Fantastic piece of TV for a great price (Panasonic TH-37PX80)

Member Name: houndour

Product:	Panasonic TH-37PX80
Date:	14/01/09 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent viewing in SD

Disadvantages: Not full HD

My criteria for a TV were:
* 32 or 37 inch
* Good picture in SD (normal TV, ie freeview)
* I didn't need a full HD TV as I do not own anything HD and am unlikely to get any HD hardware in years.
* TV picture needed to be good from 6 - 8 feet away

My biggest annoyance with flat screen TVs are the grainy pixelated edges you get on the picture. This drives me absolutely nuts. When asking staff/colleagues about this I was told it's to do with the transmission from the TV channel and the size/distance away from the TV. I'm still not 100% convinced by this though.

My initial research for a new television started with a trip to Comet. I wrote down all the TVs that I liked the look of and then googled them. My initial search did not include the Panasonic Plasma, I had been looking at LCDs. While googling I came across AVForums and it was there that I found the thread on the Panasonic Plasma TH-37PX80. Just from all the positive comments and rave reviews about this TV I made up my mind to buy one!

After convincing my husband that this was the TV to get, I started delving into the world of Plasma TVs looking up the pros and cons.

I'm ashamed to say that I thought they had to be refilled with gas, apparently this is a myth.

I also thought they didn't last very long in terms of years. But from the Panasonic website it says that they last 100,000 hours. My colleagues tell me however that the contrast will go down over years. I've only had my TV 2 months, so I can't comment on this yet, however another colleague of mine has had a Plasma for 3 years and she says it's as good as the day she got it.

Image Retention/Screen Burn
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One thing Plasmas suffer from is image retention. This is where you have a static image on the screen, for example the little E4 logo in the corner, and if its left there for a very long time the image of the logo sort of stays like a shadow.

Image retention is not as bad as it used to be years ago apparently. It's recommended for the first 200 hours of watching your new Plasma to switch the channel over after an hour if you are watching a channel that has a static image.

I've found though that even the channels that do have these logos, they disappear in the adverts, so there's no need to worry.

The one to watch out for is when watching a film that has the black bars top and bottom. I watched a whole movie having forgotten to switch over temporarily half way through and at the end the image (of the black bars) did retain for a minute. But it wasn't permanent. And I did have to look for it :)

Playing computer games
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If you are a hard core gamer then maybe a Plasma won't be for you. I know of people who play all through the night and if it were a game with static images on the screen then I'd be concerned about screen burn in this case.

We have a wii, but we only play for 2 hours max at a time. I've only played Guitar Hero on the TV since we've had it, but the picture is superb.

Anyway, taking all these factors into account I then needed to find the TV to see it in the flesh. I refused to buy a TV without seeing it in action.

We found that House of Fraser stock it (also with a 5 year warranty). We saw it, fell in love, compared it with the LCDs I had been looking at and for the SD channels there was no contest, the Plasma came out on top. We bought it there and then.

Some technical specs
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It has:
* 2 scart sockets
We could have used more as we have no HD items, so we have a wii, ps2, and PVR to plug in. We've got a splitter now.
* 3 HDMI
* PC input
* Component video input
It has more but I'm afraid it's all a bit too technical for me.

It also has an SD Memory card slot, but I've not used this yet as I don't have an SD card :)

Setting up
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Well this was really easy. There's a little bit of assembling require to build the stand and then all you need is a strong husband to lift the TV into the stand and then screw it in place :)

To get going you just turn the TV on and press the AV button to navigate through the scart/hdmi ports to display the appropriate channel.

My general opinion
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I love my TV and do not regret getting a plasma at all.

The blacks are much blacker when I compare it to the LCD we have upstairs where the blacks are surprisingly grey - I hadn't really noticed this before.

As for my biggest bug of the pixelated images, they are there on the poorer channels. I find E4 quite poor and in general the +1 hour channels. But sitting 8 feet back this is bearable. But on most other channels the picture is perfect and crisp and clear :) Am very happy.

Price
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I paid £629, but I wanted to buy it from a shop and have the 5 year warranty that House of Fraser offered. It's available much cheaper online. In comparison to the LCDs this was much cheaper. The only LCDs I were happy with were 32 inch ones (Panasonic and Samsungs) costing around £799 - £999.

Summary: Easy to set up, great to watch (and play games on)