Panasonic PT-53WX42 53 in. TV

I purchased this TV from the dreaded REX TV & Audio only because I didn't feel comfortable buying something of this size online. After several rounds of bartering I managed to get the cost down to $1350 including a DVD player and 2 year extended warranty. Once I got it home and completed the set up / calibration I was disappointed. The color had a matrix like greenish hue to it. Also 3 vertical "bars" could be seen up and down on the screen. Plus during darker sceens on tv / movies there was a weird shadow like effect in the dark areas. Now obviously I called REX back right away and they were useless, (Sorry to any other REX stores beside Sheboygan, WI. as you may have better customer service). I ended up finding out on my own who was the authorized service dealer for Panasonic in my area and arranged for them to take a look at it. Several weeks had passed until they were able to service it. Imagine my agonizing tourture waiting to truely get to use my big screen the beautiful way it was ment to be seen. After performing a series of advanced calibration only accessable by a service technician the green hue was gone and viola! the color was fixed. However the technican said that the "bars" were most likely due to an incompatablity with the DVD player, (as they only appered during DVD playback). And go figure, I was unable to show him an example of the shadowing in the dark areas so he never had a chance to "fix" that. After switching from a SONY brand DVD player to a JVC progressive scan one there was marked inprovement. However there are still a few times the "bars" are still visible in really dark loading screens. I have yet to receive an HDTV source to truely see how this thing looks but I'm sure it will be good. I don't believe that REX had a true HDTV signal going into the display model I saw and if they did the set wasn't adjusted properly. Obviously they want you to buy the more expensive TV's and not the lower cost one's, commissioned jack a**es! So until I get the HDTV signal going through this set I cannot give this a 5 star rating. Anyone purchasing this TV should be prepared to have it professional calibrated as there are many more settings only available to a technican. But for the price and the big screen BOOM it's a good deal. Prices have gone as low as $1299 recently (02-04-04)