Dead-on color reproduction.
Excellent brightness and contrast.
Top black-level performance.
lowest video noise level. No audio noise at all.
Video images are much more natural than those on LCD monitors!
many picture adjustment features (including many forms of PIP).
costly but convenient expendable/exchangable slots.

fear of burn-in so need to view distored widened pictures often.
viewable block images on large black areas.

I think this product would be too popular and nobody would care to find reviews in this audioreview site. However, in case you are lead to this site when you try to find the review for this Panasonic TH50PHD8UK, I would like to provide you some input.

In a word, this is an outstanding monitor! Yes, I know, it does not have a HDTV tuner. It cannot produce sound (no speakers). It did not even come with a stand. What extra price did I need to pay? $100 for a used Sony SAT HD200 DirecTV/Over-the-air HDTV receiver and $20 for a new Panasonic stand (for comsumer models like TH-50PX50U) on Ebay. I paid $2995 + 100.80 shipping from PCconnection.com. A good retailer! This Panasonic Plasma is worth more than the price I paid!

You want to ask me the picture quality? The best I have ever seen from many retail stores! Its brightness and contrast are excellent. The black performance is at top levevl. The color reproduction? I used my AV test DVD and find out that I do not need to adjust the color setting. Every color is right on (This is also mentioned on CNET.com. Glad that the CNET people did not lie!) How about the sound? It does not produce sound at all! I never need any crappy sounds from TV sets at all with my upper-scaled HiFi set up. As a matter of fact, I like the elegant, simple apperance of this unit. It only makes my AV system seen better.

Noise? It does not generate as much video noise as most plasma sets. Only problem is the light blocks that can be seen from big totally dark area specially if the dark area stays for a long time (over 5 seconds). I thought the sharpness was not good when I used the Toshiba DST-3000 tuner for HDTV programs. But when I switched to Sony HD200 receiver, the pictures I saw obviously met or surpassed any HDTV pictures I viewed in all stores. The sharpness of the pictures remind me the sharp pictures from my Canon 20D comparing to the pictures from cell phone cameras. I cannot ask for more sharpness! I believe that the combination of this monitor and the Sony SAT HD200 easily beats the Panny model with TV tuners deep into water!

There are numerous picture adjustments available for this monitor, more than comsumer models for sure. So that you can easily adjust it to your own prefered brightness and color settings. Its PC input is also useful. I can play the digital photos directly on my Laptop and view it on this plasma. The pictures look so life-like and colorful that when I look at my laptop's LCD screen, I feel like I am viewing blured black-and-white pictures!

So how much detail would you like me to describe this plasma? Why don't you just buy one yourself and check it out. I guarantee that you will love what you do! Don't think some MAXIN monitor are similar to this Panny. I view both of them side-by-side in Costco. Only if you view them from 100 yards away, you think they have to similar black-level. When you get close by (at 30 feet), the Panny shows much more details, much less noise and much more accurate colors. So don't expect too much from cheap plasmas. Buy the way, how many 50" HDTV plasmas you can find that are cheaper than $3000?

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Similar Products Used:

Sony 32" Tube TV.