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Date: 2008-09-28 Excellent HDTV After waiting out for quite sometime, finally decided to get a Plasma/LCD TV. Had narrowed down my choice to Panasonic (Plasma) TH-46PZ85U and Samsung (LCD) LN46A650, and decided in favor of the Plasma because of the deep blacks and excellent contrast ratio. The reviews at CNet and Amazon were also very helpful. The TV was promptly delivered in 6 days by Amazon's White Glove delivery service. Initially the delivery team indicated that they only unpack the TV, and couldn't wait while I assembled the pedestal, that comes with it (this is needed to place it on the TV stand). When I asked them to leave the TV in the box, they changed their tone, and waited while I assembled the pedestal and then placed the TV on the TV stand. This hardly too 5 minutes to do. The 46" size turned out to be perfect for the room, as 42" would have been too small and 50" too big. By default the Picture Color is Standard mode, and this looks a bit dull to me, so changed it to Game mode to increase the brightness and it now looks great. HD Channels look excellent. SD channels look okay, not sure if there is anything to tweak to improve them. Had it for 1 month now, and over all very happy with the purchase. Date: 2008-09-25 Great TV, great Amazon shipping! There are many well written reviews for this tv but I'd like to mention Amazon shipping via Ceva in addition to adding a few notes about the set itself. Shipping by Amazon (Ceva) - Awesome! Although the delivery team did not unbox the set they did carry it from the street up two flights of stairs to my apartment. I ordered on a Sunday and 6 days later the truck arrived on a Saturday morning. Tracking info provided details on its journey from the warehouse and they called on Thursday to arrange and confirm a 4 hour window on Saturday. The only complaint I have is that the 4 hour window was 8a-12p. When do you think the truck showed? That's right, 11:58a! Still, shipping for me was free (~$62 savings) so how can I complain, it was still whithin 4 hours right? Other shops charge between $150-$200 for similar service! The Panasonic TH-46PZ85U - I owned a 50" Toshiba CRT-based rear-projection tv for about 6 years before I bought the Panasonic. I never watched much video on LCD or plasma sets before my unit arrived so my first impression of this set was that the colors were all off. Based on other information found online, it seems that it is common for these technologies to skew colors to a far greater degree than CRT sets. Particularly the reds on the Panasonic were oversaturated and overpowered other colors. After some time reading forums I was able to tweak the colors to my satisfaction. Now it looks great! Deep black and balanced hues. Don't hesitate to nab this set because of color issues. The pricier PZ800U has a no-fuss THX setting so if ease of setup is worth a few more c-notes then go ahead and get that model, but the PZ85U won't disappoint as long as you don't mind twiddling the color settings. In fact I took a look at the PZ85 and PZ800 side by side in a shop. With a little work, the PZ85 was adjusted to almost exactly match the look of the THX setting on the PZ800. The very real and significant drawback of this tv is the sound. 2 wimpy speakers provide adequate sound for watching the evening news in stereo but nothing more. Bass is absent (even with the bass "boost") and sound skews to the highs. With such a large and flawless picture it is hard to settle for the tinny music and dialog the Panasonic produces. If the home theatre experience is your endgoal there is no doubt that you will have to buy a separate speaker set to realize the full potential of this beautiful panel. Date: 2008-09-19 excellent!!! Love the TV - color is great. Even before getting digital service it was a vast improvement over old set. Picture is clear and sharp; screen is non-reflective. Just love it! Date: 2008-09-08 Panasonic TH46PZ85U w/pedestal, on a TV stand: Video fabulous. Audio distorts. The stereo pair of down-firing speakers built into this plasma TV may work fine if the TV is wall-mounted, and there is carpeting on the floor between the set and the viewer. But when the set is placed on a television stand like mine is, high frequency treble sounds distort. There are two problems with the speakers. 1) They have a limited frequency range on both ends. (I don't expect much from built-in speakers, but better speakers should come with an expensive plasma set.) 2) These speakers fire downward at about 45 deg. The sound they emit bounces (a) off the pedestal and stand, (b) up to the ceiling, then (c) down to the viewer. Speaker Acoustics 101 teaches that bass sound from a speaker (or woofer) is omnidirectional. Conversely, treble from a speaker (or tweeter) follows a narrow path. Factors 1 and 2 combine to cause clipping in the higher tones of some voices--on some cable, network and HD channels. At the same time, the overall sound quality of speech (music and background music) on other channels comes through with flying colors. Several female voices on CNNHD, for example, sound scratchy or metallic. On CBSHD, half of Katy Couric's speech sounds metallic. It's most noticeable (and aggravating) when i and e sounds roll off the top of her mouth (like they should). This TV speakers' flaws are exposed by making a simple test. While a high-pitched scratchy voice is speaking, place your hands against your head just in front of your ears, palms facing backward. When you do, the scratchiness is minimized and overall speech smoothes out. Based on what I know about acoustics, I doubled a 28" wide terry cloth face towel and placed it on the pedestal and stand, below and forward of the speakers. It worked! The towel absorbed or attenuated enough of the metallic high tones to create more accurate and pleasant sound reproduction. It took three months for me to arrive at the moderately successful fix. Neither Panasonic nor the seller nor the cable guy could make the faulty speakers sound better. Date: 2008-09-05 Better than LCD by far I've owned nothing but LCD's since the CRT days and thought the rear-projection models were pretty good, but found the flat panel versions lacking. After much research and this purchase, I can definitively say that Plasmas just look a lot better.... no screen blur, no pixelation during motion, good contrast and dark blacks - great look with computer display through HDMI. I highly recommend this TV specifically and would urge everyone to take a good look at Plasma and don't assume that LCD is better. I have seen no screen burn in issues at all - even leaving static computer desktop images for hours and hours days on end.
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