Panasonic TC-P42X1 42" HDTV Plasma TV

Panasonic TC-P42X1 42" 720p Plasma HDTV

THE GOOD:
After calibration the picture is a vast improvement over analog CRT TVs, like watching a film. Not true HDTV, as it is 720p rather than 1080, but at normal viewing distances most people will not be able to tell the difference. I've looked at 1080p TVs on display in stores, and their pictures did not look any better to me although they cost a lot more and consume more power. This TC-P42X1 is an economical alternative. Plasmas are not quite as bright as LCD TVs, so this TV is better suited for dimly lit rooms rather than viewing in daylight.

That said, there are some flaws. At first turn-on the picture (Standard mode) as preset by the factory is somewhat dull & low contrast with a slight greenish-yellow tinge (other reviewers have noted the same thing), so calibration is necessary. The Panasonic manual does not provide any information for doing this so you have to do a Google search, but when done this adjustment results in a substantial improvement. Not perfect: if a scene has a large area of a very bright color, then that area tends to wash out (lose detail, texture) - for example, in a close-up of a woman with a bright red dress, the dress becomes more of a featureless bright red smear. This problem does not occur with darker colors or in scenes that have a lot of normal colors, like landscapes. The set-up menu does provide some selectable picture modes with preset color settings (Standard, Vivid, Cinema, Game), but they didn't appear to improve things. There is also a Custom menu for adjusting colors, which the manual does not explain.

THE BAD:
This TV really falls down in 2 areas - channel editing and audio, otherwise I would recommend it.

CHANNEL EDITING SHORTCOMING (make that "DESIGN BLUNDER"):
After the setup's initial automatic channel scan to find all the TV stations in the owner's area, only those found channels can then be selected for viewing - if a new station goes on the air, or if the antenna has to be turned to point toward another city, then any new stations cannot be tuned or manually added for viewing: instead, the  whole channel scanning sequence, which is somewhat hard to find in the menus, has to be restarted, and in the process all the previously saved channels are deleted. In other words, if you live between cities and have to rotate your antenna to get different channels, then you will have to rescan all channels every time you move the antenna, a real pain in the butt.
There is a "Manual" menu selection for editing the saved channel list, but it can only be used to de-select or restore the channels previously found, it cannot add new ones.

IMHO this is an unbelievable programming blunder for a company like Panasonic - their older VCRs could manually select, add and delete any channel, and so can cheap digital-to-analog converter boxes, so why didn't they put this simple feature on their new $600-$700 HDTV? I can only believe the design engineer was asleep on the job, or perhaps they farmed out the progamming to a junior designer still wet behind the ears and didn't check up on him.

AUDIO SHORTCOMINGS:
(1) The specs say it has 10 watts output for each stereo channel, 20 watts total, but I wonder how they ever came up with that figure, as it is the weakest 20 watts I've ever heard - even at 100% volume level it is softer than most ordinary AM table radios. In the usual house room a true 1 watt (average, not peak) of audio power is uncomfortably loud for most people, so the TC-P42X1 doesn't even seem to be reaching that level. When viewing, if a scene has people talking both loudly and softly, then the soft speech parts may be too weak to understand. Other reviewers have not reported this, so perhaps this one TV was not set up correctly at the factory, I don't know.
For comparison, I have a stereo with a power output indicator, and at just 1/2 watt average per channel (1 watt total) it is a lot louder than this TV.

(2) Making the audio problem worse is the unfortunate fact that this TV only has an optical digital audio output jack for playing through an external amplifier-speaker system. Optical audio connections are a fairly recent development, so likely the majority of older home stereo systems in use today do not have optical audio inputs. It would have been simple for Panasonic to include a pair of standard analog stereo RCA output jacks, but either out of cheapness or designer incompetence they did not, nor did they include a headphone jack which could also have been used for that.
Someone with technical competence could open the TV and add left-right analog audio outputs, but that would be beyond most owners.

(3) The audio breaks up first and noisily when there is any interference like thunderstorms (even with lightning up to 80 miles away) - with each burst of atmospheric static a person talking on the TV sounds like he's gargling, while the picture only shows a few ixelated streaks. I compared the audio at the same time to that from an external digital-to-analog converter box, and the audio was much smoother from the box.
Sloppy engineering, IMHO.

Summary:
Not recommended for those who need to add new channels frequently, or need good stand-alone audio, standard left-right analog audio output jacks, or an earphone jack. Those who are satisfied with just a good picture and somewhat weak audio may find it OK.