James Miller/Anyone else using a Panny 42PZ80 as a computer monitor

Alexrose1uk

Alexrose1uk

Alexrose1uk

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How have you found it?

Once used for several hundred hours, how have you found IR issues etc in general use?

I'm possibly able to afford one of these if I can still find one reasonably next week, however I don't want to spend the cash on it if I'm going to have major issues with the screen.
I'd been looking at the Plasma down to improved colour and blacks (and movement) compared to LCD in general.

General use'd be PC/360/PS3/HDDVD/Blu-Ray. 1080p is useful to me as that and 720p would consist of all my usage.
 
Durzel said:
I'm using my TH42PZ85B as a monitor of sorts (its connected to my Media PC). I also have my PS3 connected up to it for Bluray, gaming, etc.

It's a great TV, and pretty sharp at 1080p though I find it a bit difficult to make out text at 1920x1080 sitting on my couch. By contrast I can read the screen fine using my 30" Dell @ 2560x1600. TVs don't have the same sort of dot pitch as proper PC monitors so I guess that's why there is a difference.

I'd definitely recommend it though - it's very vibrant, blacks are very nice, etc.
Click to expand...

How have you found things like image retention in general usage, as thats my main worry (taskbars etc)? I'll only be sitting about 1.5-2m away so hopefully text will be readable :)
 
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Ah, thats perfect then, as 4-5hours is the most I'm likely to use it in one stretch with bars on the screen in the same places :) Cheers :D

Are you using those recommended settings floating around? (cinema etc?)
 
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Good to hear then, might just have to grab one of them before they completely dissapear (or the sister PZ82 range, my understanding is it's all black rather than having the silver bar, but a little more expensive than the cheapest price I've seen for the PZ80 - gutted I missed the JL offers :() then! From what I've already heard, I can't see the new 1080p sets being massively better (unfortunately) and it looks like they're going to be out of my price bracket given the prices of the X10 range in comparison to current sets (same/slightly higher than the current PX).

I wasn't likely to use the screen at full blast anyway, was going to give those much touted cinema mode settings a chance, and I can't stand dynamic...ever. :)

How do you find reading text on the PZ, and how far do you sit? :)
 
Your 32" may well have been a 720p model though, so not as clear as a 1080p model for text, my current 32" has the same issues, hence I'm particularly looking for the view from people who've used one of these Pannys :D

Thanks anyway :)
 
Haha thanks for the pictures. Will see what text is like when I get it here, then, looking again I may only be a 5/6ft from the 42" so given my eye sight isn't horrendous (yet) I may find it useable, will have to see.

At worst I keep my 24" LCD, I'd rather consolidate if I can get away from it though!
 
It was more taskbars that worried me, but if I'm reasonable on settings I guess it seems IR (rather than burn) isn't too bad once run in :)

Best prices on the 42 version I've seen are 750 from Richer Sounds, 799 atm from John Lewis and 770 from Laskys (hooray for now being able to talk about tv sellers; I dont think these guys are currently selling the same items as OcUK, feel free to edit if I've missed any :))
Need to see who has stock and if I can find anything better though. I could have tried to get one reserved from Costco when they did the offer, but 46" is just too big for my room.

Anyone else know any better prices (providing it wont break forum rules) :)
 
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Well I managed to get the 42PZ80 from John Lewis, with a bit of price matching for the princely sum of £699 down from £850! Collecting it on Monday/Tuesday.

Absolutely chuffed, and if there is any problems in the long run I have a 5 year warranty to back me up :)
 
Well I've collected the set with the help of my dad, and have set it up...Im writing this using the 1080p/60 set Panny (I noticed 59hz which it defaulted to added borders...odd!)
Text is readable; I'm using these settings,

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Panasonic-TH42PX80/Settings/

and apart from it needing to settle in, it looks fine and text is readable.

As these settings are a bit duller; the blacks are noticeably darker compared to my PVA 24" screen....pretty happy!

Will tweak with colour; brightness etc once the set has had a chance to settle; dont want to cause IR unneccessarily!
 
OK, anyone who's using one of these and an ATI graphics HDMI output; with newer drivers go into the TV attributes and change from limited/full RGB, and change it to YCBCR 4:4:4....noticeably better blacks!

Will try and take some pictures to show the difference it makes.

Alex


Here we go:
(Limited RGB - my amp doesn't do Full unfortunately)
limitedrgbzoomin.jpg

limitedrgbzoomout.jpg


Component
componentzoomin.jpg

componentzoomout.jpg



Not the best pictures, but its hard to show relative black depth; as you can see the limited RGB ones dont blend with the Bezel. the Component ones do.
 
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james.miller said:
thats a can of worms that lol. depending on the sources you have, you would be better off calibrating for limited lol
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As this only affects the PC, not the other stuff being fed into the AV amp/TV, that seems a slightly moot point. I've checked a few videos and played some games, and can't see any major differences in picture quality; bar better depth of dark colours.

The fact my AVR cannot feed a full RGB signal may be causing this issue; but it doesnt hurt for people to test if they have have a similar setup, and see if they notice any improvements :)

If they don't like the effect, they can simply default to Full/Limited RGB :)

As it is, with *my* setup, the recommended settings I dug up look fine, very natural if a little muted, and blacks are good in general, but for PC viewing, I find I get better black/dark colours by setting to component output, as can be seen from the pictures above, possibly because there is less conversion/cutoff being caused by the limitation of my amp. If Yamaha release a 'fixed' firmware that allows full RGB passthrough, then I will test again using Component 4:4:4 vs Full RGB.

It's not something a lot of people have even fiddled with most likely, which is why I thought I'd mention it.



In general am loving this TV so far; although it has persuaded me to spend more money on a nice MX Revolution and *InsertNewWirelessKeyboard*
 
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james.miller said:
very long pretty indepth post
Click to expand...

Heheh, I know what you're getting at, unfortunately my original explanation perhaps isn't the clearest.
Unfortunately the full RGB crush is an issue Yamaha haven't fixed, saying they can't fix it as it's hardware...yet strangely they fixed it in the higher end version of the box. There have been major discussions over at AVS about writing a custom firmware; or trying to persuade Yamaha to correct the issue; but so far Yammy's head has been in the sand on the issue.

I actually have all my other equipment set to limited rather full RGB, and to be honest, in my opinion they all look really good, very natural, and the blacks don't bother me as in comparison to anything I've used previously, I just found for 'whatever' reason, the PC seemed to be slightly paler in it's blacks; and changing to component fixed that for me, probably because I use a lot of blacks on the pc; now this MAY be an intricacy of the amp vs the HDMI ATI setup and less restriction being placed on component feeds, however I do get what you're saying, ideally I'd have everything calibrated to high hell, but given the recommended settings already look brilliant for my HDDVD/PS3/Xbox it seems a shame to change the universal settings to suit the PC more; whereas changing to component output from my PC dealt with that issue.
As I say this may well be an intricacy of the combination of my AVR, TV and the ATI output, because when set to default limited RGB in CCC, whilst the computer loads from bios, before it hits Vista, the blacks are actually blacker (identical in my eyes to the component output setting). When this switches to windows and the ATI drivers/settings load, and the switch is made to default RGB output over HDMI; the blacks lose that inkyness slightly, reverting to the slightly greyer blacks.

Sorry its a little hard to explain without sounding like an idiot, but this is part of what makes me believe it is something particular with the setup, as everything else looks fine, and are as far as I remember set to limited RGB where controllable due to the amps inability to pass full RGB, and instead cutoff the WTW and BTB parts of a full RGB signal (NOT GOOD!)

Last Samurai (HDDVD), Transformers (HDDVD) Dark Knight, Xmen 3 and Wall-E look stunning via the respective players.

Out of interest what settings do you use; I'd be interested in trying them!
 
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james.miller said:
im on my laptop atm but ill fire the tv up tomorrow and let you know :) one thing i will tell you now is that i prefer normal mode to cinema. cinema is just little too flat for my liking. Warm colour is also a little too warm for me and again i prefer normal. what amuses me is that everybody seems to religiously stick to some magical recommended setting that were originally published for the 42px, even on sets like my 50pz. I know panasonics factory settings are good on average, but they arent perfect (as we know, we wouldnt be altering them otherwise) and they certainly are NOT uniform across one range of panels out of the factory, let alone the entire brand of various sized x80/x82/x85/z80/z82/z85 ect ect ect.
Click to expand...

I could be wrong but I thought the PS3/Xbox etc were also capable of full RGB, I'm liable to be wrong though!

And yes I agree with what you say about the oddity of the settings, I don't think they're bad myself, but I also noticed they're actually for a PX, which seems odd. But then by now you'd think someone would have challenged the standard settings if there was a much better setting for the 42PZ(80/85 etc use the same panels in my understanding, the difference being in the driver/processing boards), given its a fairly popular, semi-enthusiast plasma (I'd class Loewe, Pioneer etc as true enthusiast/rich mans Plasma). I'm not a man who can afford calibration though so perhaps I'm missing out here!
Considering my luck I'm not even going near the service menus!
 
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