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After much deliberation, I got to a point where circumstances forced my hand. There was the technological dead end thanks to the surge of LED TVs and lack of widespread DVB-T2 support. Not to mention frustration that the living room never really got finished. And finally a local event that reduced the price for the 50 inch Panasonic G30 by over €110. Felt like a good idea at the time.
First impressions are mixed. Still in part stuck with SD TV channels which look bad on any TV this big, regardless of the fact that Panasonic has some of the best SD upscaling on the market. 720p HD TV broadcasts also have some compression artefacts and my highest bitrate blu-ray rips (like 20GB+ files) wouldn’t stream wirelessly to my WDTV Live. But the rips I did get streaming showed off the TV in a much better light.
This specific set passed most of the initial tests I could think of. Buzzing was acceptable, but noticeable in bright scenes with the volume muted. Fans were quiet enough. Didn’t see any of the fabled plasma flicker. No dead or stuck pixels that I could see. No color or brightness inconsistencies. Image looks great even in THX mode with colors, contrast and brightness muted. Not the sort of punch in the face you get from LCDs but a soft yet detailed and enjoyable picture. Reflections were also not as bad as I had feared. The G30 obviously is not the worst plasma in this department but I had heard a lot of complaints so I feared the worst. I however found that in a living room setting with dimmed lights and no windows directly behind the TV there was no issue whatsoever. In fact, my old, and equally flat CRT glass screen reflected a lot more. The speakers are also sort of OK for a flat screen TV.
It’s also nice to finally have HDMI ports (and plenty of them unlike cheaper LG plasmas).
The downsides that immediately come to mind are, predictably, phosphor lag / trailing / ghosting and posterization. The former is a little hard to figure out, perhaps I am seeing more of a rainbow effect? Not sure, will have to break the TV in and investigate. Can’t quite reproduce it either. It’s like if I focus on a point and then move my eyes, or tilt my head, squint or alter some other parameter or lose focus for a split second and experience a green outline / halo all over the screen even during a static scene. Or perhaps it’s the scene itself with a specific mix of bright and dark areas. Not super annoying, but startling and odd. Could also be like with posterization, i.e. something that is reinforced with SD or highly compressed material. So, basically, more grain and less macro blocks will improve posterization tremendously. I should also add that I’ve done very little about the image settings besides activate THX.
Also, on a side note, the built-in EPG is extremely bland, and the tuner is disconnected as soon as the EPG is activated. Changing channels is also a tad slow, but the quality of the tuner image seems otherwise beyond question. Signal reception is very strong.
Built-in "smart TV" functions are sort of rudimentary but this is a non-issue for me. I’m pretty much back to building a new HTPC anyway. Sick of all the underpowered streamer bullshit.
So overall, coming from a smallish CRT, I’d rate the TV as potentially very good but weird and pending a final verdict.
