I spent a few months reviewing plasmas and lcd's both in the big box stores and online. I watch a lot of sports, and the lcd's still have the motion blurring problem (except the expensive new ones). For me, that narrowed it down to the plasmas. Like others have said, the Panasonic's stood out from the rest of the plasma's (except for Pioneers, but they are almost double the cost). In terms of 1080 and 720 plasmas, I could not tell a difference between the two in 42". Maybe a little in the larger sets, but not in this size. Not worth the extra cost IMHO. So, I finally took the plunge on Panasonic's 720 42" when the price dropped below $1000, no tax, free shipping. A great deal for a TV that has been on the market for less than 2 months.
Delivery on the TV was fast (about 5 days early). They called a day ahead and delivered it within 1/2 hour of their estimated arrival. They made sure that the TV worked, and offered to take away all the packaging material. A+.
The TV was a snap to set up--10 minutes. The first thing that I noticed was that the color contrast is excellent, even on SD- much better then our 6-year-old Toshiba 27" tube TV. The clarity varies by station- a function of the channels, not the TV. SD = A-
The picture quality really excels while playing DVDs through component video. Deep rich blacks, vivid colors. The "Planet Earth" series looks incredible. We have not hooked it up to HD yet, but I'm sure it will be even better. A+.
A nice feature is that the TV remembers your settings for each video input. I.e.--we programmed a different color contrast for broadcast TV and DVDs and it stores each separately. There are more than enough ways to adjust picture quality to really fine tune it.
The audio is better than other sets, but not great. We don't use it though, since the TV is hooked up through a 5.1 receiver.
Overall, I am very happy with my purchase, both the TV and Amazon's delivery service. Definitely would buy it again.
FOLLOW UP: I just got HD, and it is even better than I could have imagined. I don't even like NBA basketball, but I found myself glued to the playoff game just to see the clarity. UFC was almost TOO clear for comfort. The only problem-- I can't go back to SD now...
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