I was, frankly staggered to see that the Panasonic TX L32 X10B, 42 inch screen, LCD television set has garnered two five star reviews from previous dooyoo reviewers.

My parents bought this TV set in early 2010, and I've been unfortunate enough to have a lot of experience watching / using it when I've been visiting them. My dad's eyesight isn't as great as it used to be, and they like a big-screen telly these days - though they've have always had a bit of a penchant for extremely large, room-dominating televisions if the ones we had during my childhood were anything to go by. So this is just another in a long line of gigantic telly sets they've owned, really - but with the added advantage that, when they come replace it with an even bigger telly in a year or so - because it's flat-screen, they won't have the almighty headache of being elderley and trying to dispose of a gigantic, blocky cathode-ray-old-style telly that weighs ten-tonnes and they're not nearly able to lift, any more.

The Panasonic set has built-in Freeview, so there's no need for a separate Freeview receiver - although my folks have one of those very useful hard-disc recorders for Freeview, so they tend to watch it through that.

The TV is very thin in profile - only about three inches, and this, combined with its immense size as a fairly flat object means that if it didn't have some weight to it, it would probably end up being knocked off the telly table you've put it on (assuming it's not wall-mounted; you can of course buy a support so you can wall-mount it) whenever anyone went past it. The TV does however weigh 13kg, much of which I suspect is probably artificially heavy ballast. The stand it comes with is easily wide enough to support it (although it looks slightly too small, aesthetically, to me) . The telly comes with its own remote control of course, but is unusually slow to switch on - after you press the 'on' button (and you seem to have to hold this down for it to switch on) there's a noticeable, several second delay before anything happens to the set - a surprisingly long wait that inevitably makes you wonder if you've really turned the TV on or not. This is admittedly a small point, just one of those minor annoyances that would make everyday life just that little bit better for everyone if it could be dispensed with.

The speakers for the telly are one on each side of the main screen and seem to work quite adequately.
As with other digital TVs I've seen - and I spent some time shopping for one of my own not long ago - these sets have an annoying idiosyncrasy that reveals itself especially when the TV picture they're displaying shows any large areas of unchanging darkness (such as the background in a night scene). When this happens, something happens to the screen that makes you see little 'flocks' of squarish pixels flickering on and off in various shades of dark colours in front of the dark areas. If the isn't any movement or change in the picture in the darkened area, this can go on for several seconds at a time, and I find the effect quite distracting. The screen resolution doesn't seem to be great in that the flickering, squarish pixels you see appearing over the large dark / blank areas seem relatively large - maybe half a cm or more square, and the picture in general isn't what I'd call especially 'sharp' during everyday TV viewing. The exception to this is when you're watching one of the terrestrial TV channels that's being broadcast in high-definition through the built-in Freeview. In that case the picture is as sharp and clear as anything, but of course my folks don't usually use the built-in Freeview that came with the set, as they watch Freeview through their Freeview recorder. In any case at the moment, it's only a couple of the BBC stations and I think the main version of ITV that're being sent out like this.

While I thought this TV was adequate - but certainly nothing special - I should probably mention that if you look eg. at amazon.co.uk, the people reviewing it there for some reason all think very highly of it. I can only explain this apparent contradiction to myself by concluding that if you've spent well over £500 on a telly, you probably end up in an 'Emperor's New Clothes' sort of mindset wherein you somehow manage to delude yourself that it's the best thing ever, even if, in actuality, it's a bit of a lemon.

A big set like this will currently cost you about the £500 to £600 mark from eg. amazon.co.uk, where the product spec for it is as follows:

Wide viewing angle with IPS alpha panel
50,000:1 contrast with intelligent scene controller
Smart networking with VIERA link
VIERA image viewer (AVCHD/JPEG)
V-Audio surround

It's compatible with DVD players, Freeview boxes, and you can connect you games console / computer into the back of it etc. etc. etc. via the following connection ports it has in the back of it:

x2 SCART connectors
x3 HDMI slots (two at the back, one at the side)
x1 PC slot