Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85U 46-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV

Probably the best picture on any television under $8,000. Not overly feature rich but lots of guts.

I'm a little upset that this set came with some dead pixels. On a green, white, or grey screen - there's a pixel dead center that appears either black or pink depending on the image color. There's another pixel that appears black right of center.

If it weren't for this I'd probably have rated 5 stars. 46" is much larger that you'd expect. It's like a movie theater screen in your face.

The appearance of the set is very pleasing. The "gray" lip you see on almost all pictures isn't gray at all, it's black.

The picture is fabulous, no overscan whatsoever, blah blah blah but that's hard to appreciate when your $1K plus item that arrived just yesterday has dead pixels. Amazon is taking care of me, but I'm not holding my breath for the replacement to have 100% pixels working either. I've done a lot of reading, and from my unscientific results, it appears 50% of these sets suffer from pixel issues. Whether you'll notice is up to you. Want to be worry free? Just watch TV. Want to be disappointed? Pop in an SD card with solid color images and count the dead pixels.

Edit: I understand some, or maybe even most of you would find a few dead pixels out of a million acceptable. Maybe I should accept this I don't know. I'm running a "pixel fixer" DVD right now and if the fast color changing images pop these back into life, I'll surely change my review.

So far none of the dead pixels have changed, and I've actually spotted some more in addition to that. Instead of racing to make TVs flatter than practically necessary, why not work on quality control? Yikes.

Final update: None of the stuck or dead pixels have removed themselves. I am swapping this set out with a new one on Monday. Again, this set would have easily received 5 stars from me if it weren't for this problem. As it stands, my level of satisfaction will remain a "2"

-COUNT THIS AS 2 BAD REVIEWS, I've now gone through 2 sets, AND HERE'S REVIEW #2

Yeah, it's me again. I'm 0 for 2. Can you believe this? Yeah, my second one has problems too. Dead pixels, again! Listen to my first review, don't check for dead pixels, you will absolutely be disappointed. I'm now batting .000 for a TV that's brand new to be right.

I will probably wait before getting another HDTV. There's no way I want to see the delivery guy AGAIN. Don't want my wife seeing another one go, but hey, $1300 is too much money to get something that's not terrific.

My 2005 widescreen, CRT HDTV made by Panasonic has overscan (as do all tubes) but it doesn't have any dead pixels. It also doesn't look out of focus. I swear, although there's no "blooming" on a plasma (as there is on a CRT when turning up contrast) it looks like there's a reflection trapped inside the 2 layers of glass on this plasma. It's very distracting and my first set did not suffer from this problem. The best way to describe it is to say that it appears that there's dust beneath the glass. Even HD text looks blurred. Has my wife and I questioning if we need glasses. If only the first set didn't have dead pixels, it did not exhibit this problem.

I'm not blindly just going to buy an LCD, or a Samsung plasma - I'll wait for god knows how long for the quality control to be advanced.

Who needs a 12mm thin TV? I'll take no distracting flaws please. Quality control! Anybody home?!

PS: This whole X.V. color thing eliminating "banding" (scroll up to the ad) is BS. I see banding that looks exactly like that on 50% of HD commercials.

The TV arrived on time this all worked great. Thanks Amazon for the great job!!!

Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85U 46-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV

After over a month of researching flat panels, I settled on the Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85U. I am more interested in watching movies and sports than playing games, so I opted for a plasma. This TV seemed to be the third-best plasma on the market (behind the Pioneer Kuro and the Panasonic 800-series), and considering price, seemed to offer the greatest value. I've had this TV for about a week and am very happy with my purchase so far. Here are my observations:

- The CEVA white-glove delivery was excellent. Ordered on a Saturday night and received in 8 days (6th business day). I was hoping for slightly quicker delivery but the service was excellent. Two delivery guys arrived within the pre-scheduled 2-hour window, carried in the TV, removed it from the packaging, installed the base/stand, placed it on my TV stand, asked me to hookup my satellite cable, and turned it on to verify picture and sound. After I checked it over for any damage, I signed the sheet and they were on their way.

- Standard-definition satellite programming is a disappointment on this TV, and from what I've heard, on all large HDTVs. I opted to upgrade to HD programming for an additional $10 per month. That will be installed tomorrow.

- Local over-the-air digital/HD channels look great.

- Standard-definition DVDs, played on a standard DVD player, look MUCH better than expected. I purchased an inexpensive component video cable from Amazon, and it delivers a better picture than on my old CRT TV. These movies look so good I may delay purchase of a blu-ray player for a while.

- The sound from the TV seems good to me. I was happy to find bass and treble adjustments in the setup menu. Increasing the bass greatly improved the sound out of the box and may be the solution to a previous reviewer's complaint about "tinny" sound. The downward-firing speakers certainly provide much more indirect sound than my old CRT, but I don't find it offensive.

- The picture is excellent and needed very little adjustment out of the box. I chose the "cinema" mode, which was just a little warmer than "standard" mode.

- The remote design seems acceptable but will take a little getting used to. My only complaint so far is the "last" button, used to jump back to the last channel you watched, is too far from the channel up/down buttons.

- The stand does not swivel but I had no need for that in my room anyway.

- The printed instructions are helpful and Panasonic included batteries for the remote and 2 cable ties for your connections.

- The TV runs warm, as with all plasmas, but is not offensive. It seems professional calibration will help this.

I hope to follow-up with an update in a month or two after I experience HD programming and perhaps blu-ray movies with this TV. But until then, I'd give this experience a full 5 stars.

It's just as most of the other reviews have said. It's a fantastic tv, well worth the price in my opinion, and I'd buy another, if I could go back in time and do it over.