Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsNetflix and Burn in?
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2011
When the TV arrived I was surprised at the ingenuity of the packaging. No knife or pair of scissors was needed to remove it. There were a few plastic plugs that needed to be removed and the box top simply slid off, revealing my prize. I have been pleased over all, and it has turned out to be what I expected it to be, with the exception of Netflix streaming movies and television shows. For the moment, I will detail the pro's.
Pros:
Excellent picture quality; ease of mounting onto wall; recessed power and volume/channel controls; lots of options for connectivity; Ethernet port; channel surfing is pretty brisk; screensaver could be a lifesaver; good range with the remote (for instance, works flawlessly 20 feet away); screen seems to stay pretty cool to touch.
Cons:
Sound quality is unbelievably crappy; remote scroll buttons could be a little wider apart and the buttons themselves could be wider, making scrolling easier; mute button on remote is a tiny button that you have to hunt for, as if no one would ever think of pushing mute; considering many people will hang this TV from the wall, you would think the power cord would be a few feet longer, considering especially that there seems to be a proprietary connection to the TV; no HDMI cable, which is just stupid;
Now for the unbelievable: the unit is optimized for built-in access to services, such as Netflix... However, most streaming content from Netflix is either in 4:3 format or widescreen movie format and therefore black sidebars or black upper and lower bars are displayed. THERE IS NO WAY TO REMOVE THESE BARS BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE THE FORMAT WHILE VIEWING NETFLIX. The manual warns in three different places that viewing content with sidebars WILL cause burn-in. The format is adjustable outside of Netflix but becomes unadjustable inside Netflix. It seems that since this unit is being so highly advertised for its Netflix streaming readiness, that there would be some fix for this problem. However, as it stands, nearly all content which could be streamed from Netflix WILL, according to the manual, cause irreparable screen image burn-in which is not covered under warranty. I will be calling Panasonic to see if there is a fix to this issue.
So far, the experience has been satisfactory with the exception of my now worthless Netflix subscription.