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Apr 14, 2008 Sancho Panza     Purchased this TV on Black Friday for $1000. Best $1000 I ever spent; guess the...

Jan 21, 2008 project     Got this tv on sale at (deleted) for $996 and it is AMAZING (to clear up from th...

Jan 19, 2008 Bill      John posted: I Love this DLP. The picture is awesome, in HD, and when its not. ...

Jan 17, 2008 sarfdawg     I ended up price matching this TV at (Deleted) and got it for right at $1000. I ...

Dec 14, 2007 John     I Love this DLP. The picture is awesome, in HD, and when its not. If you use X...

My Experience: I ended up price matching this TV at (Deleted) and got it for right at $1000. I have watched it heavily for a few weeks now, and I am so glad that I made this purchase. I was debating between this TV and the 56" Samsung with the LED light engine. While I was at the store, this TV and the Samsung were sitting right next to each other. The Samsung was about $700 more than this Panasonic, but the picture wasn't $700 better - that's for sure. I was concerned by the initial brightness setting of the Panasonic in that I felt it was a little on the dark side, but after I got into the settings and fixed them to my preferences, I was able to get it to look just as good as the Samsung.

As is with any DLP that I've seen, the colors are very bright and tend to be a little on the exaggerated side, but with some adjusting, you can get them looking pretty realistic. My litmus test is usually watching a game in HD to see how the TV handles quick movements, and this TV does a really good job. There are certain networks that do a better job with their games in HD (CBS, Fox, and TNT), and others that make you a little nervous (i.e. ABC and ESPN), and this TV is really accurate on most all of them. While watching the Michigan-Florida game on 1/1 on ABC HD (overcast skies, kind of dark), I thought that I was going to be disappointed with the TV's HD performance. However, watching the Georgia-Hawaii blowout on Fox really stunned me when my expections where kind of low as the game was played in the dark, cavernous SuperDome. While getting a good broadcast from Fox, Georgia's black jerseys with contrasting white numbers and red trim were very precise and there was very little bleeding over while in motion. The black levels and the overall color accuracy seems to be solid so far.

Watching any other non-game HD programming is crystal clear regardless of the network on either DirecTV HD or over the air.

One of my biggest concerns with this TV or any other HDTV is the quality of the SD picture as my 5-year old watches a lot of PBS and PBS Kids Sprout which is all in SD. I have this TV set to stretch, and it does it nearly perfectly. There is only so much you can ask out of SD quality, but this TV does a much better job than my Mitsubishi RPTV. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the quality of the SD.

I also have an Xbox 360 that plays some games in 1080i and some in 720p, and all I can say is "wow." The picture is perfect. I don't know what else to say other than you cannot ask for more. I've played Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, and NCAA Football 08, and all of them are perfect pictures.

Sadly, the only thing that I have not been able to test is the performance of 1080p through an HD-DVD player. That will hopefully be coming soon, but if it is supposed to be twice the resolution of the 720p, there is no question that it will be shockingly good.

By the way, I have my DirecTV HD-DVR and my Xbox 360 connected via component cables and HDMI cables, and there are no marked differences.

If I have any complaints its that there are no controls for the picture on the front of the TV, and the remote is somewhat cumbersome to use. You also need to aim the remote precisely in the lower-left corner of the TV. I know RF may be a bit of a stretch for a request, but I would like to be able to aim in the vicinity of the TV to get it to work instead of having to be so precise. Also, some of the controls inside the settings are a little awkward, but that may be that this is my maiden voyage with Panasonic as I have only had Mitsubishi in the past, and my parents own a Samsung.

I hope that this is helpful to anyone that is looking for a great deal on a DLP or LCD.