Sony KDL V3000 Vs. Panasonic Viera TH-42PX80

TheDean

TheDean

TheDean

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All,

I currently have a Sony V3000 but am very dissapointed with it's black levels. I have recalibrated the screen, even gone into the service menu, to change settings advised on avforums.com, but they are still shockingly bad.

I am now considering the PX80 as a direct replacement. I can return the item within 28 days (the set is only 5 days old). Please note that the Pro's & con's below are comparing against the V3000.

Pros of PX80:

Better black levels
Better HD & SD performance
Bigger set...an extra 2"
Better sound
better motion handling
100Htz tech

Cons of PX80:

no 1080p
no 1.3 hdmi's
Image retention?
Damage to screen when using Xbox 360?
Poor gaming in general?


Questions:

I would be hooking the PX80 up to my media centre pc using hdmi. Firstly, will the set do 1:1 pixel mapping, and secondly, can you see any other issues which may be brough about while displaying 720p HD .mkv files through this set?

I will also be gaming quite a bit on my 360. Is this recommended? What are the perils? Image retention? Screen 'smearing'? Imput lag?
 
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-Ad-, Thank you very much for your reply. It is a difficult one for me. I was so excited to get the V3000, and in all fairness it is a wonderful set, but the black levels are really appaling...To really test them I put Blade runner on. It was 720p and I was not impressed. In areas of little or no light the set just couldn't hadle it whatsoever. It showed the characters faces or whatever, but everything else in the background was almost pitch black!
 
topher said:
I have a v3000 and its great bar slight motion blur, no more than any other LCD! but me being fussy I wasn't happy so I went and had a look at the PX80, and even that had some blur imo! blacks were better but not by much. however the picture on the v3000 looked sharper, more so when I watched a few mins of casino royal on blu-ray @1080p.

blacks whilst gaming on my PS3 were poor, anything dark was almost pitch black! I have managed to sort that by changing the hdmi colour setting on the PS3 to limited, it was set to full.
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Do you know if there are other setting for 360 or in the Tv HDMI settings menu on the Tv?
 
Just to keep th thread updated, I had the JL Engineer round an Saturday morning. He rung me on my mobile at 7.45am :/
He was round at 10am and he quickly established I knew what I was talking about and immiately agreed a full refund or exchange were the best options. He said that although the Tv was up to manufacturers specificatons, it was unfit for purpose as the black levels were too poor.
I have arranged for an exchange for a PX80 so once that arrives (either Thursday or Saturday this week) then I will be able to compare them which may well be of interest for anyone else looking to buy one.
Cheers
 
-Ad- said:
Tooooot, good old service strikes again from them :D
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I tell you what - Thay have been utterly brilliant so far! Once I paid for the original Tv (the V3000) I asked them if I could pick it up on Thursday night from their depot (late opening on Thurs). The woman on the phone said yes, that was fine. I rung up again on the afternoon to confirm and another woman said that although the shop was open till 8.30pm - the depot wasn't so I'd have to wait till Saturday. I didn't go mental or anything just said, "Well that's not them best is it?" - She immediately said she had already spoken to the duty manager, and as a geture of good will they would give me £50 worth of vouchers when I came in to collect the TV!!! :eek: FIFTY NOTES!!! I was a bit shocked to say the least....

Anyway...we go to pick it up on the Saturday morning. I hand over my recipt in the Audio Visual dept and the bloke says "We'll arrange for the set to be taken to the customer collection point for you now, it'll be about 5-10mins, take this voucher so you and your friends can have a complimentary Tea or Coffee while you wait in one of our Cafe's". He then gave me £50 in cash rather than in vouchers which I loved!

As all this was happening I said to my mate that this was the best single example of customer service I had ever come accross ( and I used to work in CS!) and that when (if) I get Married, John Lewis are getting the list!
 
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BobBrainy said:
do you have your px80 yet TheDean? Improvement?

I'm stuck in the position of V3000 or PX80, did you pump a games console through the V3000? Was that not good?
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I'm getting it on Saturday morning so will be in a position to tell you about it on Sunday night. I have a 360 going through the V3000 which does look good, but the black's aren't very good at all hence why I am swapping for the PX80 ;)
 
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Full Write Up:

Sony 42" V3000 vs. Panasonic 42"PX80

Well,

First thing is first - Massive respect to John Lewis who took the Tv back no problems. In fact, I almost thought they were too relaxed about the whole thing! When I came to drop the Sony off I went into the CCP (Customer Collection Point) and handed the bloke my papers. He and his helper wheeled the new PX80 to the car and helped me unload the V3000, then reload the PX80.
It is worth noting that the PX80 box is lighter, 'fatter' and shorter than the V3000 and fitted confotably in the back of a 207 with the seats down.
So, back to the whole 'too relaxed thing'. We handed over the v3000 and the bloke didn't even check to make sure there was even a Tv inside it! It could well have been a few bricks. Anyway, they did have my address and postcode I suppose, but If I were them, I would have checked it!

Anyway, we got home and started the unboxing. This seemed much easier than the v3000 and set up was a doddle. The set also seemed lighter, although this may well be because of the heavy Sony stand.

Once I plugged in the Tv box (scart), Media Pc (HDMI) and Xbox 360 (HDMI) I moved back to work out the correct angle and viewing distance. We se it to approx 6 feet from the sofa and then began the set up.

I skipped the digital scan for channels as this was not needed and selected the scart output. Straight away I noticed the Tv was BRIGHT - and I mean stupidly bright. I changed to cinema mode and instantly felt much better about it all.
It is set to 'Vivid' by default and this looks flipping awful. Colours didn't seem accurate and it would blind you in a dark room I recon.
Once set to 'cinema' and brightness / contrast / etc etc changed to the setting recommended on the www.hdtvtest.co.uk website.

Against all advice I put the cricket on!!! This is only worth mentioning because some bloke on AV Forums got, what he thought at the time, was the dreaded permanent screen burn (It actually turned out it was just very bad retention and went after a few days). Signal was through Scart on Sky Sports 1. The colours looked life like, vibrant and in my opinion, not as over-powering as the Sony. Motion handling was smoother and even when the camera had to pan very fast for a 6 played to the leg side, the set did not display any issues I could see at my viewing distance. This may or may not be due to the introduction of 100Htz tech in this set which I had not seen before. The V3000 does not have this.

I then tested it with my media Pc. Using a 720p x264 version of Blade Runner the set showed how it was head & shoulders above the V3000 in black levels. It is fair to say the V3000 was destroyed in this aspect. Before the Sony would have serious issues trying to display dark scenes and you would really struggle to see any detail at all. With the PX80 dark, smoky scenes are shown in all their glory. This is not to say that the PX80 could not deal with bright scenes as well, in fact, against a dark background the panel was very impressive.

For watching SD the PX 80 is crisp, clean and shows clear definition. It is noticeably better than the V3000 in this respect. In HD the PX80 destroys the V3000 in black level, and I feel this is a very important part of watching movies.

Is there anything that I am not happy with in regards to the PX80? Well, not really to be honest. I prefer the look and design of the V3000 and its remote, but that is personal preference. The picture (SD & HD) and Sound are far superior, to the point that it is noticeable. I originally didn't think there would be that much difference between two sets of fairly equal value - how wrong I was!

I hope this fairly brief write up was useful to some who are considering which set to go for. It took me a long time to decide, and I made the wrong choice in the V3000, but now that I have the PX80 I am over the moon! Please note that I am not a professional reviewer, and may not be able to answer all of your in-depth questions.

For a professional review & settings go to http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Panasonic-TH42PX80/
 
topher said:
how was the gaming? and any image retention? sent my v3000 back and got a refund, so still looking for a TV! mainly for PS3 and some blu-ray and media pc connection
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No no retention at all, and i do use it for a good bit of messing about on the internet these days as well. One of my flatmates, to my horror, said he watched a good 4 hrs of videos on YouTube and after I checked it I saw no retention of any kind :)

-Ad- said:
No need to worry about that ;)

Dean, piiiiiiiiiiiiiics
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I know, I know....need to get that sorted
 
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