Please please help me to decide on buying this TV or not!

I’ve been going crazy trying to decide on a widescreen for watching DVD’s (Lord of the Rings when released) and normal 4:3 format broadcast TV. I really like the look of the Panasonic TX-32DK1 for the price compared to other 32’s, but how good actually is it since I can’t find any comprehensive reviews.

The things I’m unsure of are:

What is the picture quality like when watching a broadcast 4:3 format picture and NOT zoomed so that you can see the full image?

Whats the equivalent ‘square’ screen size when in this mode?

Are the black vertical bars unstable or distorted when not zoomed and is there any colour bleeding?

It says it will play NTSC from VCR’s through the front AV sockets. Does this mean it won’t play NTSC DVD’s through the scart?

Please let me know your opinions of this discontinued widescreen not only for DVD’s but also for watching broadcast TV in 4:3 format, and help me make up my mind. There seem to be some good feelings about this TV on the forum but I don’t know what the general consensus is.

Thanks for any advice,
Dave.

Hi
I have just bought a Panasonic 28" PL10 100Hz and I am not impressed at all. The picture itself is crisp and clear but in 4:3 and 14:9 modes the black bars down the sides are really wobbly. I bought the set on Sunday and have a replacement being delivered on Wednesday. However, I have just returned from my local TV shops and discovered that all the sets in the shop were bad too. Infact all the other makes were pretty bad for this except for the Sony range. I tuned every TV into the same channel and put each set to 4:3. I was shocked - I thought that with modern technology, a TV could be faltless.

Mark Mac

videoman - As you say, the DK1 is discontinued and the replacement is the 50Hz TX32PL1 which 'What Video & TV' just voted the best 50Hz 32" TV on the market, retails around £1K but is available for £700ish out there...

I'd be interested to know where you've found that's still selling the DK1s though and for how much...

thanks

[mandlebrot]

Most if not all widescreen TV’s suffer to some degree from this side border wobble on 4x3 none stretched mode. This is due to manufacturers using poor quality power supplies or so I’ve been told by quite a few electronics engineers (proper engineers, not the 1's that get sent out to fix or not your TV), these engineers were independent and some of them friends so they had nothing to gain from telling me lies. This does not mean they are definitely correct though.

I just bought the Panasonic TX-32DK1 from Currys for £599 in a sale I think the sale is now over and its gone back up to £699. My first impressions are that its not as sharp as I hoped. I have a very old Granada ex rental 4:3 TV and the picture is not a great improvement with the Panasonic although bigger of course. I don't think there is a fault because the TV's in the shops are not absolutely crisp either.

Pictures are bright and with good contrast, but there tends to be some over saturation of some highlights, especially against bright blue backgrounds. The sharpness control does not reduce this.

The edges of the picture in 4:3 mode do wobble a bit but are not that bad although there is a very slight red colour bleeding line on the left hand edge. Could someone please tell me if this is normal?

Overall I think the picture quality is better than some 1K+ sets and for the price not bad, but I think the flat screen 28" Panny for the same price is probably sharper.

I don't like the wooden stand that it came on, could someone suggest a better quality one (maybe glass and metal) that would go with this TV for £150 or less.

Thanks,
Dave.

I've found another problem with this TV thats been mentioned on the forum before. There is some cross talk interference inside the TV which causes a ghost image from the current channel selected on the tuner to be visible when in AV mode. The effect is quite annoying when you've seen it. You can actually see the outlines of moving objects from terrestrial TV or a video from the arial when watching a DVD through the AV1 socket.

The image and vertical edge of the TV frame can be seen slowly moving to the left and upwards. Its more noticeable on a solid colour like my DVD setup screen and is very noticeable when I switch the DVD between Video, NTSC and RGB modes.

I've tried unplugging the arial so that there is no signal to interfere, but all this does is cause noise on the AV1 signal because of the cross-talk.

Please does anyone have experience of this sort of thing with Panasonics or any other TV and maybe found a work round? Because it seems to be internal to the TV it makes no difference what combinations of signals I feed into it. If I make my video send a pure blue screen into the arial this causes very fine diagonal lines over the AV1 signal.

Dave.

The Panasonic 28inch set that I have just got rid (not widescreen) of did exactly as you say in this post. I thought at first that it was the way I had the other items up or maybe my DVD or video player was at fault. But no, it was definitely the set and now i have another one, all is well again. Also if I used the AV2 socket on the TV, you would get no colour and lots of horizontal lines.