Panasonic TH-42PW6EX Reviews

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Good Points: Brilliant contrast, excellent picture, good tuner

Bad Points: sensitivity to poor TV signal, or any other signal (even DVD) which significantly degrades the picture quality (sharpness)

General comments: Before I bought this unit, I was lucky to be able to compare side by side various plasma TV's (Sony, Philips, Pioneer, JVC). Eventhough the Panasonic TH-42PW6EX has only a 852x480 resolution, the picture looks better : I made my own DVD for testing plasma TV's (some footage from a HD miniDV handycam), the reseller was so kind to let me test it on the DVD player that fed all the plasma panels in the store. As far as I'am concerned, I noticed that, on the panels with a higher resolution (1024x1024 or 1366x768), the picture contained more noise (the edges of the objects were "vibrating") and, as a result, looked less sharp.

About the contrast, yes Panasonic has a ratio of 4000:1 and yes the blacks look really black, but there not a significant difference with the other brands. But the Panasonic's 42PW6EX picture is very pleasant to look at; so I bought it!!

BE AWARE of this : plasma TV's, and my 42PW6EX also, are very sensitive to quality of the signals they receive : if it is poor, you'll have a degraded picture. This was my case, to solve this I renewed all my wiring and used gold plated RF plugs for connecting the cable signal to the panel : the difference stunned me, it is an absolute necessity, now I have almost perfect picture.

The same preveils for your DVD player : I now have a progressive scan player with component output, the difference is obvious in picture quality (stability, no flicker, crispness, ...)

I paid it 5600 euro, it is a very good buy, for sure.