Panasonic TH-42PZ81 first impressions

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I ordered the PZ81 about a week ago from a local retailer,
and picked it up on Friday, complete with a stamped card for the free Panasonic
5 year warranty.

My first impressions were about the packaging, which merits
a mention as it’s quite impressive. Four plastic carry handles can be
unclipped, and the whole of the top of the box lifts off. The stand can then be
lifted out, the uprights screwed in, and the TV lowered on top. Nice bit of
thinking there from Panasonic.

The second impression was the physical appearance; sleek
& subtle and pretty good build quality (no sign of the overlong/over
tightened screws issue that some people have noted). The buttons on the remote
feel a little cheap, but otherwise it’s a pretty positive result.

I ordered the PZ81 on the back of spending quite a bit of
time testing the PZ85, and because reviews indicated the 81 was basically the
same plus Freesat. Unfortunately, there is one layout change that’s really bad
- on the PZ85, the third HDMI, and composite/SVIDEO connectors are on the rear
of the TV (near the side). On the PZ81, they’re under a flap on the front of
the TV, which really annoys me. Unless you want to plug something in temporarily,
these connectors are rendered useless, as you’d have ugly cables hanging from
the front of the TV. It’s a major design flaw IMHO, and a big step back from
the PZ85.

Onto use…

Scanning for analogue and Freeview channels was easy and
quick (I don’t have a dish yet for Freesat). Fan noise is pretty low, and is
only noticeable with the sound muted.

Analogue TV pictures are pretty ropey, but then it’ll never
get used that way.

Freeview pictures are a big disappointment. I know it’s said
that flat panels don’t do SD as well as CRTs, but I was hoping it would get a
little closer to my geriatric 32” Sony. Initially, it reminded me of old NTSC video -
overblown skin tones, soft fuzzy pictures... and with the added unpleasantness
of MPEG artefacts.

After a bit of playing with the settings, and running a THX
optimiser DVD, the picture is a bit better, but it’s hard to get natural skin
tones without the rest of the picture looking washed out. Motion is OK, but the
image is still soft and muddy.

Some broadcasts don’t look too bad (Wimbledon
coverage) but everything looks very flat and lacking in depth. I’ve seen CRTs
that looked much more ‘real’ than my Sony, but the plasma is way behind either.

DVD pictures over SCART are OK, but definitely not as good
as the CRT. However, my player (an ageing Denon DVD-A11) has a DVI-D output, so
I’m planning on getting a DVI to HDMI cable in the hope that the Denon’s own
upscaling will do a better job than the TV.

Freeview pictures over SCART from my Topfield PVR are pretty
close to the built in picture, if showing a few more artifacts (the internal tuner’s
electronics presumably processing the Freeview MPEG steams a little better for
the display).

A PS2 over component looks OK, though for some reason, my
PS2 RGB SCART cable results in a green image. This SCART lead worked fine on
the Sony, so anyone that’s got any ideas what’s wrong, please shout!

I bought the flat screen due to re-laying out my living
room, which meant the CRT was now too deep to be used. If you’re mainly going
to be watching broadcast SD, and don’t need the shallow depth of a flat panel,
my advice would be to stick with a CRT, until HD broadcasts become much more
widespread.

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to set up a PC to play
Bluray discs, and to get a dish installed for Freesat. Given the positive
reception for the Panasonic plasmas, I’m confident it should look good for HD,
but at the moment it’s certainly not able to show its talents.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, i took delivery of my '81 on saturday and quite frankly i'm over the moon with it! I ordered it along with their blu ray player and that is just phenomenal. Ive got freeview on at the monent and blacks , blues are much more natural than my 21 inch CRT i used to have previously.I've not optimised it yet, as panasonic advised me to wait about a month(or 500 hours or so) to run in and let the plasmas settle down, and to optimise it when i watch tv the most (i.e in the evening)I think a lot of what your commenting on is simply that-lack of run-in period. Give it time and I think youll be as impressed as I am!;-)

 

[professorhat]

sploo:Freeview pictures over SCART from my Topfield PVR are pretty close to the built in picture, if showing a few more artifacts (the internal tuner's electronics presumably processing the Freeview MPEG steams a little better for the display).
Are you using the Topfield TF5800? When I initially got my Panasonic (an older model), and hooked this up via RGB Scart, I too felt the internal tuner was better. However, a bit later, I upgraded the Scart cable I used to one of the QED AV41 RGB Scart cables and it was like a revelation, improving the picture on the Toppy to such a degree that, once I'd run the optimiser on it, it now looks better than the internal tuner. If you're still using an old Scart cable, then I'd recommend the upgrade, it really is worth it.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Clive: Hopefully things will get a little better with running in. However, as a bloke with a scientific background (and an interest in this kind of thing) I'm also very aware of the fallibility of human perception. Basically, things often look/sound better over time because you get used to it and/or forget what the 'other' thing looked like.

Knowing that of course doesn't stop me wanting to 'fool' myself, as if I fired up the CRT again I suspect I'd see the difference

. Hopefully in time I'll grow to accept it, and, obviously, more and more broadcast HD will become available, so it'll be less of a problem.

'Prof': It is indeed a Toppy 5800. The SCART is a well shielded fully wired RGB job, so I doubt there'd be a huge improvement with another bundle of copper. In any event, the artifacts I'm seeing are mainly MPEG macro block issues, which the larger size/sharper display on the plasma shows up.

I suspect the built in tuner will have some firmware and hardware to smooth out some of these issues (as it's going to be a completely digital path, and the algorithms could be tuned specifically for that panel).

On the subject of cables however, I got hold of a DVI to HDMI cable and used the Denon's own scaler (to go to 1080i), rather than sending it to the TV via SCART. The difference is staggering. I guess it's all down to the fact that the Denon will have all the access to the MPEG stream coming from the DVD, and can perform processing as required on a macro block basis, rather than sending an SD analogue image over SCART (which of course has none of the MPEG info) and letting the TV digitise and process it.

No great change to colour or motion as far as I could see, but the artifacts visible were massively reduced.

I did also work out why the PS2 was outputting a green screen, and fortunately, it was 'user error'. I'd previously used it over component, and you have to change a setting to tell it to output RGB. The result is as acceptable as you could expect from an aging console.

I've just bought the bits to setup a HTPC, so hopefully this weekend I'll get it going, and attached to the TV via HDMI. More updates once it's going...