Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good Plasma
Comment: I bought this 2 weeks ago, noticed a faint buzzing sound that drove me crazy. Apparently most plasma's do this.
But if you change the color setting from vivid to standard, it goes away. But when there are scenes with lots of white, you can hear it.
Otherwise it's okay, my 32" vizio lcd can pickup HD from my analog cable, don't ask me how but my panasonic that costs twice as much can't.
But it's a good price for the size, my other choice would have been the vizio 50".
Update: I've had this for 8 months now, the background noise due to the boards got lounder, and loud enough you can hear it in the background from 15 feet away. Over time it got worse with louder buzzing sounds espeicaly w/ white background video. So I called Panasonic conceirge service and after they replaced the 3 main boards, it's very very quiet.
So if yours is making noise it's probably the SC board on the left side of the back of the TV, it has huge capacitor and inductors, chokes' that vibrate alot.
Once these were replaces with new boards, I don't hear any sounds from where I sit.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent plasma good price
Comment: great quality for price. My only complaint is remote cannot be programmed to use other devices.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I must have gotten a lemon.
Comment: Wow, was I jazzed about getting this TV. I did my research for months, plasma, LCD, DLP etc, had my pennies saved up and finally took the plunge.
Got the unit at a local big box electronics store, you know the one with the yellow sign.
I got great service even though it took me over an hour to decide on the Panasonic, over the Samsung, LG and Sony. I really like Sony, and think highly of their products. My upconvert DVD player is a Sony as is my surround sound system. But on a leap of faith and in part due to the overwhelming glowing reviews on the Panasonic, I decided to "go pan" for the first time in my life.
I have to say the picture, viewing angle and black discrimination is the best on a plasma. I used the settings that I found posted by a fellow Amazoner below and fired her up. (I was very paranoid about burn in)
After week one I did notice 'image retention" of the TNT symbol, during a NASCAR race. Luckly it faded away @ 36 hours later.
Then after having the TV for my second week, I had a 2-3 inch band of red from top to bottom of the screen. One day later a 2-3 inch band of blue was adjacent to the red, again from top to bottom.
I called customer service, and they told me there was something obviously wrong with the TV.
So I retunred it. I ended up going back to Sony, getting a 55 inch DKF-55E2000, for almost a $1000 less than the 50 inch plasma, and could not be happier. The viewing angles are perfect in our family room, and this is the ultimate TV for watching sporting events.
I agree that rear projections do not handle the blacks as well as plasma. My Sony is good, but the Pan. was great in that regard.
However, I feel plasma TVs are a little bit like a Porsche. They are great when they run, but are just a bit finicky.
For me, I just want to watch my sports with out worrying about burn in, etc. Granted I will need to keep an extra XL2400 bulb on hand :-)
I wish the plasma would have worked out for me, but it didn't. I loved the TV while is was perfect for those first 5 days, but I could not plop down that much $$$$ again for a TV that alread went kaput on me once.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent TV..you can't go wrong with this one!
Comment: Great picture. Easy set-up. Would buy through Amazon again. Also great price. All the connections on the rear of TV that you would need.
Totally satisfied with this TV Go for the 50 unless you can afford bigger. Make sure you have the room.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't See All the Hype in "Calibration"
Comment: I've read a number of posts in this space (and other web sites) regarding the need to "calibrate" the picture on Panasonic and other plasma TVs after taking them out of the box.
Frankly, I like the look of the "Vivid" setting Panasonic defaults to and I can always adjust the other settings (brightness, sharpness, etc.) to my liking. My new TV is in a large (20' x 30') game room (pool table, dart board, bar stools and tables, etc.) which is very well lit during the day. As a result, I feel the Vivid setting gives me the best quality and most consistent and brightest picture than any of the other settings recommended in these posts.
Because our new Panasonic plasma is not our primary HDTV (we have a 60" Hitachi Ultravision LCD in our great room), we don't expect to be putting mega-hours of watching into the Panasonic like we do with our Hitachi.
Are there any other reasons to tone down the Vivid settings ? Will the TV "burn out" quicker and not last as long as normal or something ?
The TV picture quality and the look of the TV itself is great. We made the right choice, for sure.
Summary: Good Plasma
Comment: I bought this 2 weeks ago, noticed a faint buzzing sound that drove me crazy. Apparently most plasma's do this.
But if you change the color setting from vivid to standard, it goes away. But when there are scenes with lots of white, you can hear it.
Otherwise it's okay, my 32" vizio lcd can pickup HD from my analog cable, don't ask me how but my panasonic that costs twice as much can't.
But it's a good price for the size, my other choice would have been the vizio 50".
Update: I've had this for 8 months now, the background noise due to the boards got lounder, and loud enough you can hear it in the background from 15 feet away. Over time it got worse with louder buzzing sounds espeicaly w/ white background video. So I called Panasonic conceirge service and after they replaced the 3 main boards, it's very very quiet.
So if yours is making noise it's probably the SC board on the left side of the back of the TV, it has huge capacitor and inductors, chokes' that vibrate alot.
Once these were replaces with new boards, I don't hear any sounds from where I sit.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent plasma good price
Comment: great quality for price. My only complaint is remote cannot be programmed to use other devices.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I must have gotten a lemon.
Comment: Wow, was I jazzed about getting this TV. I did my research for months, plasma, LCD, DLP etc, had my pennies saved up and finally took the plunge.
Got the unit at a local big box electronics store, you know the one with the yellow sign.
I got great service even though it took me over an hour to decide on the Panasonic, over the Samsung, LG and Sony. I really like Sony, and think highly of their products. My upconvert DVD player is a Sony as is my surround sound system. But on a leap of faith and in part due to the overwhelming glowing reviews on the Panasonic, I decided to "go pan" for the first time in my life.
I have to say the picture, viewing angle and black discrimination is the best on a plasma. I used the settings that I found posted by a fellow Amazoner below and fired her up. (I was very paranoid about burn in)
After week one I did notice 'image retention" of the TNT symbol, during a NASCAR race. Luckly it faded away @ 36 hours later.
Then after having the TV for my second week, I had a 2-3 inch band of red from top to bottom of the screen. One day later a 2-3 inch band of blue was adjacent to the red, again from top to bottom.
I called customer service, and they told me there was something obviously wrong with the TV.
So I retunred it. I ended up going back to Sony, getting a 55 inch DKF-55E2000, for almost a $1000 less than the 50 inch plasma, and could not be happier. The viewing angles are perfect in our family room, and this is the ultimate TV for watching sporting events.
I agree that rear projections do not handle the blacks as well as plasma. My Sony is good, but the Pan. was great in that regard.
However, I feel plasma TVs are a little bit like a Porsche. They are great when they run, but are just a bit finicky.
For me, I just want to watch my sports with out worrying about burn in, etc. Granted I will need to keep an extra XL2400 bulb on hand :-)
I wish the plasma would have worked out for me, but it didn't. I loved the TV while is was perfect for those first 5 days, but I could not plop down that much $$$$ again for a TV that alread went kaput on me once.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent TV..you can't go wrong with this one!
Comment: Great picture. Easy set-up. Would buy through Amazon again. Also great price. All the connections on the rear of TV that you would need.
Totally satisfied with this TV Go for the 50 unless you can afford bigger. Make sure you have the room.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't See All the Hype in "Calibration"
Comment: I've read a number of posts in this space (and other web sites) regarding the need to "calibrate" the picture on Panasonic and other plasma TVs after taking them out of the box.
Frankly, I like the look of the "Vivid" setting Panasonic defaults to and I can always adjust the other settings (brightness, sharpness, etc.) to my liking. My new TV is in a large (20' x 30') game room (pool table, dart board, bar stools and tables, etc.) which is very well lit during the day. As a result, I feel the Vivid setting gives me the best quality and most consistent and brightest picture than any of the other settings recommended in these posts.
Because our new Panasonic plasma is not our primary HDTV (we have a 60" Hitachi Ultravision LCD in our great room), we don't expect to be putting mega-hours of watching into the Panasonic like we do with our Hitachi.
Are there any other reasons to tone down the Vivid settings ? Will the TV "burn out" quicker and not last as long as normal or something ?
The TV picture quality and the look of the TV itself is great. We made the right choice, for sure.