Panasonic Viera TC-L32C12 32" LCD TV

First, a bit of History - This is my fourth Panasonic TV. I've had nothing but good experiences with all of them.

The first was a 1975 "portable" color TV that my grandpa gave me when he upgraded in the 1980s. It uses vacuum tubes and is living in my attic now, but still works like a champ.

Next, was a 27" tube TV we bought several years ago. This is also a great TV.

Last year, we bought a 42" plasma for the living room. Outstanding. One minor problem, (internal connection problem) fixed under warranty by an authorized Panasonic tech who made a house call.

Now, the wife wanted a flat screen TV for the bedroom, so we bought this one.

Size - The 32" diagonal size is just right for a typical middle class bedroom. We watch in bed probably 10' away. This size is probably a bit small for a typical living room; 42" would be ideal here.

Picture - The picture quality is outstanding. Nothing more to say here. We don't have BlueRay or PlayStation3, so the 1080P model was not needed. I actually like the picture on this model better than the larger plasma picture of our living room TV.

Setup - I looked briefly in the manual to see how to install the stand into the bottom of the TV. It took 5 minutes. I was happily surprised that I did not need the manual to program the TV. It was very intuitive and just used the directional keys and the OK key. I just answered some questions that it asked me. Next, I went to autoprogram and let the TV do its thing. It took about a half hour or so to find all the channels. However, the amazing thing is that it found channels that we didn't even know we had. We have the main digital cable box in the living room, and our bedroom connection is just a tap off of that, so it was pretty surprising. Also surprising was that a few of the channels are HD channels, and we don't even subscribe to HD service through our cable provider! This is just off-the-charts good. By the way, if you're not sure whether you can see the difference between a normal and an HD channel, believe me, you can. It is immediately obvious. I recommend paying the extra $10 a month and getting HD channels after you get this TV.

Packaging - No disappointments here either. Panasonic used a heavy-duty, double-walled box, modern foam, and adequate spacing to protect this during shipment, and it did its job.

Remote - The remote is very easy to use, and is of high quality. The buttons are legibly marked with good contrast. The Ch+/- and Vol +/- are right in the middle and are angled so I can tell them by touch. The power button is at the upper left and feels different different so it can easily be shut off in the dark. Worth noting is that the remote uses 2 AA batteries, not the smaller, less convenient AAAs that some devices are using these days. This is nice because AAs have about 3 times the capacity of AAs. With a good set of alkalines, this remote will last a couple of years of channel surfing. With a set of lithiums, probably at least 5 years.

Quality - Top marks again for Panasonic. They have come a long way in modern electronics. We've only had this for a month at the time of this writing, but we are very happy with it. Based on past experience with Panasonic's support, we are sure this TV will have a long and happy lifetime. I'll come and update this review from time to time with dates inserted.