mickg007 - do you have Panasonic JUST mode on as your aspect ratio??? This is a non-linear stretch for 4:3 material, so the middle of the screen is perfectly oriented, but the extreme ends are stretched to fill the 16:9 panel. Something moving at a fixed rate from left to right will be stretchy and blurred at the fat left and right, but will move normally in the middle of the image.
Panzer - you'll find with the Pio image retention is really bad early on, but far less so after a few weeks of running in. Just need to be careful early doors (i.e. don't watch Sky Sports news all day on a brand new Pio screen!). The judder is something I must admit you will more likely notice if you are specifically looking for it!!! Sometimes you just gotta take the "if it ain't broke" attitude and enjoy your plasma otherwise all you will do is spend your life looking for new artefacts!!
fatdog - I think an aerial upgrade will do your picture the world of good! You're not gonna get razor sharp with freeview, but a bad reception will give you the more blocky, inconsistent picture. Although bear in mind this good also be down to the area you live in and it's signal strength rather than just your particular aerial.
Ziggy - give it time to run in. When we install, as soon as the plasma is up we get it on and running loads of full screen material. CArtoon channels, travel channel, something that doesn't have black bars, fixed on-screen information bars, and isn't predominantly one colour/shade. We leave it running under a dust cover for the rest of the job to run it in as best you can for when it's handed over to the client. Even after the first hour differences are highly noticeable, then each further hour gains a little more. Picture noise settles and black detail improves. And then of course setup, turn off all noise reduction options, use normal or cinema mode (not dynamic!!), very carefully adjust sharpness down a click or two.
Gussie - a marginal change in resolution wouldn't give this result. I would guess bitrates. If there's less picture information transmitted per pixel, then detail and accuracy is going to suffer. A higher resolution panel can easily show a sharper image than a standard resolution panel if the scaling is up to it.