Looking for a tv can be a long and tedious process. You want to make the right choice. You pour over reviews and develop a list of pros and cons. Atleast I did. It is easy to get bogged down the nitty gritty. You can go on forums and read all the pros and cons written by well meaning people, if not a tad geeky. They may point out things that you would never catch in the 1000 years. Fluctuating black levels? Oh NO! But, don't let that scare you from taking the plunge. First off I worried about the shipping. My goodness, how are they going to shipped this delicate tv from Japan to the Midwest? I never bought anything this costly and this big. What do I do if it is damaged, yadda yadda yadda. Well it came in perfect condition, not a scratch on the box. Always a good sign. Well I will save you all the boring details but the delivery and set up went way beyond my expectations. Totally satisfied. I have no regrets about the process of buying/shipping through Amazon. The TV is amazing. The 3d is worth every penny. I watched the NBA Finals last night through DTV and ESPN3d. The clarity was unbelievable! I looked at Samsung and LG and I think Panasonic is just a pinch better made and has a better picture overall. I glad I bought it and I would buy it again. I just wish it could play AVI files through Viera Link. The 3d works great even at a distance of 16 feet from the TV. Don't let the 3d scare you that is is just a fad, yeah it's early, but its coming and Panasonic delivers 3d in true HD. Something that you will want. 100,000 hours will give you 11 years at 24/7 tv on or 22 years at 12 hours a day. I have no connection to Amazon or Panasonic. Panasonic VIERA TC-P65GT30 65-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV
After having spent literally a year doing research on the "big boys" with 3D capacity, reading a half dozen reviews and blogs, I finally purchased the Panasonic 65" GT30. The money was serious for our family budget, so I wanted to make sure we were happy with the investment. I ticked off, one by one, the competitors for "in store" demos, literally looking at dozens of models.....then I made the leap...and haven't had the first regret after two weeks of viewing.
I have some pretty serious, state of the art LCD/LED TV's in my home already (Sony, Panasonic, et al), with their eye popping bright colors, razor sharp pictures, etc....but this is much more a movie theater type of viewing experience, with subtle shades and deep rich colors, fluid motion without pixelation....and the 3D is the best I have seen anywhere...every time we put in a blu ray movie or view the premium services (HBO and Showtime) my jaw literally drops....WOW...if you can muster the bucks, there is no way you won't be totally taken by this set. I know the Samsung sets are quality too, but they can't quite measure up in my estimation. The concerns about glare are certainly a consideration, but for the most part, even though my viewing area has several windows that can be shaded, they do not diminish greatly the watchability of the set....it seems brighter than most plasmas.
If this jewel has any shortcoming at all, it would be in the sound quality of the set....so plan on at least a soundbar or an audio system, ideally. I can't imagine spending this kind of money and not finishing it off with that component. Because our space allowed, I went for the 65", trying to simulate the 3D/theater viewing experience. Although the additional cost is not proportional to the bigger size (you pay a premium for the upscaling), it was worth it to me, bringing the adjective "awesome" to mind.
Truly the greatest TV I have ever owned. Panasonic Viera TC P65GT30 is by far the best TOTAL PACKAGE 3D PLASMA LARGE SCREEN MADE TODAY! Sharpest picture (contrasts, colors, detailed images without shadows in 3D mode) and the THX feature a TRUE PLUS! Sitting approx 9 ft at eye level is optimal for this great 65 inch Panansonic 3d Plasma TV. The wireless WIFI is great too. 10Watt speakers not bad either but do prefer my surround sound. 3D Glasses a little costly but you do get what you pay for today. Once you have previewed and watched programs/movies/games on this Panasonic...well no going back!!! Looked at others, SAMSUNG, SHARP, etc but this one was the BEST BANG FOR BUCK AND QUALITY WITH A PROVEN TRACK RECORD. THis PANASONIC 3D IS AS APPLE IPAD 2 to TABLETS. A VERY PLEASED PANASONIC CUSTOMER!
I would have given this TV 5 stars because the picture and features are awesome. But the sound system is quite "tinny" sounding and I am going to have to find an external sound solution to truly enjoy the experience. I will probably purchase a sound bar and subwoofer. I was playing a well-known YouTube clip on it (you can access YouTube directly from the TV if you have it connected to the internet). The clip (Captain Jack Sparrow with Michael Bolton and the SNL guys) has a high pitched background track that almost completely drowns out the singing voices when played on this TV. Likewise, watching concerts produces poor sound quality. I tried adjusting the audio settings and no luck. I suspect it is a similar problem as notebook computers - trying to get quality speakers into something so thin.
On the positive side, it was shipped and arrived in excellent condition from Amazon. There was some confusion about the delivery. We thought we had understood it included delivery and setup. The delivery guys were nice but only wanted to take it out of the box, lean it against a wall and plug it in and see the intro screen - and then leave. They refused to put it together or hook it up. I quickly got the stand out and figured that you just set it down and slide the TV down over it and put in 6 screws or so to secure it. So I talked them into at least lifting it up and putting it on the stand and I quickly put the screws in. Took a couple of minutes and it was together and ready for hookup which I had to do myself.
The picture is incredible - regular TV, HD TV and 3D. I believe the 3D experience is deeper and better than at the movie theatre. However, the poor sound quality detracts from such. I got it connected to my wireless network quickly and without problem and brought up its link features. This is a bit of a mixed bag but still impressive. Here are my thoughts on Internet connectivity:
1. It has Skype available but apparently does not work with typical USB Webcams. They want you to purchase their expensive web cam to use Skype - so we do not use this although we really wanted to.
2. There is no internet browser. Instead they have some internet based applications installed - Netflix, Skype, YouTube, Facebook, weather, a sports application, etc. You can go to an application store and download additional applications - some for free and some cost. We could not access Facebook because we could not figure out how to get a "@" character from the remote control keyboard to enter the user id which is an email address (three pretty technical people were stumped by this - must be a way somehow but we have not found it).
3. Using the remote control for a keyboard is akin to using a telephone number pad for data entry and not a pleasant experience (e.g. typing in things to search for in YouTube).
4. There are a set of utilities including an option to scan the network for DLNA enabled devices to find Photos, Music and Videos to play. DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is a new standard for exposing media to a network. It is supported by Windows PCs and I have a Synology Diskstation where we store content. I had to enable DLNA on the Synology and when I entered this utility on the TV, I could view photos video and listen to music files right across the network. Nice feature. My son was even able to stream a movie to the TV from his tiny Xoom tablet.
5. There are 4 HDMI inputs and one has HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) to pipe audio back out to a device connected to such. We will probably use this for the new sound system I'm going to have to purchase for this TV. There is also a 15 pin VGA out type of connector for hooking up a PC. Given the issues described above, I am going to try hooking up a PC to the TV in order to use Skype and a regular webcam, have an internet browser with a real keyboard (I'll use a wireless keyboard and mouse), and access any other Windows based content on the TV as a monitor. I will try both the 15 pin VGA input and the HDMI input for such. I'll post more later when I try this out.
6. We got a promo kit with 2 pair of 3D glasses and Avatar 3D movie for free with the TV (I think this promotion ended on June 28th however). The 3D glasses are expensive (I believe about $150 each for Panasonic Glasses). I ordered 2 additional pair of cheaper 3D glasses that seem to be highly rated from Amazon ("Sainstore 3D Rechargeable Infrared Active Shutter Glasses for Panasonic 3D HDTVs") which seem to work fine. It's good to have these other glasses because they come with different sized interchangeable nose pads and are less bulky than the Panasonic glasses. I wear regular glasses so I like the Panasonic glasses which fit well over my existing glasses. However, my wife does not wear glasses and she dislikes the Panasonic glasses which are huge on her and fall off her nose. Also, kids will benefit from the cheaper smaller glasses with changeable nose pads as well I suspect.
7. A few days after receiving the TV we purchased a Panasonic DMP-BDT110 Blu-Ray player locally at Best Buy. We actually printed out the Amazon web price and took it in and got a sales guy to match it (which greatly upset a manager there who wanted to tack on overnight shipping charges but we talked out of). It came without an HDMI cable however and I had to go scrounge one up. This player has been great. You'll see some bad reviews talking about it lacking internet connectivity - which is correct. It's "internet ready" which means you have to purchase an additional wireless dongle to get it to work. It does have a hard wired Ethernet port on the back by the way. You really don't need the internet connectivity on the blue-ray player I believe, because it appears to have the same features as the TV does which is already connected to the internet. The only possible exception is that you might need to upgrade the firmware one time. I did this by running a long Ethernet cable to it, letting it connect and download the firmware directly from the internet and then disconnected the Ethernet cable and have not had any need to use it again. You can supposedly update the firmware also by downloading it to a PC and burning it onto a disk and inserting such into the player. This Blu-ray player is an excellent match for this TV and we are very pleased with it. It claims to have 2D to 3D conversion capability for non 3D movies which we have not tried yet. Ratings we saw ion the internet state the effect is marginal at best, but some claim it's nice.
All in all, I'm happy with the purchase experience and the TV features and quality except for the sound which I'll correct. I suspect that most of these ultra-thin TV's have a reduced sound experience compared to the large bulky TV's they are replacing so I'm not too upset about the poor quality sound.
Update: I just received a Panasonic SC-HTB520PPK soundbar Home Theatre system with wireless subwoofer and hooked it up to the TV set. Sounds fantastic! It's a bit pricey at around $350 but makes an incredible difference and solves the poor audio problem with this TV set. Very easy to unbox and setup - works with a single HDMI cable attached to this TV's HDMI/ARC jack. Using the Viera link function built into all 3 Panasonic devices (the TV, The DVD Player and the Sound Bar Home Theatre) either the TV Remote or the DVD Remote can control both the TV and DVD Player and volume. Now we have an optimal setup.'
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