Hello, I am Blair an Economics and International Relations student. I have a gorgeous girlfriend wit...
Hello, I am Blair an Economics and International Relations student. I have a gorgeous girlfriend with a bouncing baby boy and I'm looking to make as many new friends here as possible!
Member since:10.02.2009
Reviews:7
Bought from John Lewis for £699 in summer 2008 this 32" Panasonic LCD television was bought by my father for our kitchen/dining room. Up to now I have been nothing but impressed with the quality of the screen, though the Freeview signal is terrible for a screen this size.
When delivered the box was snug, though still exceptionally big due to the size of the television in the first place, but there were no issues in getting it out and placing it on the stand as there were two people there to help. I think it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to set up this television on your own unless you were Hulk-Hogan, due to its sheer size.
As is the case with all Panasonic electronics I?ve had the pleasure of dealing with the accessories were all individually wrapped in their own plastic bags and the remote is excellent, a sturdy model that looks like not even the worst of toddlers could break. An excellent feature is the Panasonic Viera Link technology which allows you to use the remote with your Panasonic DVD player for all its most basic functions something I do on a daily basis very successfully.
When first turned on I found the picture blocky with poor skin tones that appeared to mash into block colours when the image showed a close up of someone?s face. I soon discovered that Freeview really does not have the necessary quality for a television of this size, let along one bigger of say 42" or even 50" proportions. To make sure nothing was wrong with the TV I actually had to plug my laptop into the VGA port to try and get a high-definition signal.
When used with the laptop signal the images were excellent, perfectly sharp with even small text perfectly legible up close. Based on this I can say the image quality of this screen is excellent but can only truly be appreciated with a high-definition signal, such as Sky HD or a Blu-Ray player (neither of which I own).
I will not dwell on the image quality from the Freeview source as this is a complaint that will affect a broad spectrum of manufacturers producing LCD televisions. Instead I will base this review on what I have seen when coupled with the excellent Panasonic DVD-S54 up-scaling DVD player used with an HDMI cable, as opposed to the laptop which I only once connected to this TV.
With movies such as Jurassic Park when watched on DVD, the screen excellently displays the colours in a vivid and natural way. As is the case with most flat screen LCDs when you watch a movie with the lights on the dark colours don't really appear well, with some backlighting shining through, showing more of a dark grey colour than a solid black. With the room lights off this problem largely disappears, though with movies which are filmed in extremely dark settings it can occasionally become noticeable as the image can become hard to make out.
These black colour issues aside I think this is an excellent television. I've given it a five-star rating because I can see that compared to other televisions on the market it remains a leader even six months after purchase. I have been generally extremely impressed with it as had the various magazines whose reviews my family read before settling on this model to purchase. As a side note all the different size models in this particular series of LCD screens do get excellent reviews by consumer magazines and based on this model I would say this is likely an excellent range throughout.
I would highly recommend this television to anyone, though I would consider an upgrade to Sky HD and a Blu-Ray player as standard DVD and Freeview really do not do it justice. Once the price to receive a high-definition television signal comes down to a cost my family can justify, I think I will really see this TV fly.
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Advantages: Incredible picture quality when compared to my old non-upscaling player with a scart lead Disadvantages: Sometimes disc drive can be really noisy when DVD's initially load.
bobbacon985 12.02.2009 (12.02.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Panasonic DVD-S54
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Feb 13th, 2009
