2010 Panasonic launch

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757 posts

Ultimate Geek

#364184 6-Aug-2010 12:27

bfginger: Are New Zealand models affected by the 1080-24p / 96Hz artefacting dysfunction?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1264097

There seems to be a serious 50Hz motion handling issue with the UK/EU VT20's and that issue could be a problem for us too.

Panasonic really need to up their game next year as this sort of thing shouldn't be happening on a $5K+ TV.

Lenovo

Lenovo computer and accessories deals (affiliate link).

Kopkiwi

2617 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#364286 6-Aug-2010 15:01

hangon: i ended up buying a sony 46ex500 before world cup finals. happy with it as long as u sit down, in front.

i'm considering a second tv, leaning towards a 42 inch plasma, mainly because of better viewing angles, but frankly nothing is a no brainer at this stage.

funny how NZ$ keeps rising and you don't see these imported goods dropping price as well.

Dam it, lol. That doesn't help me.

Can't decide between the 54" Panasonic or the 55" Samsung C6200 LED.

Dunnersfella

4063 posts

Uber Geek

#364456 6-Aug-2010 21:14

Kopkiwi: How did you boys go with your TVs? End up getting any? What are the verdicts?

I ended up with a 46V20 - very happy.
No floating blacks to my eyes. You can hear a buzzing if I turn off the heater in the room, mute the sound - pause a movie on a white screen and hover over the top of the TV...
Apparently there's 3 fans in the panel??? I don't know if this is correct, but it would explain the noise.
It's certainly not something that would ever distract me from my viewing experience though.
Love it - best 46" TV out there IMHO.

Kopkiwi

2617 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#365080 8-Aug-2010 18:57

Dunnersfella:
Kopkiwi: How did you boys go with your TVs? End up getting any? What are the verdicts?

I ended up with a 46V20 - very happy.
No floating blacks to my eyes. You can hear a buzzing if I turn off the heater in the room, mute the sound - pause a movie on a white screen and hover over the top of the TV...
Apparently there's 3 fans in the panel??? I don't know if this is correct, but it would explain the noise.
It's certainly not something that would ever distract me from my viewing experience though.
Love it - best 46" TV out there IMHO.

Thanks for the input mate. Have decided to go with the 54" Pana

Now to sell the projector.

Anyone keen on an Epson EH-TW3500? 6 weeks old, brand new bulb with no hours at all, 2 year warranty? hehe

xarqi

727 posts

Ultimate Geek

#373995 28-Aug-2010 17:48

Sudden action!
An email alert overnight advised me of a price drop on the TH-P50V20Z, down from about $3.5k to $2720 from a Wellington retailer. I rung around and did some price matching locally and I would have had it today for a touch less if it had fitted in the car. As it is, tomorrow's the day - delivered.

I figured that 20% off was a good deal, and with the GST increase now about a month away, if I was getting a new TV in the next 12 months, this was the one to go for.

jakethesnake

12 posts

Geek

#375124 31-Aug-2010 22:34

Guys, I recently got the THP46v20z Plasma Viera. Awesome tv. I had a Loewe before and thought that was the bees knees, but this blows that away. Really really great picture. I know nothing about tvs apart from turning them on and watching so am impressed with the ease of set up, automatic tuning via built in freeview, quick and easy. I only have a rooftop aerial and it found all the freeview channels and displays sweet. The anologue channels look so crap compared to the digital. Wow, to think that's all I was used to. Straight out of the box colours look great. So far I cannot hear any "noise" or any buzzing as per some have mentioned. After hours of viewing it doesn't seem to get "hot", at least I think its way cooler than the old CRT tv I had.
It did take me a while to get the internet thing going on it, but once I remembered some passwords, the wifi gizmo in the tv found the network and I was away. Not many sites available via its "Vieracast" but Youtube works well enough. No idea what or how Picassa works, looks like some picture gallery so unless I can put my own up there, rather boring. Really needs access to more sites, the weather and stocks are of minor interest. It even downloaded its own software update. USB stick - pics and music displays and plays easily.
I am looking forward to trying out its other features but one I am not happy about is its recording to a "registered to this tv" hard drive to record to.....silly that it ONLY records WHAT YOU ARE WATCHING" which is rather dumb. Surely it should be able to record one channel whilst you watch another!. But the drive simply plugged into the USB port and was easy to setup and get recording. Annoying one can't unplug it and plug it into a computer and watch its recorded content from it, but the manual states it would need to be reformatted again for the laptop to recognise it, so no point I guess. Playback simple but not sure on what REWLIVE is or does. Manual states it records current programe constantly,but so does One Touch recording, so no idea what the difference is. Manual is vague on any specifics.
Panasonic recommended a Media Server called Twonky, but since I use Macs I couldnt get it to work. It quite possibly works but I have no idea on how to set up that kind of thing - network settings i guess, way too complicated for me, so hopefully i can get a mac mini and plug that in to use as my media centre eventually.
Anyhow that's my 10cents worth. So far a great tv, and a leap forward into technology for me.

xarqi

727 posts

Ultimate Geek

#375139 1-Sep-2010 00:55

I'm trialing Twonky media server too, streaming files from my iMac G5. The "Twonky" thing has some rough edges, but in essence, it does work. The 50V20 was able to play any DivX or XviD I threw at it, but choked on MP4. TS files are a bit of an oddity - the ones I had recorded on the satellite PVR before I sent it back wouldn't play - that is - until I edited them with MPEG Streamclip and saved them, and then they worked fine.

Set up of Twonky isn't overly complex, just a bit quirky. Download the server, install it and run it. It uses your default web browser as an interface. If I recall correctly, it shares your Movies and Photos and Music folders automatically, but if you have files elsewhere, you need to configure Twonky to share these too, again, through the browser interface.

It *should* see your TV as a client, and the TV see the Mac as a server. If there's trouble, look at the Twonky "Clients" section of the interface - you may need to tick the box for the TV to enable it to access the server.

It's not a perfect solution at all, but seems to do the job so far. I've had a couple of scares though, with it hogging the processor for a long time, and then finding I couldn't kill off the process! The server does crash from time to time I've found, but only by having seen the crash log.

Support is very patchy. There is a forum, but there are more questions posed than answers given.

Twonky 6.0.1 iMac G5 2.1 GHz OS X 10.4.11

kerryland

67 posts

Master Geek

#375164 1-Sep-2010 08:40

A good alternative to TWonky might be "PS3 Media Server". I've had excellent results with it streaming to both my PS3 (as you might expect) as well as the XBox 360. Forums seem to indicate that it has also performed well with Panasonic TVs.

Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux:

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/downloads/list

Keen to hear your experiences if you try it.

Cheers
Kerry

xarqi

727 posts

Ultimate Geek

#375171 1-Sep-2010 09:07

Thanks for that suggestion, Kerry. There's a lot of chatter about using a PS3 as a server for (typically) Blu-ray material, but it just never occurred to me that the software would run on anything but a PS3, and even less, that it would run on Mac. I'll give it a crack and report back (maybe in a different thread though).

openmedia

3046 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#375270 1-Sep-2010 12:53

Had a look at one of their LED sets in the UK, the L42D25B. This has DVB-T and DVB-S tuners.

Contacted Panasonic NZ about availability here and the local version is DVB-T only, and also offictally priced at about 50% about UK retail although I've yet to see anyone in NZ stock it.

Over in the UK they have quite a number of models with DVB-T and DVB-S tuner support and its a real shame they don't offer something similar here.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

Quinny

812 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#375312 1-Sep-2010 14:31

A wee while ago I was after a new tv for the bedroom. After looking at several options in the end I brought the 50V20Z. Thanks for the comments in this thread as they meant I was able to be up on any issues such as the floating backs, buzzing noise and lack of THX.

The Tv is wall mounted and so far I am yet to have any issue with a buzzing noise. The tv is absolutely fantastic and I am very glad I went for it over the LED Samsung or Sony. The picture is incredible even for analog playback.

The DLNA was a big feature for me and to date the best free option is PS3 media server. You need the last version before the beta. The beta will not work. For most files you try play and if they dont work you play the transcode version. Sometimes even then files wont play. The issues seems to be the Tv is Dlna 1.0 not 1.5 but I have been unable to confirm this. I have also tried Mezzmo which I really liked but had issues and Wild Media server but the pricing/payment for that gave me warning signals so I removed after the trial.

The USB recording is ok. But annoying that overseas you can use pvr style by moving around the freeview guide but here we cannot. Best use is that you start watching something then let it record the rest for you. Having to set the channel and then manually start the program then watch something else other than by the tuner (and no u cannot record and watch via the media server) is not a big selling point. What it does record tho is very very nice. Programs get the channel name and program name attached.

The most hated "feature" you can only access the off timer via the setup menu and only when in some tuners eg freeview. Cant get to it from the media server. No access via the remote and if you are on the media server and change to freeview you get to start again it wont remember where you are. Combine this with the off access and it is really bad as a bedroom tv. I have set the tv to auto standby after 3 hours now to get around it (and for late night cricket watching).

From my reading the Pro settings were introduced to tweak the THX ones. Using an online guide I was able to set this to what should equal or be better than THX.

The free Skype camera arrived but as the Tv is in the bedroom is not connected :). I have setup the weather options in Viera cast and it is useful. the YouTube playback is smooth as and a HD clip will look very very nice and is a great way to show off the tv.

Thats the first impressions.

xarqi

727 posts

Ultimate Geek

#375320 1-Sep-2010 14:42

@openmedia:
Yeah - it would have been great if there was a satellite tuner, but alas, no.

@Quinny:
*Free* skype camera? News to me. How does that work? The "free" part that is.

Got a link for the online calibration guide? I'm floundering a bit trying to get a decent image - everything is looking a bit muddy at the moment. I'm not too concerned though. A lot of that is because I don't want to boost the contrast too much for the first couple of hundred hours - that seems to be the general opinion on how to do things.

It sounds like the recording facility is pretty lame. That isn't a biggie for me as I can't get UHF anyway.

Quinny

812 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#375336 1-Sep-2010 15:10

The tv came with the camera promo from HN.

I cant find my saved links from when researching but these have some guides. Hifivision is a huge resource just search for panasonic and your models base name eg 50V20 (removing the Z)
http://www.xbox-360.co.za/forum/hdtv-reviews/78258-panasonic-v20.html
http://www.hifivision.com/television/11354-panasonic-v20-owners-thread-settings-problems-impressions...
http://www.hifivision.com/television/11174-bought-th-p42v20d-pana-plasma-2.html

xarqi

727 posts

Ultimate Geek

#375342 1-Sep-2010 15:29

Many thanks, Quinny.

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In other news: I did look at the PS3mediaserver project site, but it won't run on my G5 iMac, it looks like Twonky may be the only choice I have (after having tried and discarded the Nullriver Medialink option since it didn't support .TS files).

It may all be a little moot. When (if?) my Vu+ Duo arrives, I should be able to pull files from my LAN and stream them to the TV. If that doesn't work, I'll look at the WD Live possibilities.

jakethesnake

12 posts

Geek

#375443 1-Sep-2010 19:29

Set up of Twonky isn't overly complex, just a bit quirky. Download the server, install it and run it. It uses your default web browser as an interface. If I recall correctly, it shares your Movies and Photos and Music folders automatically, but if you have files elsewhere, you need to configure Twonky to share these too, again, through the browser interface.

It *should* see your TV as a client, and the TV see the Mac as a server. If there's trouble, look at the Twonky "Clients" section of the interface - you may need to tick the box for the TV to enable it to access the server.

Hi, glad to know someone else is doing the same and maybe I can pick your brains and see if can you help me with this twonky set up. I'm a newbie to all this network stuff and really struggle with it. I downloaded the 6.01 twonkymedia server and installed it on my old mac laptop g4 mac OS10.4.11. I use safari, but even though the twonky program can find the tv address (as the client?) and yes its ticked and correctly identifies the tv, but how do I tell the tv to find the twonky? I go into the Media server menu on the telly and it cannot find any server. How do I get this working? In twonky in the list on the left, the word network which is underlined opens a screen that says nicrestart, which is ticked. What else do I need to do? Very confusing.
All the paths to my itunes and pictures are set in twonky in the "sharing" page correctly. When I click the part that says mediabrowser-Flash, it opens a window that has a smaller window that says "Null 9" click ok, then I see a window with what looks like a list of itunes but its all blank and I cant access it....any help appreciated. thanks

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