsung C8000 LED set, and had bad luck with two units which were unrepairable, and needed to be replaced. Finally I got one without a problem, and it looked pretty great with bright content, but in blacked out scenes, or letterbox content there was a “flashlight” and cloud effect that was just too distracting. This is in a completely dark room by the way. It was at this point that I decided I was going to buy the best TV on the market with little regard to cost, and almost everything I read led to the upcoming VT30. So I placed my order in April, and the set was delivered on May 13th. Immediately I was blown away by the picture quality of this set, but also noticed a “flicker” effect, almost like the picture was fluttering on the high contrast scenes. For about the first month of owning the set I can’t tell you how much reading and research I did to see if there was a way to fix this flicker problem, and although there is a lot of info on the web about this set, it seems like nobody was addressing the flicker issue. So I thought it must just be me, but then I found an article that talked about the greyscale of PDP technology, and that it can cause flicker which only some people see. I know that my vision is good, but could this be a problem with Plasma? Is it just me? Is it the settings of the set? Well, it couldn’t be the latter, because I had tried just about every settings combination possible, and nothing had worked. When the contrast was turned down low it did reduce the flicker effect, but never went away and made the picture too dim to really enjoy. The picture quality on this was so good that I was heartbroken to think that it would go back because of this issue, after all, for this kind of money I expect near perfect results as I don’t make this kind of purchase every day. So before returning the set I bit the bullet, and forked out the money to have a professional calibrator come out and adjust the settings in the TV’s Service Menu. This is a menu that you can access with the proper codes, and is intended only for professionals to tweak the color, greyscale, light output, etc. on the set. Turns out that the set needed the calibration badly. I have never had a professional calibration on a TV before this, and although I figured that it would be a good idea, I never realized just how much difference it could make! The picture quality was already the best I had ever seen, but after professional calibration it is absolutely mind blowingly good! The flicker is gone, the picture is bright, but subtle, and tons of detail in the shadows. Black areas of a scene are pitch black, and colors are incredibly accurate. I almost want to miss work just to stay home and watch TV now. I have Comcast HD, and although it is pretty good in my neighborhood, you just can’t beat a Blu-Ray on this thing. In fact, the calibrator that dialed in my TV has a Pioneer Kuro, and has calibrated up to an 11 Million dollar home theater, and his opinion is that there are a lot of great sets to choose from with Panasonic, Samsung, LG, etc, but he agrees that the VT30 is the best you can get right now. If you can afford it, I highly suggest that you take a good look at this TV before you make the leap. By the way, the Samsung LED that I referenced above is now in a bright room, and looks phenomenal. The Samsung D8000 is a pretty awesome set for 2011, and until the calibration I thought I was going to end up that direction, but it also has the flicker effect, and I have had bad luck with two Samsung TV’s, and two of their Blu-Ray players in the past. Not sure how reliable they are this year, but I’m pretty sure that the Panasonic was the right choice.

Update: The fluctuating brightness issue on these sets that some people are talking about was on a small number of the initial units released. It has been addressed, and fixed. You will not have a problem with fluctuating brightness from this point forward. Also, I saw the new Elite sets from Sharp and the VT30 is still definitely the king of the mountain. Go see for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree.

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Final review — success., September 22, 2011

I was reluctant to purchase this tv as are/were many secondary to the fluctuating brightness.

My amazon TV is an August 2011 build. A previous amazon customer who wrote a review here mentioned his recently acquired (sept 2011) tv was a July build. amazon, on the phone, could not guarantee me any build date, I guess I got luck of the draw on August, which apparently all August and beyond tv’s have a replaced A board from the factory — there is changing information on this on the ‘net forums.

I was also a bit reluctant to purchase from Amazon, as I’ve never purchased something this expensive online before, but I’ve purchased from Amazon for years and have ZERO negative to say about Amazon reliability and service — it’s always been impecable.

I received this this tv only 2 days after I purchased it from Amazon, it arrived in great condition, my wife was home and she didn’t know to ask the gentlemen who delivered it to put it on the stand, but they did not offer to do this for us. They turned it on, made sure it worked, and left (they just removed the top part of the box, pulled the styrofoam wrap down a bit, and plugged it in).

I got home, plugged in the wifi, updated firmware from 2.060 to 2.070 witout any problems.

I must admit — for the purpose of this review — so far I have not done any major testing. I currently own a Panny TC-P65S2 (2010) and came from a Panny TC-P65S1, and have only owned panasonic plasmas. I have dealt with fluctuating black levels (and am annoyed by them) on the S2, and the VT30 was a great prospect when I heard about the great black levels, apparently stable (thus far in reports from professional testing, i.e. cnet).

I’ll report back as I start playing around with this thing. I gave it 5 stars because I did not want to lower the average rating.

I can already tell the black levels are much better than the S2, the one sheet of glass is very cool, it’s 1/2 or 1/3 the depth of my s2 — very thin for a 65″ plasma. The brushed aluminum trim is also a nice touch.

Oh, and no buzz compared to my S2 .. my S2 can get rather loud, but this thing has no significant buzz – you can hear a little when you’re a few feet away from it.

******

Final review:

My EEPROM number is 84.46 .. this is an August build, Serial MJ1214XXXXX. This has the updated a board/firmware, because I see NO FBr (fluct. brightness)

Performance — stellar (compared to my previous panasonic plasmas).

This is clearly, without the 9G Kuro on the market, the king of plasmas. I hope all purchasing from Amazon get the August build or beyond. When I called Amazon, they could not guarantee me that, but they would guarantee that they’d return it no charge if I was not satisfied in 30 days. Nothing touches Amazon’s no tax price right now.

Colors, black levels, “pop” .. all amazing.

Sure, it’s not a Kuro, but it’s 90% there, and that says something. I thought my S2 black levels were terrible once I got the tv and started using it. For someone who will be doing dark room watching and CARES about black levels, fluctuating brightness, fluctuating black levels — here’s your tv.

Thanks for reading.

Update (all good) 11/28/11:

This TV continues to impress me — rock stable black levels and on brightness fluctuation issues (see my report above). Will definitely continue to stay with panny for plasma as currently their plasma is the best on the market. Time to get an oppo blu-ray player.

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