I really didn't want to buy a Panasonic (Panasonic TX-37LZD80)

Member Name: AndrewPo

Product:	Panasonic TX-37LZD80
Date:	16/01/09 (514 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent picture quality from Blu-Ray

Disadvantages: Freeview picture quality looks a bit unnatural

After much procrastination and research, I finally got round to buying a new telly: a Panasonic TX-37LZD80. For the last five years I have been using home-cinema projectors and a 72" fold-away screen, rather than having a big ugly TV in the lounge. My latest Panasonic projector died after just over a year (see separate review) and Panasonic customer services were hopeless so I vowed never to buy anything made by Panasonic ever again. I intended to buy a 1080p projector, but I couldn't find anything suitable for my large lounge (most have a very narrow range of zoom lens, so you are restricted about where they can be located), so I reluctantly looked at smaller normal televisions instead, with the intention of having it far closer to the sofas than the big screen.

Theoretically a plasma or LCD TV should be better than a projector in terms of most measurable criteria: contrast ratio (in normal lighting conditions); sharpness; noise; reliability; running costs etc. but to get the home-cinema effect it is difficult to beat a projector, but we were going to have to compromise.

Plasma or LCD?

The next decision was whether to buy a plasma or LCD TV? When the technologies were quite new the viewing angles for plasma used to be better and LCD were more reliable and used less power, but had a tendency to leave a blur behind fast moving pictures. There is little distinction between them now, but the big deciding factor for me was that there are very few (if any?) 37" plasmas available with 1080p (Full High-definition resolution) After staring at many TVs from various angles in High-Street shops, several conversations with ignorant sales staff and much research on the internet I decided it had to be a Panasonic (despite my pledge) and the basic model is the TX-37LZD80. This has all the features I need without the extra cost of extras like Freesat receiver or a 100Hz screen (which reduces flicker on very large screens) and works very well with my existing surround system.

Picture Quality

The screen resolution is "Full HD", the highest currently available for TV: 1080 lines, progressively scanned, which is twice the amount of data needed for 720p (720 lines progressive) or 1080i (interlaced) screens, five times as much as 480p (DVD) and ten times as much as 480i (old fashioned wide-screen format) It is therefore far better with bigger screens or close-up. In the shops the Panasonic did appear to be better or at least as good as everything else on display, although all Full HD screens seem to give excellent results with a 1080p source (e.g. blu-ray disc) Contrast is very good and the sharpness and resolution seems far better than my 720p ("HD ready") projector. The colours a far more vibrant than the projector and even my old Sony CRT TV although perhaps a little unnaturally so, but of course these can be turned down. There doesn't appear to be any problem with fast moving images, unlike early large LCD displays and I really can't fault the picture quality with a high-quality 1080p source. Unfortunately I frequently watch TV programmes on Freeview rather than blu-ray or any other HD source and this was a little disappointing in comparison. This is of course to be expected because Freeview only outputs 480 lines and the TV has to upscale the input to create all of that missing data. This is actually quite complicated and it does do a good job in many situations, with a good clean source, but with a poor source (e.g. I tested with a DVD of Not The Nine O'clock News recorded for TV about 25 years ago) the generated pixels are quite apparent i.e. "digital artifacts" sometimes appear and some images can look rather artificial and unnatural. The built-in Freeview tuner is slightly better than my Freeview PVR connected by RGB scart cable and both are better than the built-in analogue tuner. All are tolerable, but not a significant improvement over lower-resolution televisions. Good DVDs give a good clear result and cartoons seem to be particularly good as the upscaling algorithms have nice clean sharp lines and flat colours to work on, although still not as good as blu-ray.

Build Quality

This TV seems very well built and nicely finished with a smooth shiny almost piano-black finish on the front. It sits on a small low stand with 15 degrees of swivel for fine adjustment; a very simple uncluttered design.

Sound Quality

I didn't bother listening to this TV before buying it, nor compare it with the competition because I have a good home cinema surround-sound system and five feet tall electrostatic speakers, but for normal TV I won't usually turn the full system on because the built in stereo speakers are really rather good. They lack bass, but are clear and detailed with more than enough power. For a good home cinema experience you will need more speakers for a proper surround-sound affect because the "Simulated Surround Sound" option from the two built-in speakers is not particularly impressive.

Setup

The set up is really easy: Simply plug it into the mains, and a coaxial aerial cable into the back and turn it on and the auto-setup tunes the digital and analogue tuners into all available channels. Then you are ready to watch TV. The remote control is large, but quite simple with all of the usual controls and a navigator button to move around the menus and TV guide both of which can be opened with appropriately named buttons. The guide lists all programmes currently on and in the near futures and is easy to read and navigate. If you can find anything worth watching in the huge number of channels click OK.

Specification

Screen size: 37" 16:9 ratio widescreen
HDTV: 1080p (1920 x 1080 progressively scanned) frequency 50 Hz
Nicam Stereo speaks (20 Watts) and analogue stereo outputs sockets and digital audio out
Tuner: Analogue and digital (i.e. Freeview) built-in
HDMI inputs: 3
RGB input
Scart sockets: 2
Svideo and composite inputs x 1
PC input x 1
1-year guarantee

Conclusion

This is an excellent, well-made Full HD TV. The only picture quality limitations are those inherent in the input formats I am using. To get full benefit from the TV you will need to use a good quality, preferably Full HD source. I paid £599 from Empire Direct although it was also available from Currys Digital for £729.

Also published on www.ciao.co.uk under the same name and on Squidoo:

http://www.squidoo.com/Panasonic-tx-37lzd80

Summary: One of the best available

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