Wednesday
Dec222010
Dec 22 Panasonic TC-P58VT25 Very Initial Impressions
OK, the Panasonic TC-P58VT25 58-inch 3D 1080p VIERA Plasma HDTV (Street Price $2700) has been in my house for about an hour so here are my very initial impressions. I’ll do a full review after CES. Setup was very quick. Assembling the stand took about five minutes and was very straight forward. In my situation I simply removed the old Samsung DLP and replaced it with the new Plasma. Once I powered the TV up I was greeted by several settings screens. Until the set is broken in I am leaving it in THX mode. It looks pretty darn good right out of the box in that mode.
I connected an Ethernet cable since the wireless adapter is NOT included. To get the Vieracast to work you have to upgrade the firmware. That process took about five minutes as well. The Vieracast provides access to Weather, Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Video, Picassa, Skype (optional camera not included either), Twitter, Bloomberg, Pandora, and Fox Sports. Panasonic promises more services in the future.
The screen looks beautiful and I can barely see any glare from lights in the room. This was my biggest fear with buying a plasma. The picture looks fantastic in THX mode. And the blacks are deep, dark, and inky! I can’t wait to adjust the settings after the break in period. I was told by a listener (Rob H. BTW, Rob hangs around the site and posts some great comments) that to fully calibrate the TV you have to go into the service settings so I’ll be experimenting there. I am going to try the Spyder Calibration System for this set. Stay tuned....
One disappointment right out of the box though. The TV is a $2,700 3D set and Panasonic could only scrape together one pair of 3D glasses to include. Come on guys! At least provide two so you can invite a friend over to watch with you.
Reader Comments (12)
You should definitely have this calibrated by the guy who calibrated your projector. Enjoy the TV, it's a beauty!
So excited for you. That is the same one I've been drooling over. Can't wait to hear your full review in January.
An early Christmas for Ara!
I don't know how much experience Ara has with delving into the service menu to make non-consumer-level adjustments, but I just wanted to point out that the vast majority of people should NOT poke around in any display's service menu. To access a service menu, you have to enter a special sequence of button presses. Technicians and professional calibrators have access to these special codes. Unfortunately, it's fairly easy to find service menu access codes on the internet. As a result, just about anyone can get into these "hidden" adjustment menus if they really want to.
The problem with mucking around in the service menu is that you can genuinely ruin your display! The regular user menu is safe to play around in. You can make your picture inaccurate with the user menu, but you can't really do any damage. You can always reset back to the default settings. But in the service menu, it is entirely possible to do irreversible damage!
Bottom line: unless you know exactly what you are doing, you should NOT go into the service menu. I don't even bother with service menus myself and I am much more informed than a lot of people. I call my local ISF calibrator and I let him handle any adjustments that require use of the service menu.
I mentioned to Ara that the Panasonic VT25 series requires service menu level adjustments in order to get perfect (well, near-perfect) color. Out of the box, if you only use the user menu, the VT25 series can get really close and very accurate color, but with the service menu, you can get it pretty much spot on. The gamma can also use a service menu tweak because the user menu only has preset options for the gamma, and while it comes close to the industry standard, it isn't quite perfect.
It might be really helpful to have THX calibrator Ray Coronado come back for two reasons:
1) Being a professional calibrator, Ray knows exactly what settings to adjust inside the service menu and - more importantly - which settings NOT to touch! He can use the same, expensive and precise calibration equipment that he used to calibrate Ara's JVC projector to really dial in this plasma to virtual perfection.
2) It would be awesome to have Ray back on the podcast! He could talk about service menus and let the entire HT Guys audience know more about this rather poorly understood facet of display calibration. I'd also love to hear Ara interview Ray having gone through both a projector and a plasma calibration first hand! There are a lot of things that people wouldn't even think to ask, so Ara and Ray's insight could be extremely valuable to a lot of listeners, I think :)
I'm saving up for this TV. I love the way it looks. Forget 3D, I just love the 2D picture
Hello all,
I would like to tell Ara, that he has bought one of the best looking displays currently on the market.
Now..that being said….only way to get this display to it’s full beauty is with the Calibration interface software that Calibrators use. This software interface with the display thru the RS-232 port on the unit and give you the ability to adjust things that are not even available in the service menu. This is the only way to adjust and enable the ISF modes and do a thorough Calibration.
Later
Ray Coronado
Awesome! Thank you for that comment, Ray! I was unaware that the Calibration Interface allowed adjustments that are not even in the service menu. As I said, I've only ever had my local ISF Calibrator adjust those "hidden" settings and I have not ventured to do it myself. That information is a perfect example of something that any "normal" person would not even know to ask about! I'm fairly familiar with service menus and I didn't even know to ask! :p
I do hope that Ara will have you back, both on the podcast and to calibrate his new VT25, Ray :) One question that I would love to hear you talk about is the so-called "break-in" period for displays. There is a prevailing recommendation on many forums and blogs that people ought to wait a few hundred hours before having their display professionally calibrated. For projectors, they say to wait for the lamp to age a bit and "settle". For plasmas, they say to wait for the phosphors to age a bit, dim a bit, and "settle". And many of these same forums suggest that LCDs and LED-LCDs do not require this "waiting period" before a professional calibration is "worth it".
I would love to get a genuine professional calibrator's opinion on this and maybe settle this matter for those of us who are wondering where the truth really lies ;)
Hello Rob H,
I will try and answer your questions regarding break in the best that I can. Projectors require break in because the bulb changes most rapidly in the first 100 hours, after that the lamp pretty much stabilizes. Plasma and LCD panels I normally tell my customers to run them for about 100 - 150 hours. This is not for a break in per saying, but to stress test the electronics and make sure the panel will hold up..... As I have calibrated brand new displays and had and them go out a week later. This is my practice to safeguard the customer in case the display goes out or develops a problem in the first week or so.
Please keep in mind that the panel process is my personal recommendation to my customers, not anything recommended by ISF or THX.
I hope this has answered your questions.
Ray Coronado
Ray, thank you so much! You definitely answered my questions and I think it would be extremely helpful to a lot of people out there if you were able to say that information on the podcast!
There are all sorts of conflicting "recommendations" out there. Some people say, "go ahead and get your flat panel calibrated whenever you want - it doesn't really matter" - which, from a purely technical standpoint, you are saying is true.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are the people saying, "you should do nothing but run a special 'break-in' DVD for the first 500 hours or else your flat panel will be prone to burn-in/image retention/shifting colors/floating blacks/etc." - which, you are saying, is NOT the stance of ISF/THX at all!
Most of the recommendations are to wait 100-200 hours before having a professional calibration done. This seems to fall right in line with what you recommend and your explanation makes perfect sense.
Having a clear and easy-to-understand recommendation like that makes it so much simpler! I really hope you will be able to share that information on the podcast so that it can reach as many people as possible :)
Thank you!
I picked up the Panny 50" 50VT20 3d tv with a bundle starter kit and blu ray player and am loving it. The 2d picture is incredible and the 3d picture by far is better than the 2 Samsung 3d tvs I bought and took back.
Ian B
After a false start with Samsung 8000 series plasma, I have a VT-25 plasma, and couldn't be happier with it. I was expecting great 2D performance, which is what I got. I was pleasantly surprised at how much mileage I've gotten out of the 3D.
Sports, notably football, looks great in 3D. ESPN is still learning about how to best present the games: I only saw about half the season, and I can say that the late season was clearly better than the early season. By next year I think they will really have it down. For now, there are only 2 games left: The Fiesta Bowl (tonight as I write this) and the "National Championship" game next week. I think that Ara needs to watch in the cause of "research".
There are a few PS3 and Xbox 360 games available in 3D. Notably, Call of Duty: Black Ops has a 3D mode. It is worth a look in single player. I tend to get destroyed normally in multiplayer, but it does seem to be that I get killed faster when in 3D, so I'm wondering if there is more processing (thus lag) going on. So, I'd avoid that experiment unless you are in a very masochistic mood.
The issue with eyewear is annoying, but at least Panasonic throws in one set of glasses: Samsung doesn't have any. I expect that the prices of glasses will start to drop this year. Xpand is making a set of "universal" glasses and I'm thinking of buying a set to try them out.
I purchased this exact Panasonic unit a few months ago and couldn't be happier with it. The picture seems every bit as good as the Pioneer Elite Kuro I had previously, but after listening to the interview with Ray Coronado I'm wondering if a professional calibration would make it even better...
I agree with Ara's comment on a recent podcast regarding the Viera tools. They were fun to play with for the first day or two, but I haven't used them again since.
I am also a bit of a 3D skeptic, but I have to admit I enjoyed watching A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey in 3D with my kids over the holidays. The Tostitos Fiesta Bowl also looked great in 3D, and I'll be tuning in to Comcast's ESPN3D channel more in the future.
Next up: front-ending my Mac Mini video server with a new AppleTV!
I just bought my Panasonic 58" VT-25 a few days ago and have had some minor but worth mentioning observations. First let me say the image is incredible and that is going from THX, Vivid and Custom. I sued the calibration settings from http://reviews.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/panasonic-plasma-tv/panasonic-tcp58vt25.html.
I have to admit that the review of the VT-25 58" was not 5 stars, but it wasn't a bad review. They did mention jitter and also mentioned that the processor was of low caliber for a high end tv. At first I didn't let the review influence my analysis of the tv, but I have found that after viewing Hurt Locker using the 3D Blu Ray player that came as the package deal and I saw jitter on some scenes and thought maybe it was just the movie. A day later or so I was watchiing Netflix through the Xbox and my wife said she noticed that there is some bouncing on some of the images. I once again thought it was the stream I was watching which was Battle Star Galactica. I then switched to a movie and has Zombieland and saw some jitter in one of the scenes too. Streaming is not the most reliable signal so I haven't necessarily sent the tv back, however I did want to know if anyone else is having any jitter. Also, I switched from Xbox input to Cable and had a white screen that only cleared after I turned tv off and back on.