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Date: 2008-11-02 Very good HDTV Pro: I settled on this HDTV after much research. If you want an HDTV that can be used as a monitor, this is a good one because there is a setting for overscan. Overscan is the amount of picture your digital TV will cut off. Then it resizes the image, then displays it. If you have a true 1080p source, you want to eliminate overscan so you are displaying every pixel of input (for actual 1080p Blu-Ray or computer input). The problem is that this setting is buried in the menus, and is not easily accessed. An improvement would be to put this as a button on the remote. You DON'T want this setting activated when watching normal TV because there is garbage at the top and bottom of most TV signals. Having this setting on displays the garbage! Another reason I picked this HDTV was for sports viewing. I'm a sports junkie, and watching 720p input from ESPN or ABC looks great. The TV scales this input very well. I can even zoom in and the 720p signal zoomed looks good. A word on blur: There is no blur on a plasma. LCD screens can make a tiny amount of blur. Great. But when I watch the sports shows I normally watch, the broadcast has a slight amount of blur from camera motion and perhaps poor image processing. The only thing you might want to consider if you're considering this TV is getting the next models up, which are the Panasonic TH-46PZ800 or TH-46PZ800 models. Both will display 24Hz, which is what Blu-Ray movies come in. This is only needed with Blu-Ray - HDTV is in 60Hz. The 24Hz display mode will result in smoother Blu-Ray viewing. If you don't get this, the Blu-Ray player must be set to 60Hz output, and the change from 24Hz to 60Hz can be a bit choppy, and result in "judder" during some panning scenes. Ask a Circuit City or Best Buy employee to show you, and you'll see. Or don't, and you'll probably never ever notice. Also, the sides of the TV are a little larger than I think they need to be. There is a good 2.5" border of "frame" around the picture; I'd prefer 1" or less. Go check it out at a big box store, and see for yourself - this is simply a question of taste. Other models I considered: Sony's 120 Hz LCD 46 inch, Samsung's LCD TVs, Toshiba's 120 Hz 46 inch LCD. All had slight blurs, so I went with plasma. If you're worried about plasma screen burn in, do some research. This TV will shift the picture up and down to avoid that effect, and will also turn OFF if the picture is from the same channel for too long. From what I've read, that almost totally eliminates burn-in issues. Date: 2008-10-21 Excellent tv I had spent many months searching for a tv for my great room. After doing a significant amount of research I decided to go with the 46" Viera TH-46PZ85U. I'm impressed by the overall quality of this product as I have been a fan of Panasonic tv's for a while but the picture on this is amazing. I have mounted it on the wall paired with a polk audio 5.1 home theater setup and I feel as though I'm at the theater. Very deep blacks and watching the NFL on Fios TV is like being at the game. i would recommend this tv to anyone. Date: 2008-10-20 Plasma vs LCD I've owned the Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85U 46" 1080P PLASMA HDTV for a little over a month now and it is awesome.The picture is even better than I expected and is worlds away from the old 32" Sony WEGA CRT television I had been watching for years. You really don't appreciate what you had been missing before the plasma flat screen.Broadcasts in 480i almost make you shy away from watching once you get spoiled by high def. We have only been to see one movie since buying the TV. I'd rather just rent movies at home since I added the Bose 321 system (which is not a must).The TV speaker quality is very good-much better than most, but now it's like a miny theatre at home. Everything on the TV is very user friendly and I have no problems whatsoever with glare, burn-in, or heat that some people claim is associated with a plasma. You can't go wrong with this HDTV. I researched a lot and spend several trips comparing TV picture quality and features.I was leaning toward it or the Samsung LCD. I've seen the picture quality of my freinds Samsung 550 LCD and it's good too, but for the money ....I'll take my plasma.Panasonic claims 100,000 hours before the plasma screen begins to loose half brightness where all the others are rated at 60,000hrs.Amazons white glove service and Panasonic's Viera plasma get an A rating from me. I am very happy with my purchase and will gladly do it again in the future.Overall...very pleased. Date: 2008-10-19 One fine picture Probably the best picture on any television under $8,000. Not overly feature rich but lots of guts. Date: 2008-10-18 Dead pixels - AGAIN I'm a little upset that this set came with some dead pixels. On a green, white, or grey screen - there's a pixel dead center that appears either black or pink depending on the image color. There's another pixel that appears black right of center. If it weren't for this I'd probably have rated 5 stars. 46" is much larger that you'd expect. It's like a movie theater screen in your face. The appearance of the set is very pleasing. The "gray" lip you see on almost all pictures isn't gray at all, it's black. The picture is fabulous, no overscan whatsoever, blah blah blah but that's hard to appreciate when your $1K plus item that arrived just yesterday has dead pixels. Amazon is taking care of me, but I'm not holding my breath for the replacement to have 100% pixels working either. I've done a lot of reading, and from my unscientific results, it appears 50% of these sets suffer from pixel issues. Whether you'll notice is up to you. Want to be worry free? Just watch TV. Want to be disappointed? Pop in an SD card with solid color images and count the dead pixels. Edit: I understand some, or maybe even most of you would find a few dead pixels out of a million acceptable. Maybe I should accept this I don't know. I'm running a "pixel fixer" DVD right now and if the fast color changing images pop these back into life, I'll surely change my review. So far none of the dead pixels have changed, and I've actually spotted some more in addition to that. Instead of racing to make TVs flatter than practically necessary, why not work on quality control? Yikes. Final update: None of the stuck or dead pixels have removed themselves. I am swapping this set out with a new one on Monday. Again, this set would have easily received 5 stars from me if it weren't for this problem. As it stands, my level of satisfaction will remain a "2" -COUNT THIS AS 2 BAD REVIEWS, I've now gone through 2 sets, AND HERE'S REVIEW #2 Yeah, it's me again. I'm 0 for 2. Can you believe this? Yeah, my second one has problems too. Dead pixels, again! Listen to my first review, don't check for dead pixels, you will absolutely be disappointed. I'm now batting .000 for a TV that's brand new to be right. I will probably wait before getting another HDTV. There's no way I want to see the delivery guy AGAIN. Don't want my wife seeing another one go, but hey, $1300 is too much money to get something that's not terrific. My 2005 widescreen, CRT HDTV made by Panasonic has overscan (as do all tubes) but it doesn't have any dead pixels. It also doesn't look out of focus. I swear, although there's no "blooming" on a plasma (as there is on a CRT when turning up contrast) it looks like there's a reflection trapped inside the 2 layers of glass on this plasma. It's very distracting and my first set did not suffer from this problem. The best way to describe it is to say that it appears that there's dust beneath the glass. Even HD text looks blurred. Has my wife and I questioning if we need glasses. If only the first set didn't have dead pixels, it did not exhibit this problem. I'm not blindly just going to buy an LCD, or a Samsung plasma - I'll wait for god knows how long for the quality control to be advanced. Who needs a 12mm thin TV? I'll take no distracting flaws please. Quality control! Anybody home?! PS: This whole X.V. color thing eliminating "banding" (scroll up to the ad) is BS. I see banding that looks exactly like that on 50% of HD commercials.
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