low price, nothing else!!!!

Eventual screen burn inevitable Poor warranty Poor customer service Only 3 veiwing modes compared to others that have 5 or 6. Costly repairs on the tube can be expected every 2 or so years!!!

I purchased the 53" vers. of this HDTV in Sept. 2002. I was very pleased with the picture quality and the price/performance compared to other manufactures that I looked at(at first). For several months I watch regular TV in 4:3 mode, but mostly watched DVD's in either full or zoom modes. After only 8 months of use (casual use at that) I noticed yellowing had occured on the inside part of the screen due to watching it in 4:3 mode (and way below the recommended 15% of the total veiwing time per week). On page 6 of Panasonic's manual it does say that use of this TV in 4:3 mode is only recommend for 15% of the total veiwing time per week. I think that statement from Panasonic is VERY deceiving!!! After all, some may only watch TV for a few hours a day while others may watch TV for several hours daily. I called Panasonic to have tech. come out to the house to look over the TV to determind the problem. Of course it was screen burn in. And of course Panasonic WILL NOT cover that in their warranty. The technician that came over told me that he had customers that owned both Sony & Hitachi HDTV's that had similar problems within the warranty period and both Sony & Hitachi DID cover the repair and parts costs for their customers. After lodging several complains about this prematual burn in with Panasonic, they basically burried my case & completely blew me off as a customer. Everytime I called or was contacted by them, I was treated like a burden instead of a customer. After spending almost $2000 with them I would have expected better treatment. I will never buy another Panasonic item of ANY design after my experience with this TV. I now watch regular TV in ZOOM mode ONLY!!! For those of you that have this problem, expect to pay around $300 for the part and up to $200 for installation if you're going to pay to get it fixed yourself, which I will end up having to do. If you do buy this type of TV, it is a high maintenance TV. Expect to have this problem eventually, even as a casual watcher. As I said before, I bought it mainly to watch DVD movies on. But even if you're buying it for that purpose alone, also be warned that 80% or more movies are filmed in 70mm compared to 35mm. A 35mm movie on DVD would fill the screen completely; no black bars on the top & bottom. That is basically the difference between 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and 16:9 widescreen. So most DVD movies that you'll watch on this TV WILL have thin black bars at the top & bottom of the TV in "full" mode. Panasonic in their infinite wisdom has no compensation mode for this, where as other manufactures do, thus eliminating the top & bottom black bars by cutting off a small portion of the left and right sides. In doing this, they FORCE their buyers to watch movies in a modes that is NOT recommended in manual. That is utter BS!!!!! Panasonic knows this! And they know that everyone that buys one of their rear projection 16:9 HDTV's will eventually have to also buy replacement tubes and pay for repair costs. I DO NOT recommend this TV for someone that will be watching it on a regular basis!!! I will probably end up selling mine, taking the loss for it, and getting one that has additional viewing modes. Right now I have not fixed the TV and the warranty just ran out last month, however I did purchase the extended warranty with Circuit City and they did tell me that this problem would be covered. That remains to be seen however. Now, the TV also has begun to exhibit burn in due to watching DVD's that have black bars on the top & bottom. Not to mention the contrast is WAY OFF. Dark images blend in with no detail whatsoever going completely black, while brighter scenes become washed out. There is no way to adjust any of the setting to compensate for this after trying just about every adjustment within the TV's menuing system. And by the way, I've never connected a game system or computer system to this TV as they produce a "hotter" signal than the tuner or other video input devices (dvd player, vcr, laser disc, etc). I also kept my brightness, color, and picture levels BELOW 30, and I still got screen burn after only 8 months. Thinking about buying a Panasonic HDTV? DON'T!!!!!!