http://www.avsforum.com/a...p?p=13503116#post13503116
TH-42PZ85U Initial Review
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I just received my TH-42PZ85U this afternoon and have been testing it out for the last 6 hours or so. I am upgrading from a Westinghouse 42” 1080p LCD. I hope this review is helpful to those thinking about switching from HD LCDs to HD plasmas. First let me list my sources:
Component 1: Comcast HD Cable through a Motorola DCT6412 Phase III (1080i)
Component 2: Nintendo Wii
HDMI 1: PC with Geforce 8800GTS graphics card using DVI-HDMI cable
HDMI 2: Playstation 3 40GB (Mainly for Blu-Ray)
HDMI 3: Xbox 360
The very first thing that impressed me was the contrast. I bought this T.V. online without seeing a demo at the store. The first thing I did was set it to cinema mode as Tom had suggested and brought down the torch-mode settings. I instantly noticed the extra detail in dark scenes. Colors were bright and clearly defined. I never realized how washed out the picture on my LCD was. For some reason I had a SD channel running when I turned the TV on the first time. SD stations looked so much smoother than on my “Westy.” I am a big LOST fan, so I loaded an episode I had saved on my DVR. While the contrast and colors were impressive, the Panny didn’t do much to help the poorly compressed ABC channel that it was recorded off of. Flipping to HD-Theater made all the difference and many other HD stations looked fantastic. In my opinion, the picture on my plasma is very smooth and soft compared to my LCD which was much more sharp. This is not a bad thing at all. Flesh tones look great!
Next I switched over to my Playstation 3 to try out 1080p over blu-ray. Before watching a movie, I wanted to check for dead pixels and put in the break-in DVD. Sure enough on the white screen I instantly noticed 2 dead pixels staring me in the face. I seemed to be plagued by dead pixels. Every LCD display I have ever owned has had at least one. One of the reasons I switched to plasma was to avoid defects such as this. I was slightly disappointed, but they are absolutely invisible at normal viewing distance and only appear in certain background colors. The screen faded into grey. Then I noticed the banding. There were vertical lines all over the set that were slightly lighter than the rest of the display. I know a bit about banding because my Westy had lots of it. While the plasma’s banding was not nearly as bad as my LCD’s it is still noticeable when solid light colors are on the screen. Again, I was disappointed because I never expected this on a plasma. I ran DVE on Blu-Ray and adjusted my settings. I turned off the “warm” setting and switched it to “normal” because I thought the whites were too yellow. This time I watched LOST on Blu-Ray and I was absolutely stunned. It was the best in-home viewing experience I had ever had.
I am a gamer. I mainly play World of Warcraft on my HTPC. Connecting it to my 42” LCD was great because it was just like connecting it to any other LCD monitor. After a while, the motion blur, posterization, and banding on my LCD got to me. Lately I have been a big fan of the “glossy” LCD displays, but it seems all LCDs in the TV-size range have a matte finish. This is when I decided to research plasmas. PC use is extremely important to me. I am being very cautious about using the plasma for games and PC use until my 100-hour break-in period is over. Until then, I am only flashing to those inputs for a short time to get the feel of it. When I first switched to my PC input, I noticed the borders of my desktop were cut off. I had to switch the HD-Size to 2 and then I got 100% of the picture. I tried some WoW. I loved not having to deal with motion blur and everything ran much smoother. I’m having a hard time getting whites to look white for my PC. On-screen fonts are pretty good, but seem slightly less crisp than my LCD. I will come back and talk more about my gaming experiences after I break it in for a bit longer.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with my 85U. The picture quality on this set is leaps and bounds better than my Westinghouse LCD. Blacks are (almost) bezel-black and really show off the darker scenes. I’m going to work on the stuck pixels. A few of them seemed to have disappeared and some new ones have popped up. Maybe after running the break-in DVD and JScreenFix they will go away. The banding seems to be a lot less noticeable. I don’t know if it’s the break-in DVD or just that I’m getting used to it. Another important note: I have yet to see any IR on this display. This is even after playing WoW and browsing the internet with the settings up high. This really brings my confidence up and after my break-in period is over I am going to game my heart out.
I don’t want to post my settings for all my inputs just yet, because I’m still in the process of tweaking them to my liking. I will post again some other time with updates, but so far so good. I will do my best to answer any questions thrown at me, but I am not an AV professional. If I could come up with one regret, it would be that I wish I had gotten a bigger size. I sit between 5.5 and 6.5 feet away, so I figured I didn’t need to increase my screen size, but I’m wondering how much better the experience would be if it was even bigger. Thanks for reading my long-winded review. I hope it helps make your purchase decisions a little easier.
8.960 Wp - 16 kW Daikin L/W - 2 x MHI L/L - gasloos sinds 2017 - Loxone - SAP/IS-U/ABAP - rijdt nog LPG ;-)
Zijn er nog wat mensen die hier wat meer advies over kunnen geven? Dat ik voor mezelf kan bepalen welke ik moet kiezen.
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. In de winkel waar ik de mijne kocht scheelt het amper €61. Dus een veel groter scherm voor een heel kleine opleg! :strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/137751/113220.jpg?f=community)
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