Panasonic VIERA TC-P65VT50 65-Inch 1080p Full HD 3D Plasma TV

Best tv you can buy right now, May 30, 2012

By 

Anthony Campo (New Hampshire) –

  

In my opinion, this tv is the best to be had at this time. To provide some background for that opinion, I have tried the following sets while I still had my Kuro 5020: The VT30, D7000 and the 80″ Sharp 632U LED. The Sharp was something I had to try based on some reviews but it really was quite disappointing and never even made it onto the wall. For further information regarding my opinion of the Sharp, please read the comments section where I have answered a question regarding my expereince with this set. The VT30 was quite good but had color issues, uniformity issues and large bezel syndrome. The D7000 was far better than I had expected after reading the nasty comments about it. But none of these sets allowed me to feel good about sending my 9g Kuro packing.

With much anticipation, I ordered the 65VT50 from Amazon. The entire process was painless and quick as per usual. Delivery was sooner than expected and professional. They did send only one driver, so be prepared for that. But we managed just fine. I quickly inspected the set and immediately mounted it and got things setup. Everything went smoothly.

I did download and install an available update. The only new “feature” I noticed after the update was a fairly long duration banner at TV startup. This is defeatable within the settings, so fear not.

**** A second update had been released and is mentioned at the end of this review.

Now for my impression of this television.

This VT50 is simply beautiful. The smaller bezel and overall aesthetics are quite excellent. Gone are the days of “but LCD’s are so much slimmer and/or less bulky”. This set looks great turned off. I am happy to pay a premium for the single sheet of glass design even if that was the only difference over the GT, but its not.

Some complain about the silver trim, but you will be hard pressed to find an owner that does not like it. Personaly, I really like the look. I think the TV would look rather run of the mill and boring without it.

The touchpad was easy to pair with the television. I do not imagine myself using the touch pad much, but it does work as advertised. If you use your television to browse at all, you may find the touchpad quite useful. I had no issues navigating with it at all.

It is also worth mentioning that this set is also quite a bit lighter than the VT30.

To my eye, the blacks are right there with the Kuro I just sold. A meter may say otherwise but it takes a trained eye to see the difference if not side by side. The blacks are inky and satisfying and do not leave me wanting in any way. My eyes are pretty damn good and all I can say is that I do not miss my Kuro one single bit. And the extra real estate is quite nice as well.

Equally as impressive is the increased brightness of this panel. If you find that you are really drawn to the brightness of an LCD, but prefer the motion of a plasma, this set should fit your bill perfectly. I have two large windows in my living room and never feel like I need more out of my set in terms of brightness. The anti-glare works excellent as well.

If I was forced to come up with a gripe, it would be the red LED that comes on when the set is on. This was poor planning on Panasonics part but I am not losing any sleep over it. A little well trimmed piece of electrical tape takes care of that if it really bothers you.

Everything works as it should. HDMI control works perfectly on mine. I can hit the power button once on my Directv remote and everything turns on as it should (STB, TV, and AVR). ARC (Audio Return Channel) is also nice. This allows the audio from the TV to play through your home stereo while utilizing the same HDMI cable that feeds it content. To utilize this feature, you will need to plug your HDMI cable into HDMI #2 on the television. This is great for when you are watching Netflix or something emanating from the TV itself. All this functionality is assuming that you have an AVR that is up to date and HDMI 1.4a compliant as well as your HDMI cables. I use these cables Mediabridge Ultra Series – High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet – (6 Feet) – Category 2 Certified – Supports 3D & Audio Return Channel [Latest HDMI Version Available]. They have worked perfectly for me every single time and the price is nice. I still feel compelled to interupt when I see an employee at a Big Box store trying to convince an unknowing person to spend over $100 on a Monster cable.

You will notice that the HDMI ports are extremely close to the edge of the set. If you have rigid cables, it can present a problem and possibly cause them to protrude past the edge. There are several fixes for this. The one I chose was to use two of these connectors…

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Sets the new high bar for home television, May 9, 2012

Pilot freight services delivered my unit May 8th, 3-days sooner than advertised. While I was apprehensive about set-up, an HDMI (not included) and power cord were all that was needed to start watching programs through my receiver. I’m a big guy, so hefting the TV onto its base wasn’t such an ordeal, but I will note that most people will need help with this chore. I opted not to put it on the wall due to its weight and my living room’s space restrictions (not to mention the extra price/non-availability of a wall bracket). The pedestal required a Philips screwdriver to construct and does not swivel in the slightest. Upgrading to 65-inches, I don’t miss that feature.

The viewing experience is as advertised. Out of the box, the VT50 is set very dark. Unless the unit will be placed in a home theater, you will need to use a custom or the “THX Bright Room” setting. At any setting, however, you will note the incredible degree to which blacks are displayed. I tested some modifications while watching a MLB game broadcast in HD. Its difficult to describe the “new” shades of black and grey that I could discern on this set, but I can say that I never saw them before. Every detail that I thought of or tried to see was simply: there. The one sheet of glass addition is gorgeous, though when the TV is on it kind of disappears. Simply put, I’ve never seen a better looking plasma display.

VIERA functionality is running wirelessly and almost seamlessly through my Netgear N900. Every app I’ve tried (I’m not a subscriber to anything like Netflix, so I don’t know how well pay apps function) loads quickly. The on board browser is ever so slightly slower than one on a dated laptop I’ve got, but every web-page loaded without issue. I found streaming videos from a networked PC not to work unless I ran them from a my X-box 360. I can only assume that this is a codec issue.

The speakers are “Meh”. At this level of monitor, you better already have standalone speakers running through an amp or your missing out. Form factor-wise, the included speakers and woofer melt into the VT50’s body. Frankly, I wouldn’t have known they were there had I not read the specs. Additionally, and this probably can be attributed to my Pioneer receiver or an HDMI bug, you cannot listen to the set’s speakers and your externals at the same time.

The touch-remote is a nice addition, but responsiveness and fine movement leave a little to be desired. It’s not a laptop/ipad… er, pad. I’ve got an android smart phone that quickly synched with the VT50 and functions better during internet browsing. Media transfer from the TV to the phone was a button click away, however, going the other way around has escaped me for the moment. Attempts to “flick” a pic or .mov from my phone all end in a triangle inset with an “!” on the TV. There’s probably a work around, but I’m a little disappointed it didn’t work out of the box.

On the disappointment front, I feel obligated to express mine at the lack of 3D glasses included at purchase. I knew that going in, but never the less, it still stings not to have the ability to test such a significant function of the VT50. At around $3,800 I think I’ve earned at least one pair. Additionally, don’t let some idiot at your local big-box store attempt to sell you last years glasses (not that this happened to me, even though it did). The VT30 & VT50 are incompatible.

Finally, I live in Colorado and my front door opens at 6,170 feet-ish. My previous plasma was built in 2003 and did not like this altitude. It ran hot and buzzed incessantly. 15-min of use and you can feel the heat escaping the top of the VT50’s rear vents with a wave of your hand. It doesn’t heat my living room after being on for an hour or buzz at all like my previous set, but I’ll be sure to update this review if anything changes. Panasonic’s own tech support sent me an email before I purchased it, ensuring me the all their plasmas were rated to 8,000ft, and a local specialist told me that I’d be safe up to 11,000ft.

To be clear: I took a star off my review due to the lack of included glasses at this price. It’s like buying a pick-up truck and being told that the lever/toggle switch for your included 4-wheel drive is an extra. Bad marketing Panasonic, bad. Other than that, and the odd Android functionality, I cannot recommend this Plasma any more than if I were to post a picture of me hugging it. The P65VT50 is truly fantastic. While I cannot speak for a comparison between this set an a comparable LED, I would figure the LED to be brighter. But if you do most of your TV watching at night, as I do, I’d stick with the Plasma.

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Still the Best Plasma, May 6, 2012

This is essentially the best Plasma TV Period for last year updated for the year 2012. Panasonic has taken the same model the “VT30” and made it better and faster largely improving the smartTV aspect.

Upgrades over “VT30”:
Touch pad controller. This is obviously designed to combat LGs motion remove (like a Wii controller) and Samsung voice controls. Out of all of these I dislike Panasonic the most. Unless you love laptop mouses, you probably will too.
Web-browser. This is not were it needs to be as far as usability, but they are definitely going in the right direction. I still find that I use my computer for web browsing as it performs more and does it quicker. Also along the same lines though the VT50 now has built in WiFi which I prefer over the wasted external connection of last year.
The new color filters and processing. The color and black and whites on the VT30 were already to die for, this series does it even better. In a time when TV are slowly becoming computers, the VT50 has endless software/hardware to help fine tune all your images to crystal clear quality. The blacks somehow get blacker than black, the white are so clean, and it works well in low or high ambient lighting. The sound is even great for a pencil thin TV.
It makes YouTube videos smoother. It make splits 24p frames to make the transition of imagines cleaner. It does everything better.
The VT30 is by no means a bad TV. It is still a great TV and definitely worth buying. The VT50 is just the younger brother that came along and broke all of VT30 records.

My positives on this TV are almost everything.

The cons:
The touch pad controller. It takes the worst part of a lap top and brings it to your home TV.
The price obviously is hard to take down.
The web-browsing and smartTV is getting better, but they still operate slower and less adequate then they should be. Maybe another year or two and this technology will be refined.

*Update: 5/9/12:
I will say that I was too negative of the touch pad remote. Although I still stand by the statement that it was not the best TV remote, It does make web browser much more familar and operate smoother than a traditional remote.
I also have now played a little bit of Call of Duty on the PS3 on this TV, and let me say it performs fast and beautiful. Did a little research and found out that this TV has 1080 resolution in motion which is why it looks so much cleaner than any TV I have ever seen.
I never commented on the sound before because I instantly hooked up surround sound without a second thought. The built in sound is to weak for a TV of this size as the TV will fill the room with picture but not with sound.

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Struggle, Pain, and Joy, May 18, 2012

This review is for the 60″ model.

First Impressions
—————–
The box is *huge*. The TV is *thin*. Not even an inch at the edge, and maybe just over in the center. The menus are pretty straightforward. (I don’t care too much about the 3D or Smart features of this TV at the moment, and don’t have much frame of reference for how to judge modern 3D, so I can’t really review these aspects.) The screen doesn’t seem too glossy, but it apparently works very well as a mirror because I can see a negative image of my kitchen when it’s off.

Struggle
——–
One extremely annoying “feature” of these TVs that I’ve found out after purchase is the “CE Dimming” feature. This is not the “ECO Dimming” or anything you can control; It’s hard-coded into the certain picture modes (Standard and Native, at least). This feature is something that will reduce the backlighting when there is mostly black on the screen. (For example, if there is 100% brightness white text on a pure black screen, it would actually display at a fraction of that intensity due to the backlight dimming). I’ve read that this is to reduce the appearance of light bleeding in from the edges, since it’s edge-lit. This “feature” annoys me significantly, particularly because I am not allowed to control it. After searching around I found out this is called “CE Dimming” and you can hack it by going into the service menu (you can find the instructions online yourself), however messing with it apparently voids the warranty. The only picture mode I found that doesn’t use this is “Movie” mode. But, movie mode looks terrible with its default settings.

After 3 days of struggle, experimentation, and research, I’ve found settings that actually give me a picture I can call “good” or better. I’m not an expert, but I’m technical and pretty picky. So, because I have found no calibration settings for this series of TVs yet, I’m going to provide the ones I am using, if only to prevent any of you from having to obsess over this for hours and hours. I’ll offer a little bit of explanation as to why I’m setting it the way I am. I got some guidance and expertise from a known site, but as of right now they do not have professionally calibrated settings. What I did is by eye only.

Settings
——–

Picture Mode: Movie
Backlight: 15
Contrast: 100
Brightness: 46
Sharpness: 10
Color: 50
Tint: 50/50

Dynamic Contrast: Off
Black Tone: Off
Flesh Tone: 0
RGB Off: Auto
Color Space: Auto
White Balance: 25 for all
10p White Balance (R, G, B): ON
– Interval 1: -8, -7, -7
– Interval 2: -10, -3, 2
– Interval 3: -9, -2, 6
– Interval 4: -9, -1, 8
– Interval 5: -10, 1, 10
– Interval 6: -6, 3, 10
– Interval 7: -9, 5, 10
– Interval 8: -1, 5, 8
– Interval 9: -5, 1, 6
– Interval 10: 0, 2, 0
Gamma: 0

Color Tone: Warm2
Digital Noise Filter: Off
MPEG Noise Filter: Off
HDMI Black Level: LOW
Film Mode: Auto2
Auto Motion Plus: Clear
LED Motion Plus: On

Comments on the Settings
————————
Movie mode is the only mode I found that doesn’t use “CE Dimming”, which is a huge annoyance to me. (I’d rather see edge-lighting, easily. Not sure why I can’t control that, Samsung.) Backlight, brightness, and color are kind of like salt and pepper: Use to personal taste in your environment.

A note about almost all the other settings: I like an eye-popping, colorful picture as much as the next guy, but I don’t like it at the expense of information loss. From my own experimentation (in Standard and Native modes), all the Dynamic Contrast and Black Tone settings did was flatten out the low end of the blacks. Dark scenes look like “paint by number” with all kinds of banding and digital multiplication/division. Lame, worthless settings if that is the effect, and a problem in general with “digital” stuff.

Standard white balance isn’t fine-grained enough to make the adjustments to any of the picture modes that are necessary, in my opinion. I messed with it for a long time, so I know. 🙂 The only way to get actual, fine-grained color control is to use the 10p White Balance settings. Now, I only know this from messing around with it, but what this does is allow you to control the individual colors R, G, and B as 10 different intensities, from black to white. So, Interval 1 is the darkest reds, greens, and blues (close to black), and Interval 10 is the brightest R, G, and B, close to white. If you use “Expert Pattern 1” you can see how this works. Short summary?: Red is WAY over-represented and blue is WAY under-represented when everything is set at 0. Everything looked neon until I calibrated this, particularly the reds, and greens to some extent. (Maybe they…

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Second Samsung TV, April 16, 2012

After purchasing a Samsung UN55D7000 about 6 months ago (2011 model) which I was very happy with, I needed a new TV for my bedroom and this model was the perfect size and it had many of the same features.

This TV is the 2012 model and is still fairly new, they are still working out the bugs with the smartTV side for the 2012 models at Samsung. I noticed that this TV does not have the HBO2GO app yet and I read how it is because it is a 2012 and the app has to be changed.

Also the Browser is not working, this could be an issue with just my tv but I tested it and it would not connect.

I compared this TV next to the D7000 and it was exactly the same but it did not have the “spotlighting” that occurs on the 2011 models. The blacks seem much blacker also.

I have not tested the 3D part, one good this is that this model comes with 2 pairs of glasses, they are the ones with batteries you have to replace and they do not recharge but I did not buy it for the 3d part.

I tested the Pandora app and it worked the same as other my other TV. The entire Samsung model line up seems to be ahead of the curve and quality seems to be great. The tv is very thin and crystal clear. The built in speakers sound good.

Pros
– Clear Picture and good colors
– Samsung smartTV – huge fan of how it works and the ease of use

Cons

– Browser is not working and some apps are not ready for the 2012 line up (yet, no worries they will get them working)

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Samsung UN60ES6500, April 26, 2012

By 

Benny Hugo (Los Angeles, CA) –

  

I just received the TV yesterday at noon time and here are my initial impressions on it (an update will follow in 2 weeks)…

Please keep in mind I previously owned a Samsung UN52A650, UN46D6000, UN55D6000 and now on my 4th Samsung unit UN60ES6500, all purchased through Amazon.com

HARDWARE SPECS
————–
Yes, the ES6500 models do come with only 3 HDMI inputs. I don’t know why people are rating the TV low because of this (downgrade) feature. Having previously owned the UN55D6000, which had 4 HDMI inputs, I never made use of all 4 HDMI ports anyhow because I do own an Onkyo 607 receiver with a built in 5 HDMI switcher.

Here is how I use the HDMI labeled ports:
1) HDMI/DVI (recommended for PC use) – connected to my HTPC computer, very sharp clear text in 1920×1080 resolution with Windows 7
2) HDMI 2 – connected directly to Sony 3D BX58 BLU RAY player (since my Onkyo 607 does not support 3D, but planning on buying Onkyo 616 through Amazon). Amazing picture quality. Be sure to use a high speed (10.2gbps) HDMI cable to playback 3D content.
3) HDMI 3 – connected to Onkyo 607 receiver (cable box, Asus Oplay media player, Xbox 360, PS3)

The TOSLINK (optical output on TV) however does not pass through HD-MASTER, TRUHD, or any other high fidelity sound other than Dolby Digital and PCM. The only way to achieve this is to connect your blu ray player through your surround sound receiver.

The speakers sound OK, but only use them when watching conventional TV programming. Surround sound is used mostly especially during movies and sporting events.

PICTURE QUALITY
—————
Default settings set the contrast level at ’14’ which is too low for my taste. I did some calibration to match my UN55D6000 set and found the UN60ES6500 to be a tad bit dimmer than the UN55D6000, maybe because of the new semi-gloss finish on the screen. Again, I will come back in two weeks to update this section after I have found the perfect settings for each of the 3 HDMI inputs, which can be configured independently.

Now for the 3D part… I don’t have an actual 3D blu ray movie just yet, and will update in 2 weeks when I do watch one. However, I was able to view 1920×1080 24p/30p demos on my Sony 3D blu ray player and watched various content including music videos, sports, and PS3 games. I’ve seen plenty of store demos on 3D, and after playing around with the UN60ES6500 3D features, I must tell you that 3D has come a long way especially on this unit. The UN60ES6500 3D feature is simply mind blowing!! You may have seen 3D, where it feels like the 3D only goes ‘into the TV’ and not protrude out towards you. The UN60ES6500 3D feature DOES COME OUT at you, and with great depth! I’ve seen some LG models that their 3D content goes ‘out of the TV’, but let me tell you the demos I’ve watched last night REALLY came out!! I’m very amazed Samsung, job well done here! Even the 2D->3D worked impressively well, but again not as good as REAL3D video footage.

Again, I will come back and update this in 2 weeks from 4/26/2012. Hope this helped some of you in rethinking about buying the UN60ES6500. Thanks!

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