Here goes my review of the Panasonic TH-37PD60 (pedestal). First of all why choose plasma? Well, personally I think plasma technology is superior to LCD in that plasma TVs produce a brighter more natural looking picture, darker blacks and do not suffer the picture blurring of LCD. Even though people will argue the point of picture retention on plasma's but if you are careful and do not have the same static image or logo on for hours and hours on end, you will have no problem.
I have 3 kids and they watch a lot of the children's channels CBBC - C Beebies, etc., and they all have bright logos and I have not had any problems with screen burn. Panasonic plasmas are fairly bombproof in that department, that is the main reason I went for the panny as well as the other reasons that I am going to outline.
Any keen eyed reader will notice, or maybe not, that I have bought the standard definition model of 852x480 pixels,( which is HD compatible). "Why", I hear you ask, "in this day of Hi-def", well, I will tell you why.
This model was side by side with the Panasonic TH-37PX60 which is the hi-def model and on viewing Freeview on both sets the PD60 was far better!! The PX60 suffered a lot of picture noise close up and from about 6-7 feet away, the reason being I reckon is the PX60 has to upscale the SD picture to its 1024x768 pixels. For now and the next few years I am more than happy to watch SD television and refuse to pay subscription services for TV, so I am not going to pay an extra £500 for the hi-def model to watch an inferior picture. Incidentally, I bought this television from a Panasonic dealer for £999 with a five year warranty.

Ok now for the television, I spent 15 minutes assembling the pedestal which is fairly lumpy at around 13kg and I then waited for the wife to finish work before I could lift this beast out of the box, even though it only weighs around 25kg it's too big to try and lift yourself in case you damage the TV, etc.! You mount the television on two poles on the pedestal stand and four screws hold the television in place. Once everything is plugged in, I switched TV on and it auto tunes within a minute and you are ready to enjoy!
The television itself is slightly bigger than the PX60 with its matt black frame surround and the speaker grill under the screen incorporating 2x10 watt speakers, and the on/off and volume and channel control buttons situated on the left just above the speaker grill.
There are plenty of connections- 3x scart(2 off rgb) hdmi connection so you can still view downscaled hi-def material now or in the future if you wish, it also has audio in-audio out and component in, more connections than I will ever need.

Now for features, it has Freeview built in so no need for extra box - cables etc., the usual brightness/contrast/colour/control/sharpness/noise reduction, etc., various picture sizes, auto mode 16.9 ,4.3 and zoom modes and teletext with picture and text. It is not over laden with gimmicks, just enough to tweak picture to suit individual tastes. Picture wise when I first got television I only played about with it for about 15 minutes since I had to got to work( I was tempted to have a sicky), so when I came home, the wife was watching Gordon Ramsays the F word and he was cooking steak and I kid you not I was tempted to go and grab the steak from my television, it looked that real!! Before I bought this television I had a JVC 28" (review is on here also) and I was more than happy with that picture and thought it could not get much better, especially jumping to a larger screen but believe me this picture is a lot better, it's more life-like, almost 3 dimensional and the colours are more vivid and more solid. What made me write this review was I was watching a documentary on the Galapagos Islands on BBC2 and I was blown away by the picture quality. I don't believe hi-def is much better than what I watched. DVD's are also excellent as well as cartoons and cgi movies such as Shrek, The Incredibles and Ice Age, etc.! I have had this TV for about two months now and have run it on the recommended settings of low contrast and low brightness and view on normal mode and not dynamic mode, which makes the picture bright and colours false and is only used in retailers to make the television stand out, so any way I have clocked over 200 hours now with the settings low and to be honest I do not need to put them up any because the picture is fairly bright anyway. The contrast is quoted at 10000: 1 which I believe because I have my contrast set to 0 and the picture is still bright, a lot brighter than my JVC CRT! The blacks are also very black as opposed to darkish grey on LCD TVs. I use Freeview 99% of the time because the picture is a lot better than standard analogue but the latter is still very watchable, it's just not as sharp as digital and the only time I watch analogue is when I am recording a Freeview channel and want to watch another channel as it locks the channel you are recording. I have passed my run in settings now and I am convinced the picture has got a lot better with usage!.

I like having the Freeview built in as it saves me having an extra box, etc., as mentioned earlier and when I want to record off Freeview I just set the television and it switches on my DVD recorder or video through scart control. The menus are childsplay to use and you have a seven day guide onscreen for Freeview. The remote control is user friendly too with additional VCR and DVD control.

Lastly I will come to audio, you have the usual bass-treble-balance and also speech and music (I use music), also there is the ambiance mode which throws the sound about a little but makes it distorted slightly and unnatural so best leave it alone. Volume wise the tv is good, I only need it up to about 10-15%, it's fairly loud with average bass and good treble, my only gripe is the stereo separation, it just does not have good left and right separation, which is ok for normal TV but I have a separate home cinema system for DVDs and music etc., I think because the speakers are under the TV as opposed to the sides on some other TVs. I think in the audio department this TV had a tough act to follow anyway compared to my JVC as it had a separate sub woofer and side mounted speakers!!

So to sum up, this is a very good and stylish plasma and I would highly recommend it to any one who does not want to go the hi-def route just yet or are not willing to pay the £1500 for the equivalent hi-def model. I don't think you will be disappointed with the picture quality at all. So go and find your nearest Panasonic dealer to view this model and I think you will be won over by the picture quality!

Looks : 9/10
Build quality : 10/10
Picture : 10/10
Sound : 8/10
Ease of use : 10/10
Features : 9/10
Overall : 93%

I hope you liked my review and feel free to ask any questions on things I may have not covered, please all of you LCD owners, don't give me abuse because I prefer plasma to LCD !! It is only a personal preference...lol.

Dougie