Panasonic VIERA TC-P42ST30 42-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV

by Panasonic

Product Features

• Full HD with 3D ready
• It has Infinite Black 2 panel
• VIERA Connect Wi-Fi Ready
• VIERA Image Viewer H.264 with 3D Playback

› See more product details

Product Description

Amazon.com

3D Technology Checklist

This product is 3D-related. To help you get a great 3D experience, use the checklist below to ensure you have everything you need. 3D viewing requires:

	A Display First, you'll need a 3D-ready display--whether it's a 3D HDTV, 3D projector, or 3D computer monitor. These displays have more processing power than standard 2D models for displaying 3D images in rapid succession.
	A Source Your display may be ready for 3D playback, but you'll still need a device to read 3D content. This can be a cable box with a subscription to a 3D channel, a 3D Blu-ray Disc player, or a PlayStation 3 system.
	3D Content 3D content--the actual entertainment, in other words--will be played back using the source mentioned above, whether it's a 3D broadcast from your cable provider, a 3D Blu-ray Disc, or a 3D video game.
	3D Glasses For now, the vast majority of 3D HDTVs require glasses for 3D viewing. Many use powered "active shutter" glasses, others polarized "passive" glasses. You'll need one pair per viewer, and they'll have to be compatible with your display, whether they're the same brand, or a pair of "universal" glasses designed to work across brands.
	HDMI Cable To connect your source (such as a 3D Blu-ray Disc player) to your display, you'll need a high-speed HDMI cable. Cables with this designation feature bandwidth speeds up to 10.2 Gbps (gigabits per second), for carrying the 3D signal without any loss of quality.
If you want to get more information about 3D, shop our 3D products, watch videos, or interact with other customers, we invite you to visit 3D 101, our customer center about everything 3D.

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Internet-Ready Television

Internet-ready TVs use your broadband connection to deliver dynamic content, whether it's streaming video from Netflix, new music from Pandora, or a quick glance at today's weather forecast.

Although there is overlap, each manufacturer offers a unique bundle of free or paid services, including streaming video and music, social networking apps, online photo galleries, news and financial updates, weather info, sports scores, and a variety of other smartphone-like applications.

Manufacturers continue to add new content to their offerings, keeping customers current through firmware updates, and making a bit of research a prudent step in your buying decision.

Learn more about Internet TVs, how they work, what services are offered by different manufacturers, and exactly what you'll need to get started at our Internet TV 101 customer center.

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(March 2011)

Step into the 3D World. The VIERA ST30 Series Full HD 3D Plasmas create an all new viewing experience by putting you inside the action and creating a new world of TV viewing realism.

Infinite Black 2

In new VIERA models, contrast in brightly lit locations has been significantly improved. Enhancements to the panel and cells help reproduce images with smooth, natural gradation and deep, rich blacks even when viewed in bright surroundings. In movies, the true, deep blacks faithfully convey the intent of the filmmakers, adding power and realism to the viewing experience.

Full-time 1080 Moving Picture Resolution

VIERA plasma TVs have 1,080 lines of moving-picture resolution. Newly developed phosphors with minimal afterimages and a new motion compensating technology have made it possible to render faster-moving images with greater sharpness. This far surpasses the APDC moving-picture resolution measurement standard of 5 seconds by providing a moving-picture resolution of 1,080 lines at the 1.5-second level. And it shows the inherently clear motion of VIERA TVs in both 2D and 3D images.

3D 24p Cinema Smoother

VIERA incorporates technology that analyzes picture information in both the preceding and succeeding frames, and creates a precise supplementary frame between them. This suppresses the jerky effect seen in movies so playback is smooth and natural-looking. The distinctive tonal qualities and atmosphere of the movie are preserved, and you enjoy extremely lifelike 3D images.

Frame Sequential Technology

Panasonic uses Full-HD Frame Sequential technology to create its 3D images. Images recorded in 1920 x 1080 pixels for both the right-eye and the left-eye alternately flash on the screen at the ultra-high rate of 120 frames per second. When you view the screen through active-shutter glasses that open and close each lens in sync with the alternating images, you see breathtaking FULL HD 3D pictures with stunning power and realism.

Brilliant Luminance and Superb Blacks

By combining the highly light-transmissive IPS Alpha Panel and high-brightness backlight, Panasonic has attained both high contrast and low power consumption. Also, by detecting the contrasting parts of the scene, the backlight is adjusted to maintain a brightness that is optimal for each area. Deep blacks are reproduced with no fading. The contrast between the brilliance of diamond-like stars and the deep black of the night sky produces a sharp, crisp image.

600Hz Sub-field Drive

600Hz technology lets you view superb full-HD motion and still images. For even greater clarity with motion images, Panasonic uses its own unique image-analysis technology. This technology converts the motion in each scene into dots. And each frame is practically displayed for a shorter length of time than in previous systems, to reduce aftereffects.

3D Image Viewer

It's easy to view 3D photos and movies you shot yourself on the big VIERA screen. After shooting with your 3D-compatible camera or camcorder, simply insert the SD card into the slot on a 3D-compatible VIERA TV. The viewing is incredible, with images so realistic it feels as though you're right back in the moment. You'll find that life's special moments are even more memorable when you preserve them in 3D.

VIERA Connect

The exciting world of IPTV, centering on TV, is about to begin for the enjoyment of the entire family. Now you can enjoy intuitive remote control while relaxing on the living room sofa, with a wide variety of content at your fingertips. In the near future, TV will also be able to link with a tablet device to achieve completely new forms of entertainment that you've never before experienced.

VIERA Link

VIERA Link interlinks the operation of a variety of AV devices, so you can operate them all using only the VIERA remote control. Setup is easy simply connect the compatible devices to each other via HDMI cables.

VIERA Remote

VIERA remote is a TV remote controller app for select Panasonic VIERA HDTVs that uses your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad (of iOS 4.2 or later) to control TV channel selection, input selection, and volume control. Included features are gesture control, a keyboard user Interface, and a power off button. Learn more about Panasonic’s VIERA remote app.

Long Panel Life, Up to 100,000 Hours

One important way consumers can protect the environment is by choosing high-quality products and taking care of them so they last for a long time. A high-quality VIERA HDTV can help. Thanks to a newly designed phosphor process and rear panel process, our plasma panels last for up to 100,000 hours before the brightness decreases by half. That's more than 30 years of viewing 8 hours a day.

Mercury and Lead Free Plasma Display Panel Panasonic is committed to making our products more friendly to the environment. In line with this commitment, all VIERA plasma display panels are free of both lead and mercury. This reduces impact on the environment years down the road when the TV is recycled or retired from use.

Key Specifications

Series: ST30 Screen type: Plasma Screen size: 41.6 inches Native resolution: 1,920 x 1080 pixels Shades of Gradation: 6,144 equivalent 600 Hz Sub-field Drive: Yes HDTV display capability: 1080p, 1080i, 720p EDTV display capability: 480p Speakers: 2 full range, 20W total power, Surround Sound Capable Image viewer: Yes (AVCHD/MPEG2/JPEG/MP3 playback) Aspect control:4:3, Zoom, Full, Just, H-Fill Optional wall-mounting bracket: TY-WK4P1RW Multi-lingual menu: English/Spanish/French Energy Star qualified: Yes

Connections HDMI: 3 (1 side) Component (Y, PB, PR): RCA x 1 Composite A/V: RCA x 1 USB: 2 Wireless LAN Adaptor: WiFi Ready Digital audio output: 1 (optical) Dimensions TV with stand: 26.6" X 40.2" X 12.6" " (H x W x D); 51.8 pounds TV without stand: 25.2" X 40.2" X 2.8" (H x W x D); 44.1 pounds Carton Dimensions 29.5" x 45.7" x 10.0" What size TV should you get?

Panasonic 2011 Plasma HDTV Comparison

Series:	GT30	ST30	S30	X3
Models:	50", 55", 60", 65"	42", 46", 50", 55", 60", 65"	42", 46", 50", 60"	42", 46", 50"
Full HD 1080p				--
HD 720p	--	--	--
3D Ready			--	--
Motion Picture Resolution	1080 Lines	1080 Lines	900 Lines	720 Lines
THX Mode		--	--	--
VIERA Connect			--	--
EASY IPTV	--	--
DLNA			--	--
Wireless LAN	Ready	Ready	Ready	Ready
Ethernet
HDMI	4	3	2	2
Component (Y/Pb/Pr)	1	1	1	1
Composite A/V	1	1	1	1
Digital Audio Output	Optical	Optical	Optical	Optical
PC (DSub)	1	--	--	--
USB 2.0 Port	3	2	2	2
MP3 Playback
JPEG Playback
MPEG Video Playback

What's in the Box

Panasonic ST30 series Plasma HDTV, removable stand, wireless LAN adapter, remote control (with batteries), operating instructions, quick start guide

Product Description

Panasonic VIERA TC-P42ST30 42-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV

See all Product Description

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

176 of 182 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Picture Quality With Only 1 Problem, But There's A Fix June 23, 2011

By EC8CH

Amazon Verified Purchase

The picture quality of this television is really outstanding. It is however compromised by an issue common to all 2011 Panasonic plasmas known as "Fluctuating Brightness". About a half of a second after a scene change there is sometimes an instantaneous change in the overall brightness of the screen. Full discussion of this issue can be found by Googling: "panasonic 2011 fluctuating brightness".

Panasonic, to their credit, has recognized this as an issue and has come up with a solution that eliminates it. All sets produced after August and have a serial number of "xx1215xxxxxx" or higher will have new software installed that eliminates these brightness fluctuations from happening. If you have an earlier model and notice these fluctuations, contact Panasonic and let them know. They should either schedule a Panasonic employee to flash the software to your EEPROM, or they will schedule a 3rd party tech to replace your A-Board with one that already has the new software installed. In my case, they replaced the A-Board. Since then I have not seen any fluctuation and I am now completely satisfied with my set's remarkable picture quality.

Otherwise this television is exactly what I was looking for. Great price, superb picture quality, good Internet connectivity and interface. 3D is nice for future-proofing but it wasn't something I was actively looking for, but Panasonic sets with the best 2D picture quality are all 3D capable. Panasonic's menu interface seems a little more dated than their competitions, but it is simple and straightforward which makes it very functional without any extra eyecandy.... The ST series is a great value if you don't need the somewhat fancier styling of the gt or vt series, or the thx certified picture mode, or the extra connections (st lacks vga, and has 3 instead of 4 hdmi ports). Also the st is the only series to offer the 42" size screen. For me it all boils down to this being the perfect television for 2011 now that Panasonic has given us a solution to the problem of Fluctuating Brightness.

**COMMENT ON PANASONIC'S RESPONSE**

I think Panasonic really demonstrated how committed they are to their product's picture quality by addressing this issue. Instead of writing this off as only a minor issue, they stepped up and supported their customers. This is a great response that insures that without condition Panasonic's line of 2011 3D televisions have the best picture quality you can buy. THANK YOU PANASONIC! Read more ›

61 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best 3D full HD 42" TV For Under a Grand. April 25, 2011

By Mark F

OK, I figured since I've hit the 200 hour mark I will give more impressions of my P42ST30.

I highly recommend D Nice's panel prep method which can be found online by using Google. Even if you "accidentally" watched a couple of hours of regular content, just start it now and don't watch anymore. I know that the purpose is to get even pixel aging for accuracy of settings, but I think doing this also results in sharper colors, with less bleeding.

I read the entire thread over on High Def Junkies forum about the brightness flux. Now I've been keeping a critical eye on this TV since I bought it (it's my 4th counting returns of 3 GT25's) and I had not noticed a problem with brightness adjustments during viewing. However, after reading the thread I decided to pay more attention. To test whether or not my TV suffered from brightness flux, I watched a movie that I thought would be an excellent test, Dark City on BD, Director's cut.

All I can say is that I was very impressed with how my ST30 handled this movie. If anyone is familiar with it, you know that Dark City is filmed almost entirely in this eery night/twilight background. There are tons of scenes with inky black backgrounds, brightly lit lights, and plenty of shadows and contours. This TV really passed with flying colors. I actually got up several times to go stare at the screen during a particularly dark scene with good contrast of bright localized lighting and I could not see any brightness flux, or any light bleeding into dark areas, etc...

Tried that "binary butterscotch" hi def jpeg that someone posted a video of on You Tube with his GT30 doing obvious flickering, and the only thing I saw was a very brief moment of darkening of the blacks in the picture and then it was stable....

Watched the opening scenes of Inception because someone on the thread mentioned their set did a lot of this brightness flux on the first 11 minutes...nothing...lights and darks were rock solid.

Now, I thought that I encountered a very slight version of this issue one time when watching hockey in 1080i on digital network broadcast. But I watched hockey again yesterday, same channel, and I realized what I saw was the unit's interpretation of the camera flashes from people in the stadium sitting near the camera but out of view, adding a kind of backlighting effect with their flashes. Not once did the white ice rink alter brightness or shades.

As a matter of fact, the only thing I can produce that even comes close to being called this kind of problem is if I have the white slide on the screen from the D Nice panel prep method and I bring up the ST30's main menu. Then I can see the white dim noticeably. But again, that's only when viewing the slides.

Now again, I'm a newb and this is an uncalibrated set, but I definitely noticed the panel changing as I broke it in. The ST30's seem to be particularly...I dunno how to say it...stiff, out of the box. Colors looked a bit dull and it looked like the TV really didn't know how to handle gradients, etc...but after the 100 hour panel prep, I really noticed images looking very sharp, colors bright and well defined, no bleeding into each other. They seemed more accurate. Fast motion scenes held their color well as they quickly passed across the pixels. And then I really noticed another marked improvement right around 180 -190 hours.

Let's see...about the only other issue is when I choose 48hz while watching something on BD with the player set to 24p I can see flickering in bright lights on the screen. When I change to 60hz, it disappears.

The buzzing has not gotten any louder at all. It's quite soft. Heck, it vibrates at the same frequency as my fridge motor so for all I know it could all be caused by dirty electricity from the utilities. They operate at 60hz so there has to be some interference. Anyway, I can only hear the buzzing with audio off and sitting within 6 feet of the TV and even then the other electrical sounds in the house tend to drown it out. It does change pitch with different colors but since I can hear the high-pitched whine from a CRT tv from any room in the house it really doesn't bother me at all. Of all my electronics the TV is probably the most quiet of the bunch.

As far as dead/stuck pixels I only have two. One goes dark on blue slides and one goes dark on red slides. I can live with that because they both fire properly on all other colors.

I have not been able to watch any native 3D content yet (waiting for my Avatar BD), but 2D-3D is cool to see at first but after a while it's not really noticeable unless there's some kind of graphic up on the screen then you really get the depth perception. The TV syncs up easily with my Xpand active shutter 3D glasses.

Oh yes, I am getting audio stutter on Netflix, but that only started recently, so for now I'm assuming it can be fixed with a firmware update. Plus it's not that big of a deal for me because we have the DMP-BDT210 and that Netflix shows more movie choices anyway for some reason so we primarily use it for streaming movies.

In conclusion, I know the ST30 line is the lower, high end model and I know it is far from perfect. But I really think it is the best value on the market for a 42" full HD, 3D television for under $1000. I am definitely a happy ST30 owner.

UPDATE 6/1/2011: Over 400 hours now and I stand by my review 100%. Also, I finally received my Avatar 3D Blu Ray and I watched it using my Panasonic BDT-210. WOW! Great 3D picture, the sense of depth is amazing! Using the Xpand X103 glasses from Amazon. Don't be fooled by the naysayers, 3D is cool and it's not a gimmick. Every guest I've shown the opening scene of Avatar to has been very impressed. Audio stutter on Netflix seems to have been fixed via the 2.04 firmware update.

Update 1/28/2012: Over 3k hours on my panel now and I love it as much as the day I bought it! Got it calibrated at around 2k hours and the difference was substantial. It calibrated pretty well for not having advanced controls, gamma, color temp, greyscale all calibrated quite well. I am definitely happy, 10 months later, that I made the decision to go with this panel. Read more ›

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Plasma TV March 27, 2011

By Samuel T. Stevenson

I just received my TC-P42ST30 a couple of days ago. I haven't purchased 3D glasses yet so haven't viewed 3D on this unit, but regular 2D looks great, including 1080i HD. I did some tweaking to the picture and other settings and am still tweaking, but so far I'm very happy with the image quality. I'm watching the NCAA finals now - this unit is great for sports!

I'm not sure what another (negative) reviewer was watching to get a dark blurry picture with image lag - I'm getting a crystal clear picture on HD channels, and it's plenty bright and colorful after I tweaked the picture menu settings to my liking. I haven't noticed any motion lag, including during fast-moving basketball games. I found that the picture looked best with the brightness and contrast set between about +65 and +70 each. I also found that turning off "C.A.T.S." (a picture menu feature that automatically adapts image brightness based on ambient room light) in the picture menu keeps the display from darkening when I want it bright, so that might be worth trying while setting up the picture settings. I got the most realistic color by adjusting the color temperature to "Warm1" and using the "Custom" picture mode's "Pro settings" to tweak the white balance by increasing the blues (+10) and reds (+5) and decreasing the greens (-5) to get more realistic skin tones (I found it nearly impossible to judge skin tones by broadcast content - I used an image file from my computer as my color target) along with -5 on the general "tint" setting. I set the panel brightness to "low" and the gamma to 2.2. I also decreased the "Color" setting quite a bit (+40) to get the colors, which looked over-saturated on the default setting, more natural looking.... These settings might not work for everyone, and they're still a work in progress, but I'm getting natural skin tones and a very nice overall image, so they might be a good starting place. I haven't noticed any kind of color cast in white/dark gray areas, so think this is a non-issue with this TV. I thought about downloading the Datacolor TV calibration software to use with my Spyder3 colorimeter to calibrate the TV, but I'm not sure I'll need to do this since I've gotten it pretty close doing it by eye.

The TV comes with a Panasonic USB wireless adapter, so I can use the Vieracast feature to access Netflix and other online services. It just took a few minutes (mainly fiddling with security settings) to get it connected to my home wireless network. The TV immediately updated its Vieracast software without any issues.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased so far. Read more ›