Customer Reviews

Panasonic TC-P46S2 46-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this television from Amazon & have lived with it for a couple of months.

I did a lot of shopping; finally deciding on this television & I am very happy I did. This TV is fantastic: Beautiful colors - 1080p - 600Hz Refresh Rate - 2,000,000:1 Contrast Ratio. The last two numbers make LCD's come up very short. In case you don't know: The contrast ratio is a measure of the difference between white and black. The higher the contrast ratio, the blacker the blacks & the whiter the whites. The deeper blacks make the colors really pop. This is where Plasma completely dominates LCD.

Sound & Vision Magazine rated these Panasonic Viera Plasma televisions right under the Pioneer Kuros. This is high praise considering that they had rated the Pioneers the best TV, of any kind - anywhere, for the last two years. Considering that the Kuros are 4 times the price, this TV was the obvious pick.

For the last years; the knocks against plasmas were the issues of Burn-In and excess heat compared to LCD's. The issue of Burn-In has been addressed. It is not a problem anymore. In addition, I have not noticed the TV giving off any abnormal heat. As a matter of fact, I don't notice any heat from it at all. Since these issues have been fixed, Plasma's should be much higher on everyone's shopping list.

A couple of side notes: 1) since I got it I have moved from cable to Dish. This has made a big improvement, & 2) the ability of take an SD card directly from the camera, insert it into the TV, and play the images is a nice feature.

I ordered direct from Amazon with the free shipping. The television arrived quickly and in perfect condition. The delivery people were accommodating and professional. They set everything up & were nice enough to even move some furniture around.

If you are considering a television in this price range, I think this is the one to get.

Bought from Fry's on a fantastic sale of $549. Thought the 46" might be too big for my room, but it's not at all. It's replacing a 42" plasma and this is actually lighter than my old 42". At under 70lbs it was relatively easy for my wife and I to lift this 8 ft onto a wall mount. It looks fine on the wall and not too bulky.

After playing with the settings using cinema mode and changing black level setting to black, the picture is awesome. It may not look as vivid if you compare to a top line LCD, but it's it's not necessarily poorer quality it's just a different look. Image looks the best about 8 ft back. I'm using AT&T uverse for cable and haven't tried DVD or blu ray, but it should look great based on the hd cable picture.

The panasonic g series looked better in the store next to this but is a couple hundred more. Aside from pioneer, which doesn't make plasmas anymore, panasonic is the plasma leader.

Sound quality is fine for a bedroom. It has very incremental volume adjustments for setting to the right level so as not to wake the kids.

Has lots of inputs, but most only need a couple hdmis and maybe a 3rd for games, but this has all most will need.

If money is not a concern there are better tvs out there, both plasma and LCD, but for the price this is a great deal. Since new models are coming out for 2011 grab one of these under $600 in the coming months and you'll be happy.

So far, this has been a great purchase. The picture quality when viewing a blu-ray disc is truly stunning. With Comcast hi-def (which is actually only 1080i), the picture is still very good. It took some fiddling with the various settings to get the picture just right, but I am very happy with the results. One note for those considering a hi-def TV: get a plasma if you need to be able to see the TV clearly from locations that are not directly in front of it. The picture on this plasma still looks good at high viewing angles (say 80 degrees from center). LCD's still look dim at even small angles from center.

I'll start off by saying that this television is overall decent and I'll be keeping it. In trying to keep this brief, I'll only mention its few big flaws. You can find the rest of the positive and negative opinions in Amazon's 42 inch model (tc-42s2) reviews (there are too few Amazon reviews for the 46 inch model).

I get my digital channels from over-the-air signals through a boosted indoor antenna. My problem is that this TV displays a below average picture detail for signals that are 720p or lower. Picture quality is excellent on 1080i signals. I would have given this TV a rating of a 4, instead of 3, if the 720p signal was displayed better.

To explain this problem, I want to first make the distinction between the channel signal quality and the TV show's format quality. The channel signal is what your local station is transmitting to your TV, either standard digital, 720p, or 1080i. The show's format quality is the resolution it was recorded/saved in before it is transmitted. For example, 60's or 80's television shows were recorded in a much lower resolution than say today's ABC, NBC and CBS sports shows which are at either 720i or 1080i. This TV displays much better images when the signal is 1080i for all shows regardless of whether they are old lower resolution shows or newer shows recorded at high resolutions. When the signal is 720p or lower, the picture looks smeared even for the new sports shows that are recorded at 720i or higher! One or two other Amazon reviewers have noticed this same problem and mentioned that their other HD TVs display better picture quality for the 720p or lower signals than this Panasonic TV.

Another problem with it is that the picture looks washed out no matter how I adjust its contrast and brightness. This may be made worse because I have it set to one of its picture mode called Cinema; but the other modes (though a little less washed out): Standard (too dark), Vivid, Custom, and Game are just too noisy/grainy looking; Cinema mode looks best by a wide margin. After buying this TV, I read the CNET review on this TV and it mentions this same washed out problem. They said that the gamma setting is too low. Unfortunately, the TV does not allow access to directly adjust the gamma setting.

I have had this new TV for two and a half weeks now. This is my first HD TV. I sit and view it from a distance of about 8 to 9 feet and use it mostly for viewing off-the-air channels and occasionally for PS3 gaming. I am getting use to these shortcomings and can live with them especially since I think I paid a lower than market price for it.

Other minor issues:

-When displaying pictures from the SD card slot, it takes about 5 seconds to manually (not using the slide show feature) switch between pictures (depending on the resolution/size of the pictures).

-No interface (usb, Ethernet) to upgrade the TV's firmware.

-To successfully use it as a display for your computer, you may need to set your computer to a 720 resolution before connecting the hdmi cable to this TV. Otherwise, you may only see a blank TV screen.

-Sound is not all that good.

Question:

Has anyone been able to get the sound to output to the TV's speakers when the computer is connected? I have my Gateway laptop running Windows 7 connected to it but the sound is only playing on the laptop, not the TV.

Just Buy this TV! For it's price and quality it is better than any other plasma or LCD or LED LCD TV period ! I spent about a month and a half searching for the perfect TV to purchase . I went through so many reviews, went to a lot of stores and shopped around constantly before I finally pulled the trigger on this TV. I am so glad I did, I couldn't be much more happier.

First of all Plasmas, versus LCD types, have better color and naturalness to the picture. One issue also for me was that LCD TVs in either 120Hz or 240Hz refresh rates always gave the picture a very unnatural and uncomfortable feeling. These newer settings help cut out motion blur in faster scenes. Some people refer to these refresh rate settings to give a ''soap opera, or shot with a home video camera effect. I agree with these statements and do not like this visual effect for any movie, game or TV program. I have heard however that some people do not mind this or that you will eventually get used to it. Not for me, and believe me I tried (my mom has a Samsung 40'' LCD 120Hz TV. If you don't know what I am talking about, go to a store with lots of TVs and see for yourself. Now, this Hz refresh rate setting can be turned off or more correctly turned down to the usual 60 Hz setting that most LCD TVs had when they started to really make them. When doing this, the weird soap opera effect does go away but then of course you might run into some motion blur during fast action or sports scenes.

Now there are some other nice models of plasma TVs even a 50'' from Samsung I was checking out. But I was really looking for a 46'' tv as that was the best size for my smaller condo. Panasonic of course though, really had the best selection and quality for plasmas. The S series was a much better step up from the C series which is only 720p High Definition. The S series combines 1080p full high definition with slightly less features but at a very reasonable cost. I was thinking about possibly purchasing the the G25 model by Panasonic. This model has more features and connections plus a higher contrast ratio and THX certification which in my opinion doesn't make a difference in color, gamma or overall picture quality compared to the S models. I use a playstation 3 and I can stream netflix through that which really negates the G25 and higher models feature for doing so. I just wanted a great TV that I can watch movies, TV shows and play occasional video games on with great quality and no issues. The TC-P46S2 surpasses all my expectations for delivering great image quality when doing all these things. I have read reviews saying the speakers don't deliver good sound and I disagree. Now if you need louder more in depth sound of course you are going to need a better external sound system. The little speakers do ok for their size and work well in conditions that don't require bigger sound. It seems however, the surround setting for the speakers lowers volume and quality a little. Just keep it on the regular speaker setting or just get a decent sound system. I keep my TV on the cinema mode setting which is wonderful for movies and tv and even video games although for games you might experiment with the bright setting or just customize your own. Fast action and sports scenes are fantastic on this TV with no blurring and of course great color! The 600Hz refresh rate makes it care free to watch any kind of movie or play any game without blurring or horrible soap opera effects. This TV is great .

Beautiful picture - very crisp, with no blurring whatsoever. You can see amazing detail and the picture is visible regardless of the viewing angle. We compared this to the best LED TVs and liked it much better. You might not want it for playing video games, especially shoot-em-up games like Halo, as the picture is so big that it is difficult to scan the whole screen rapidly and not get ambushed. It is great for watching sports, however.

For the price, if you have a space with minimal glare, this Panasonic Plasma is a great choice. The price is great and I don't think you miss any of the bells-and whistles that come with other models. Panasonic has dedicated themselves to making great plasma's and I think the picture out shines all others.

Like other Amazon shoppers, I did a lot of research by looking at other reviews of these tvs as well as other models and makes. Decided to go with plasma by panasonic and chose a 46 inch version with the screen that is purported to reduce glare.

Although it is a great tv, I have decided to return it after a month for a few reasons which I will delve into later.

First off, wonderful picture after tweaking the color a bit for my taste. The largest tv we had before this was a 32 inch Samsung LCD that I loved. The reason for buying this tv was new furniture, rearranging the living room and deciding that bigger would be better.

We also got a panasonic blu ray with internet connectivity. They work very well together and I have had fun listening to Pandora and surfing youtube with it.

I like the remote, but rarely use it as we are hooked up to Uverse with ATT and use their remote almost exclusively.

The bottom line is that this is a nice television but that it just wasn't perfect for us and our space. I found the following to be its weaknesses. First, the stand juts out too far and looks ugly. Many won't care as they plan on wall mounting, but we don't. Also, it doesn't swivel, which the Samsung stand does. Next, the sound quality is very low. Again, I know many won't care since they plan on using a home sound system anyway, but we don't want to do this for the room the this tv was in. By comparison, the Samsung produced much clearer sound. I am fairly hearing impaired and this difference meantI needed to turn the volume up very high for me to be able to understand what was being said. Intolerable for my wife. This brings me to the closed captioning and picture justification. Using Uverse, in order to get the full picture on the screen with the correct justification, I needed to put the screen in "zoom". This resulted in the closed caption words not all appearing on the screen. When you put it in "just" all the words appear, but the picture looks a bit scrunched from the vertical perspective. I thought this may just be Uverse, but I have a similar tv at work that uses Direct tv, and I have the same issue. It also happens when viewing dvd's. I worked my way through all the menus and could not fix this problem. By contrast, this was not an issue with our little Samsung.

This was all tolerable, and we would not have decided to return the television, but then our new credenza arrived, and the tv on top of that was clearly just too big for our space. So given the issues cited above, despite the fact it is a very good tv, we have decided to return it.

A note in that regard, working with Amazon to return the tv has been wonderful. I have been a prime customer since the time it was offered a few years ago, and I have loved it. After a short call to customer service we are arranging a pick up time for next week. Very simple, and makes me convinced to continue purchasing with Amazon. Now I need to pick out a new tv.

What will we do different? A smaller tv. Likely 37 inches or so, and drop back to the 720p. That makes the blu ray somewhat superfluous, oh well. I will probably go back to Samsung, due to all the minor deficiencies in the Panasonic that I listed above. I thought that plasma and the 600 hz would make the difference. But I guess I will stick with what I know that worked for us in the past.

Again, I don't want to knock this tv too much. It's really great. But for us, especially with my hearing issues, I think it's not the right tv.

The picture quality and price are a great find, the 600 hz and 1080p are hard to find at an afordable price and for the price i paid i was pleased.

I've owned this TV for about 60 days now and have been very pleased with it. The picture quality is great and the sound is pretty decent for TV speakers. Also, it's one of the few plasmas in the 40-46in. range that's 1080p. Price was very reasonable with no shipping costs and no tax. I was able to schedule delivery, so I wasn't surprised when it showed up. Would highly recommend this TV.