Panasonic TH-50PZ80U I love this TV

Panasonic TH-50PZ80U TV

Overall, I love this TV. It is fantastic. A few comments:

1. The speakers are great, as far as TV speakers go. Anyone who complains about them are just surround-sound speaker snobs. That's like complaining that your Ferrari won't float in the lake. That's what your boat is for, dummy. Let's compare apples to apples. A TV is not a surround sound system.

2. Most movies are not 16:9 ratio, as all widescreen TVs are. They are 1.33:1, which means you will still have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, just like you did with your old tube TV. But the bars are much thinner, at least.

3. Regular analog cable TV looks okay, not great, not bad. I think when you get a TV of this size, since there are limitations on the quality of regular cable, a 50" TV will magnify them, simply because it's so big. However, regular DVDs look fantastic. So if you are getting a digital signal, you shouldn't have any problems.

4. I've had no issues as far as burn-in goes. I've had a movie paused for 20 minutes with no ghosting. I've also had the black bars on the top and bottom for 3 hours watching a movie, and light gray bars on the sides watching regular TV for hours, as well, with no problems. It also has a manual burn-in prevention selection, where you can run a white vertical bar slowly across a black screen as a prevention measure. I do that every once a while on my own, just to give myself a warm and fuzzy feeling. When you watch programs made for the old 4:3 tube TV ratio, it shows light gray bars on the sides of the screen. You can change these to black, but the TV likes them to be light gray to help prevent burn in, although it will default to black bars on the top and bottom when playing a DVD.

5. Reflection, the other concern about Plasmas besides burn-in, is no big deal. It's glass on the front of the TV, so it won't reflect any more than your old TV, or the family portrait on the wall. You might have to turn off a lamp, or close the drapes to remove some glare, but even if you didn't, it's not a deal breaker. LCDs don't have glare problems, but then you have to deal with some blurriness on fast movement, so Plasma seems a better choice to me, especially since burn-in seems non-existent.

6. The box says to keep the TV upright, and the manual said that some internal circuitry could be messed up if it was set on it's side, and I've heard from other people that you need to have the TV upright for 24 hours before you turn it on, but after doing research, the true concern is the huge, expensive piece of glass on the front of your TV. Remember when you see glass trucks rolling down the street, and all the glass is vertical on the side of the truck? That's because it's stronger on it's edge, and being horizontal in the back of a bouncing truck could crack it. I think that the TV is firm enough to keep the glass from cracking or the internal circuitry messing up if you drove slowly and cautiously. Besides, you kind of have to put it on it's side just to get it out of the huge box. I drove it in my van on it's side for 30 miles (that's how the store put it in there), and have had no problems.

7. The box was so big, I initially thought that the TV might be too big for my living room. No such thing. The bigger, the better.

8. The black setting was set to off, which keep the blacks from being as black as they could be. I switched it to on, which made everything a little darker, but I like it better. It's not the brightness setting, as this option was "off" or "on". I think this is a default setting they had for display purposes, to try to make the TV seem brighter for display.

9. One last minor issue, there isn't a separate button for closed captioning on the remote control. I know most people never use closed captioning, but sometimes I can't understand what someone says, and I want to quickly read what they are saying, then turn it back off.

Overall, this is a fantastic TV. I am extremely happy with it.

As an aside, don't pay a ton for an HDMI cable. "Category 2" is as high quality as hdmi.org recognizes, and RadioShack sells them for $40. I have found that Mediabridge cables online for $4 are just as good, as well.