As I mentioned in an earlier entry I had decided it was time to upgrade my main television to something that could handle full HD and was future proofed for Freeview HD.

The Panasonic TX-P42G20 I had my eye on is currently around £725 at Amazon, which given its abilities seems pretty good value to me.  Bear in mind a few years a go I bought an Ilayma 19 inch LCD computer monitor for more than this, in fact I ended up with two, quite an extravagance on reflection.

I am unable to criticise Amazon, I ordered the set at around mid-day and for only about £8 delivery it arrived the following morning at 11.  I was shocked to see the delivery driver walking up the drive carrying it with little difficulty, given my previous 37 inch plasma is barely liftable by one person.  This new unit must weigh less than half as much.

I hooked it up with little difficulty and am blown away by the quality.  I have ordered a Panasonic Blu Ray player which hasn’t arrived yet.  However I am frankly astonished by the quality of a regular DVD upscaled by my Denon DVD player connected via HDMI, my wife was convinced it was HD.

When the Blu Ray player arrives I’ll do a proper review but on first impressions things are looking very good.

(Update)

Arrrgh, Guide+, how did I fall into that trap?  This is turning out to be a great television but I really, really object to having adverts delivered to me when viewing the guide.  Not only is it completely unacceptable to force adverts on to your customers in this underhand manner when they’ve just bought your product but to add insult to injury the adverts make the guide almost unusable by stealing valuable screen estate.

I’m a great fan of Panasonic but this has made me seriously question whether I shall buy the brand again.

(Further Update)

Screen burn, something I thought had been resolved with modern plasma screens has reared its very ugly head.  Courtesy of Cbeebies and the BBC red button I now have the words ‘Come and play’ faintly but permanently etched into the top right corner of the screen.  I’m seriously irritated, not only with the TV but perhaps more so with the BBC red button service.

Which imbeciles decided it would be a good idea to create a solid high contrast graphic and place it permanently in the corner of the screen? Morons!

Incidentally my previous Panasonic Plasma which has seen many more hours of Cbeebies has no such problem.