Panasonic G20 Owners Thread - part 6

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I don't find the blacks that noticeable in a good or bad way but great tv though.

NB can anyone please help with this USB recording question. On formatting a 1TB hard drive, it's recognised and shows as 931GB capacity (if you press info button once you've done the USB HDD set up). See 931 photo attachment. Just the size you'd expect given hard drive size is always less than advertised. But....as per the second photo, the empty drive also shows in the video (viera tools) menu as 100 % free (correct) but just 876GB space. Why the disparity?? What has happened to the further 55GB?! When I record a programme the available space then reduces from 876 (not 931). I couldn't get any explanation from Panasonic and wonder if anyone else can comment either with the same situation or does their hard drive show the correct capacity in the video section? I've checked and have the same disparity with a second hard drive.
 

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It should do mate. Just a quick question but what setting you using for night viewing?

Im using THX most the time but sometimes use pro1 with tele's settings. I cant see much of a difference though regarding blacks.
 
Do you watch without lights on? If so thats why your seeing a difference at night, these panels dont show 'pure blacks' but more a very dark grey.
If you placed a very dark grey onto a light background it looks black (this is what you see in the daytime), place the same colour grey onto black and it stands out as grey(this is what you see at night).
Hope that makes sense.
:confused::D
 
My G20 on the stand is a bit unbalanced. Checked with a level. I have to prop it up slightly on one side with my portable hard disk between the frame and stand.

Biggest issues I have with the TV are in the following order.
Phosphor decay flashes of greenish yellow/blue (Can be very distracting on movies like Sin City).
Posterisation. Most obvious on out of focus areas where the colour differences are small. Underwater scenes of light coming from above can show this up bad. Or things like light through fog/mist. I don't know why that shows it up so bad but it does.
Floating blacks. Luckily I don't see it often but when I do it's annoying. The Dark Knight intro is the best example I have seen to demonstrate this. When you see it...eek!
Lack of Dolby Digital 5.1 from Freeview HD (That's a real joke to be honest and everyone involved in this including the BBC and their choice of audio codec should be taken outside and shot! Transcoding 5.1 AAC to DD5.1 should have been mandated!).
HD videos played from the network only displayed as SD. Why? If the TV is powerful enough to decode it and display it as SD then it should be powerful enough to display it in HD! Maybe it will be added in a later update but I don't hold out much hope.
Adverts on the TV guide. Unforgivable. We paid for the TV outright. How dare they force adverts upon us!

Other than the above it's a great HDTV. Being my first HDTV though I feel rather disappointed considering the cost. It's easy to say return it but the dealer I got it from probably won't be easy to deal with as it was not from a big box seller. I've decided to just live with it's foibles until something better comes along and then sell it on.

Sorry to put the downer on things. These are issues most people probably won't notice and I do not notice them all the time or are less important. I am the perfectionist though and when I see that 'some' stuff that could 'probably' be fixed with some firmware update it generally peeves me no end.

Roll on OLED HDTV's...
 
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That looks like exactly what I need! How loud do you reckon it can go?

Also looking at the specs, I notice 'HDMI Audio', is this what benefits from connecting it to the 'ARC' port on the TV?

Also what justifies the £150 increase on the next model up?
Onkyo HTS6305 Black | 5.1 Package System with HDMI inc. Speakers exc. DVD player & iPod not included | Richer Sounds


The most important difference being 100w vs 85w. 15 watts difference in output to the speakers per channel. More oomph = more powerful sound.
Also, the more expensive one can output to 7 channels, while the cheaper one only outputs to 5. Meaning you can hook up an aditional two speakers to the more expensive one.

According to specification on the page you linked, that is.
 
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Been away for a few day's lads and lasses should have been a bit longer but manged to put myself in hospital today with of all things an infected tounge :confused::laugh:. Any way had to cut the holiday short ( my luck recently :( ). One thing i can say is i missed my G20,( sad i know), after watching a 26" Technika LCD for a couple of day's.;)

PS.
Wife and Daughter think its realy funny as i can't talk. But i know what you lot are thinking Geordies can't talk anyway...................................::laugh
 
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Been away for a few day's lads and lasses should have been a bit longer but manged to put myself in hospital today with of all things an infected tounge :confused::laugh:. Any way had to cut the holiday short ( my luck recently :( ). One thing i can say is i missed my G20,( sad i know), after watching a 26" Technika LCD for a couple of day's.;)
Infected tounge:p! Oh err misses!:blush::laugh:
Hope you ok Barry:p
 
Hey folks, been away for a couple of days!

Also looking at the specs, I notice 'HDMI Audio', is this what benefits from connecting it to the 'ARC' port on the TV? (Onkyo HTS3305)

Is this what it means?

For a start the more expensive one comes with an active sub rather than a passive one. Also it has 4 HDMI inputs instead of 3 and 2 coax inputs instead of 1.

Please excuse my ignorance, but I don't know the difference between passive/active subs!


In the meantime I've been looking at Home Theatre options, which would possibly be the best solution for me. I have found 2 that have the required 2 HDMI inputs.

These are both sSmsung and are the HT-C6500 and HT-C5550

The C6500 has pretty good reviews, but I can't seem to find any for the C5550.

The C5550 would probably be the best choice, being tall boys, but does anybody know if you can dismantle the front speakers?

Are there any others I could maybe look at?

Apologies as I am not meaning to go OT with this post, please feel free to PM me with any guidance. I have also posted this in the Home Theatre threads.
 
Nevermind about my last post. ^^

I found the HT-C5550 for £399.99, decided to go for it.

I'm sure it will cover my needs, 1000W, 2 HDMI inputs, Blu-ray & DVD upscaling.

I do have one question though:D...

I connect my 2 360's into the player, then the Blu-Ray player into the TV via HDMI (ARC port). Now to get sound from the TV (freeview HD) would I need to connect an optical cable? As I'm not sure the player supports audio return from hdmi.
 
Bill e, unfortunately not. USB recording can only be done on an external hard drive of 160GB upwards capacity (I've taken this info from the manual and it's what I've found too). You can view files in certain formats on memory cards and sticks but cannot record to them thru the TV. The recording facility is a brilliant feature of the TV given it can record freeview HD (albeit it's all encrypted and can't be viewed other than on the tv to which it's registered).
 
I'm officially an official member of the g20 club, £940 for the 46" happy days, loving it... FIFA 10 is wow, dark knight bd, mega wow!!! :) thanks all in helping make the decision
 
I'm officially an official member of the g20 club, £940 for the 46" happy days, loving it... FIFA 10 is wow, dark knight bd, mega wow!!! :) thanks all in helping make the decision

Congratulations! I'm still waiting on mine damn it!

Where did you buy for that price?? Did you get any warranty?
 
Bill e, unfortunately not. USB recording can only be done on an external hard drive of 160GB upwards capacity (I've taken this info from the manual and it's what I've found too). You can view files in certain formats on memory cards and sticks but cannot record to them thru the TV. The recording facility is a brilliant feature of the TV given it can record freeview HD (albeit it's all encrypted and can't be viewed other than on the tv to which it's registered).

Thanks for that, What silent/quiet drive enclosures you guys using??
 
How does the G20 handle football on SKY Hd, any of the motion blur, judder, double center line that is reported by some on the V20,VT20 thread?
 
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hello fellow G20 owners, ive been reading avforums for some time, this is my first post, unfortunately its ragarding an issue with my 50g20
A few weeks ago i was in the service menu,(fool i know) i was just checking how long my tv had been running for(i now know u dont need to go into srv tool for this) but while in there i hit something i shouldnt have, and now I have a problem the the hdcp (i think) on my tv.
whenever I have something on say sky hd if i turn my tv off by the I/O switch and back on, i get a pink/purple screen (im thinking a hdcp issue) the only way to currently solve this is to turn everything off at the mains, any help on correcting my stupidity would be much appreciated
 
hello fellow G20 owners, ive been reading avforums for some time, this is my first post, unfortunately its ragarding an issue with my 50g20
A few weeks ago i was in the service menu,(fool i know) i was just checking how long my tv had been running for(i now know u dont need to go into srv tool for this) but while in there i hit something i shouldnt have, and now I have a problem the the hdcp (i think) on my tv.
whenever I have something on say sky hd if i turn my tv off by the I/O switch and back on, i get a pink/purple screen (im thinking a hdcp issue) the only way to currently solve this is to turn everything off at the mains, any help on correcting my stupidity would be much appreciated

Have you any idea what you did and where you did it?
 
Can anyone recommend any good and relatively cheap HDMI cables? Or would this be sufficient
Scan.co.uk: CDLHD-901 - 1m Scan HDMI Cable with Swivel Ends v1.3B Spec
Need 2 at least to connect my equipment once I have it all.

Yes mate that will do fine but this one 2M HDMI to HDMI Cable with Swivel Twist Connector Ends: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo is slightly dearer but there is no £3.99 delivery charge on it its 97p dearer, it is not free delivery on the scan stuff unless you spend over £20 with the avforums offer.
One hdmi cable is very much like another it works or it dosent the only difference is the shielding.
I have 3 fiver ones from amazon and they work just as well as my mates £50 monster one he was conned into buying from currys :suicide:
 
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Bill e, my hard drives are certainly quieter than the tv with its buzz! Western Digital and Hitachi both have worked fine for me. Panasonic have tested Buffalo and I'm told Iomega. Some uncertainty was created by the manual in that as I recall, it said Panasonic had only tested with Buffalo drives and couldn't confirm compatability of other drives. I think some reviews when the tv came out highlighted that as a risk. But I've not found it a problem. You may know external hard drives are quite cheap these days; you can register up to 8 of them in total. Matter of choice whether you'd want to archive programmes on the hard drive or just watch once and delete. But if archiving when choosing the size of drive to use, bear in mind HD programmes take a lot of space- I'm finding up to 5GB per 2 hour film. Also note, as I've just learnt from Panasonic, up to 10% of the drive space is "reserved" for the rewind live tv function, whether or not you use it ie a 500GB hard drive will show as c.425 GB available capacity (rather than the actual capacity of 465GB).

Mr Bester- you could ask Panasonic support for help (01344 862444). They've sorted out a few issues/concerns I've had. They don't ask who you are by the way. NB would be interested to know how you can check hours used other than thru the service menu?
 
Yes mate that will do fine but this one 2M HDMI to HDMI Cable with Swivel Twist Connector Ends: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo is slightly dearer but there is no £3.99 delivery charge on it its 97p dearer, it is not free delivery on the scan stuff unless you spend over £20 with the avforums offer.
One hdmi cable is very much like another it works or it dosent the only difference is the shielding.
I have 3 fiver ones from amazon and they work just as well as my mates £50 monster one he was conned into buying from currys :suicide:

Thanks for that, appreciated.

Any chance you could answer this query for me...

Nevermind about my last post. ^^

I found the HT-C5550 for £399.99, decided to go for it.

I'm sure it will cover my needs, 1000W, 2 HDMI inputs, Blu-ray & DVD upscaling.

I do have one question though:D...

I connect my 2 360's into the player, then the Blu-Ray player into the TV via HDMI (ARC port). Now to get sound from the TV (freeview HD) would I need to connect an optical cable? As I'm not sure the player supports audio return from hdmi.
 
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^^^^ no mate i dont have my g20 through an amp sorry, what about mark (haircut 100) he may be able to help you, MARK????
 
^^^^ no mate i dont have my g20 through an amp sorry, what about mark (haircut 100) he may be able to help you, MARK????

Thanks Roberto:D

I connect my 2 360's into the player, then the Blu-Ray player into the TV via HDMI (ARC port). Now to get sound from the TV (freeview HD) would I need to connect an optical cable? As I'm not sure the player supports audio return from hdmi.

If the player(???) doesn't support ARC then, yes, optical or even RCA in to HT:)
 
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