Panasonic Viera TC-P50X1

I researched this product a lot before buying. I read the manual in detail from the panasonic website. I like Panasonic products; I myself still have a panasonic tube tv, vcr and dvd player that work… perfectly after 8 years of daily use. While this plasma is a good unit overall, here is a word of warning. if any of your tv channels are in the 4:3 format, a sidebar will show and image retention or burn-in will result. same happens when watching a movie dvd - horizontal bars appear. The manual clearly says so on page 45 - "Note that Image retention of the side bar may occur from displaying it for a long time". So apparently, the burn-in problem with plasmas is not solved, but minimized using features like pixel orbiting and screensavers. This is a problem for those who watch a lot of international TV channels, most of which are not in HD and thus will display in 4:3. This means to avoid burn-in when watching these channels you must set the Format setting to Full resulting in everything appearing wider than it is. Of course if you dont watch any 4:3 channels this is a non issue.

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I was renting this TV thru a rent-a-type place paying $140 a month before I purchased this thru amazon. Let me tell you this TV is the best deal since EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did order thru amazon paid $789 and… when it arrived the screen was CRACKEd. I was so mad. I waited a week for this TV to arrive and it came broke. I called up amazon and the lady told me they would rush ship me another one. I asked how long should it take, and she said about a week. I told here what kind of rush shipping is that, as I waited a week for the first one to arrive. She then said she could do nothing. Could not even credit me something for this inconvenience. Horrible customer serveice on this AMAZON deal. If I knew it would take 2 weeks to arrive I would have gone to WOLLY WORLD!!!

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