The Bottom Line: If you want High Definition TV then this is the best way to see it. DLP technology appears to be significantly better than current plasma technology.

I have been wanting to build a home theater for several years. We do not have a dedicated media room, so we had to pick something that would fit into a corner in the living room. The big projection units were out due to depth and the picture quality has never really been that good. So it boiled down to Plasma vs. DLP. DLP is a technology from Texas Instruments. It works by a very bright light being shone onto a tiny piece of silicon that consists of approximately a million moving mirrors. These mirrors are digitally controlled creating an XGA resoultion digital image. The resulting image is then passed through optics to focus on a 52" diagonal screen. I was able to compare several plasma units alongside the Panasonic DLP and when it comes to overall picture quality, DLP wins hands down.

So this is the unit that I ordered along with a bunch of other home theater gear that included high definition DirecTV receiver (also Panasonic), progressive scan DVD, TIVO/DirecTV box, and a VCR, plus surround sound system.

The unit arrived and came out of the box pretty easily. I had the DVD driving it within minutes. There is a separate stand available that I highly recommend for both looks and function. It comes on casters which are a great help. When you first see the progressive scan DVD images play you'll think "wow" but you ain't seen nothing yet. Next I mounted the dual satellite DirecTV dish and tuned into the two of their High Def channels 199 and 509. Once you see these on the DLP there's simply no going back. You will be blown away by the image. Progressive scan DVDs look ordinary, and regular DirecTV looks almost horrible on a screen size like this.

There are plenty of inputs to the unit, both component video, S-video, audios etc. I used Monster cables throughout the installation. Hooking up the remaining devices was not a problem either. One evening, one of the local stations (CBS) made some High Def. transmissions and once again I was blown away by the pictures on this unit.

And finally there's the XGA input for PCs on the front. Want a 52" display that pixel perfect for your applications or games. Then this is the display for you.

OK - there must be some drawbacks. So here they are:

1) Price. You want the very best, you're going to pay.
2) Warm up time. Significantly longer than a traditional TV. In the order of a minute to full brightness. Also, there's a weird cool down cycle in which you cannot turn back on.
3) The remote is horrible. Whoever designed it obviously didn't actually use it in a home theater system. Half the time you hit a button and the wrong device responds in a surprising way because the remote is not intuitive.
4) The Panasonic HD DirecTV box is pretty buggy (serial number 14!).I thought about the RCA one but wanted the same manufacturer. They've got quite a bit of work to do on it to get it right.
5) Poor quality signals look horrible on such a crisp large screen, often masked on a smaller fuzzier screen.
6) The built in sound system is mediocre at best. You must have a full surround system to do justice to the TV.
7) The marketing literature claims the unit is 17.7" deep. True, but on the stand it's total is nearer 22". While still a lot less than the big old clunkers, the plasma displays have it in this category.

But all these nags are lost when you marvel at the picture.