""I've had Panasonic VIERA TH-42PZ85U for two weeks now and it is a shame Panasonic has disconitnued it and moved to a different model. This TV works great and looks beautiful whether I am watching with the Digital Tuner, with my HD Converter through my cable provider or Blu-Ray. I personally thought I would never own a Panasonic television but after doing research on websites like CNET I decided to give it a try. I am not disappointed with this product quality at all. For this price you should grab it off the shelf FAST!

The only problem I have found is that the Bass Boom setting does not work well and the sound is muffled with the stock speakers. I prefer watching TV with the audio through my Bose 1-2-3 system any ways for better quality Dolby sound so this is really a non-issue for me personally. I am sure most will agree with me on that topic.

I'd recommend this television for everyone and add Panasonic units to it. I purchased a Panasonic Blu-Ray player at the same time and the installation and functionality is flawless. High Quality Product at a very competitive price point!!!"

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    "I wanted the smallest (42" - short viewing distance) 1080p, high contrast (30,000:1) plasma that had anti burn and anti glare. After running the set at half power (standard mode) for the 100 hour burn-in period I switched to cinema mode and we watched The Fifth Element BluRay version. We're drop dead impressed. I have only one esoteric hint to pass on - if you're not planning to view broadcast signals, skip the setup. Once the broadcast setup is done, if you've switched to the remote's TV context to select the cable input, the chanel selector button no longer defaults to the cable box but switches you back to the broadcast input - you have to remember to select the cable context on the remote after selecting that input on the TV. Before doing the broadcast setup, the remote would default the channel change to the cable box and the volume to the TV regardless of context that could be the best configuration"

    "The picture quality on Panasonic VIERA TH-42PZ85U is unparalleled. The colors are so vivid with with true color skin tones. The new higher contrast ratio is better than any other LCD in its class. My brother in law has a Samsung LCD TV. I watched "Pirates of the Caribbean" on my TV as well as his. In the dark scenes blacks appeared blue on his TV while on my plasma the scenes looked dark with very good shadow detail just like in a theater. I was very glad for the purchase I had made despite the LCD craze these days. I have hung this TV on my bedroom wall and usually watch it from a distance of 8 ft. During the day I have to close the blinds to avoid too much glare and reflection on the screen on bright sunny days but at night or in a relatively dark room the feeling is like having my own cinema theater. I use this TV to watch movies most of the times. However, my wife has hooked up her Wii and uses it to play in the Game mode. She also watches her serials on this TV in standard definition. And she is extremely impressed with the upscaling on this TV. Sometimes we have to press Info to check if we are watching programs in SD or HD. I watched the NBA finals on this and it was a sports watching experience like never before. I never want to watch sports in SD again after watching them in HD on this TV. The sound on this TV is not as impressive as its picture quality. So, I have hooked up my Sony home theater system and now my TV watching experience is so good. The remote control for this TV is just like the older models and does not have as strong a signal as Universal remotes or Dish network remotes. But that is not a concern. I have one concern though. A green flash occurs when you change the input signal from 480i to 1080i but that has not deterred the picture quality or anything else. I think that is just normal. I am extremely satisfied with my purchase and would do it again in a heartbeat. If a more sleek look is given to this TV this could give those high end TVs a run for their money.
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    "In October, I purchased a Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85U Plasma Television from Amazon. One of the caveats about owning an HDTV is that it requires quite a bit of time to tweak picture settings in order to ensure that your TV is giving you the best possible picture. In the proceeding months, I've fiddled with the various settings, like color, contrast, brightness, and even used a THX calibration disc and blue filter glasses in order to calibrate my set for optimal viewing from all of my sources (FiOS, DVD, PS3/Blu-Ray, DVR, Xbox). Overall, I've been quite happy with my Panny.

However, in recent months, I've noticed a very disturbing and annoying trend occuring in my TV: phosphor trails. These are green or blue trails that are left behind a moving object in a high contrast scenario. It occurs, as I understand it, because plasma pixels cannot shift directly from black to white, or vice versa. They have a brief green or blue phase in between. An example of this might be a hockey game that has players with dark jerseys on a white ice background. This scenario is plagued by phosphor trails on my TV. The players leave streaks as they move across the rink. I love hockey, and this is a major issue for me. Another example might be a movie or TV show where a person with light skin is moving through a dark room. This scenario is even worse for me. Light objects on dark background leave horrible green trails and are physically taxing on my eyes. Video games often have high contrast scenarios like this, and this effect is present in many that I own.

Unfortunately, I don't have a video camera capable of accurately depicting this phenomenon. On the cheap point-n-shoot I have, the effect is far worse than it appears in person. Nevertheless, I'm very close to selling my TV, cutting my losses and getting a Samsung LN46A650 LCD. I know that I may just be trading one issue for another, as LCD's have problems of their own, but I've just about had it. If a representative from Panasonic or Amazon is reading this, please contact me, as I would love to remedy this somehow. "

    " Panasonic VIERA TH-42PZ85U is my first plasma TV (Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85U, 1080P), purchased 11-2-08. Mounting the screen on the non-swivel base took a little doing, best done by two people, to align screws for fastening, but the rest is easy. Out of the box, my initial impression was not good, picture-wise. However, for some reason, Panasonic chose "standard" picture mode on startup, in which the default picture settings were pretty dark for use in a well-lit room, and not very impressive. However, upon learning more about the various picture modes (standard, custom, vivid, cinema and game) and the ability to adjust the various parameters within each of these modes, I was amazed at the clarity, sharpness, contrast and true-colors that are possible. I had been looking at 42", good quality, 1080P LCD's, but even the best ones didn't have the sharpness, true color, etc. of this Panasonic. Of course, the in-store units are generally hooked up to the best possible HD input signals, unlike what many folks have at home. Even so, the fluorescent background lighting used in LCD's, while providing substantial brightness, seems to give a sort of "neon" coloring to large, colored areas, such as grass, etc., unlike the plasma sets. I was told by a friend who knows plasma TV's that the plasma picture gets even better with time (perhaps the plasma in the cells develops to a higher performance level?). The inputs and outputs of this set are impressive (3 HDMI, 2 component, 2 composite, optical digital audio out, S-video, PC, program out (audio/video), SD memory card reader, RF, etc. In my opinion, the plasma sets are still definitely superior to the LCD's, and the price has dropped considerably, now comparing favorably with the improved LCD's. The refresh scan rate of plasmas is 480/ Hz, compared to only 60 Hz for LCD , or 120 Hz on the higher priced LCD versions. The improved LCD's are still well behind the plasmas. This gives the plasma much better motion capture (without blurring or jerkiness, which is great for watching sports events). This model of the Viera line has improved anti-reflective filtering on the glass screen face, and glare/reflections are much improved over our previous TV, under the same lighting conditions. Reflections of windows and room lighting are virtually eliminated. I do not presently have the high definition equipment required to take full advantage of this HD TV's capability, but, frankly, I don't feel that I need it for now . My next step will probably be to obtain a speaker/receiver system so that I can take advantage of the surround sound capability and, possibly, a blu-ray DVD player. The two speakers located at the front, bottom of the screen, are angled outward, rather than downward, and they do seem to provide excellent sound characteristics. Several features now help to eliminate a previous problem of burn-in on plasma sets, and lifetime is now rated at something like 100,000 hours or more, well over 10 years of 8-hours a day use, so the old bugaboo of short life and having to "refill" plasma gas is apparently a thing of the past. Panasonic plasma HDTV's were top rated ,overall, in Consumer Reports, early 2008, above plasma LG, Samsung, Philips, Hitachi, HP and another Hitachi version. In all three aspects of picture quality, HD, DVD and standard definition, the Panasonic TH-42PX77U was rated excellent, and I presume that the tested model was a predecessor of the TH-42PZ85U (more recent version, not yet rated). Based on impressions of this model, thus far, I would highly recommend it to flat panel, HDTV purchasers. I hope my researching and impressions are useful to you in making your choice." "