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Panasonic Tx-32lxd600a


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I love this TV, but unless I'm doing something wrong, recording to the SD card for all practical purposes is a useless gimmick!

Which pretty much confirms what I suspected when I downloaded the manual to have a read through. Under the heading "Data Format For Card Browsing" it states:

Photo : Still images recorded with digital still cameras compatible with JPEG files of

DCF∗ and EXIF standards

Video : Videos recorded with this TV, Panasonic DVD recorder or digital camcorder

Data format : FAT12 or FAT16

Number of pixels

for motion picture : 320 x 240 (QVGA) or 176 x 144 (QCIF)

Max. number of files : 65,535

Image resolution : 8 x 8 to 5,120 x 3,840

Sound format : G.726 (32 Kbps, 8-kHz sampling frequency, monaural)

So what it seems to imply there is that the highest resolution possible is 320x240 QVGA. And that would look really ugly on a HD display!

Looks like this is the second Panasonic LCD in a row to come equipped with a "what's the point" card slot. The 500A read more card formats, but could not record. It could play back MPEG4 video - really, really badly. And it could display photos - with no control over aspect ratio so that everything was stretched, and with no EXIF support.

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Well, I just spent (wasted?) $69 on a SD card.
It may be a gimmick but for $50 more, I would have bought a real PVR (Wintal or Supernet 80GB) than a puny SD card :blink:

Or buy your memory cards on ebay, 1GB card for about $20. I have been buying my memory cards on ebay for the past 5 or so years and never had a problem with any of them.

While Panasonic could have done better in making recording to SD more functional, you could always take the view of treating it for what it is, a bit of a gimmick, a bit of technology you can just play with. It's not as if you have to pay any more for the SD card slot. The Sony 32" doesn't have an SD card slot and only has one HDMI, and costs several hundred $ more then this TV.

Buy a decent PVR as webmal suggested, you'll never look back.

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was wondering if it will fit in a large family sedan or will i have to get it delivered?

Most likely it will fit in a large sedan but bring some rope in case you can't close the boot properly.

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hey guys i'm thinking about getting this tv on friday and was wondering if it will fit in a large family sedan or will i have to get it delivered?

Well, I bought mine home in the back of a Camry (sedan). It was a tight fit and I had my daughter hanging onto it all the way home. The box it comes in is humungous, I just discarded that and sat the TV on the back seat, still sitting in it's styrofoam packaging. In hindsight I probably should have got it delivered. If it gets damaged on the way home then it probably wouldn't be covered by warranty.

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I just picked up a Panasonic Tx-32lwd500a (we wanted the 600a but it just wouldn't fit in the space available).

This is my first LCD TV and I must say it's impressive. PQ is beautiful.

I am using settings "out of the box" which has Picture Setup as "Dynamic".

My only complaint is that the white is just too bright, almost blinding, but all other colours are perfect. I tried playing with the settings but can't seem to get as good as the default (except for the bright white).

Can anyone suggest some suitable settings please.

cheers

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I've just picked up a 600a. Being new to LCD widescreen displays, I was just wondering, I have set up the DVD player to 16:9 widescreen, but is it usual to have to continually adjust the LCD to 16:9 or 4:3 manually depending on whether the source material of the DVD is one or the other.

Thanks

I set my DVD player to 16:9 and when I play a non-anamorphic or 4:3 DVD the picture is "stretched", so I have to adjust the TV aspect ratio manually (easy enough to do), so I assume the answer is yes.

For someone researching into getting this TV. Can anyone who has recently purchased give an idea of what the best price has come down to.

Also I know that the Samsungs are now made in Thailand. Can anyone tell me where the TX32LXD600a is made.

Thanks.

I bought mine 2 weeks ago for $2100 cash, not including delivery. According to the back of the set, it's made in Japan.
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Can anyone suggest some suitable settings please.

Be sure to turn P-NR off. I'd also recommend NOT using the auto-backlight-brightness feature.

I've just picked up a 600a. Being new to LCD widescreen displays, I was just wondering, I have set up the DVD player to 16:9 widescreen, but is it usual to have to continually adjust the LCD to 16:9 or 4:3 manually depending on whether the source material of the DVD is one or the other.

It's not desirable, no, but for some reason Panasonic's LCDs behave this way.

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Be sure to turn P-NR off. I'd also recommend NOT using the auto-backlight-brightness feature.

Backlight was set to medium by default. I'll try P-NR off but I would have thought it would be beneficial being on as anything that improves picture quality should be good.

I don't seem to cure the overbright white without stuffing up the other colour balances.

Any other suggestions?

cheers

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Just wanted to let people know that Bing Lee have these on sale at the moment. I went looking for one today after reading the threads on these forums.

Was expecting around the $2000 mark but saw they were on sale for $1499!!!! :blink: But I ended up purchasing a Hitachi 37" for $1850 (the made in Japan and extra few inches got me :D). Feel free to comment on why I should have purchased the Pana.

/edit: specific model is: 37LD8800TA.

Edited by alco
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$1499

wow and i thought i got an ok deal paying $1980

picked one up yesterday and i couldn't be happier.. running it with out of the box settings atm also but i still love it

will play around with it more later

oh and just so everyone knows i got it at the good guys in dandy

Edited by donchichio
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Just wanted to let people know that Bing Lee have these on sale at the moment. I went looking for one today after reading the threads on these forums.

Was expecting around the $2000 mark but saw they were on sale for $1499!!!! :blink: But I ended up purchasing a Hitachi 37" for $1850 (the made in Japan and extra few inches got me :D). Feel free to comment on why I should have purchased the Pana.

/edit: specific model is: 37LD8800TA.

Yep, you've mixed it up with the 60a which is made in china. You can get it a lot cheaper than $1499. Old stock.

The 600a is made in Japan and worth every cent. Flawless.

I think you've made a big mistake. Should have stuck with a quality brand.

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I'd also recommend NOT using the auto-backlight-brightness feature.

Why do you suggest this? I've recently changed to this setting and find the picture a lot better ("Standard" was too dull during the day and too bright at night. I got tired of adjusting the brightness and contrast settings)

BTW, I've got the TX-32LX60A

Edited by jsk38
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Is anyone using the sound output on the 600a to route sound to your stereo system. And if you do have that set up then are you also using the TV speakers, so you can swap between the two. There didn't seem to be any way to actually turn off the TV speakers other then to mute. I guess muting the speakers is the same as turning them off.

I also couldn't get digital audio out to work, I could only get the analogue audio out to work. Will have to investigate the digital out, might not have had it plugged in properly. The digital out on this TV is pretty hard to get to, particulalry if the TV is already set up in it's cabinet.

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D'oh, oh well... too late now. Will have to make do til next purchase.

both the models use the same sharp panel the only difference is the electronics. In my opinion the hitachi is the better made model it has a level of class that the pana dosen't have. So you did make the right choice

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I've had the 600a for a few days now. PQ watching standard definition TV is simply outstanding, even with out of the box settings. I have a Topfield PVR (standard definition) and have the PVR connected to my Yamaha amp via composite. The amp up-converts composite to s-video, so I'm feeding s-video to the TV from the amp. After tinkering with the settings, for normal TV viewing I have set sharpness slightly higher to about 60-65% and the picture mode to Auto, (I think picture mode default was Dynamic). I have left P-NR (picture noise reduction) turned on and all other options at their default settings.

I also tried component (also via the amp) but PQ is not quite as good, couldn't get colours to look right and skin tones were not as natural. I tweaked the settings a bit but could not get it looking quite as good as on s-video. There are some known issues with component coming out of the Topfield and I believe that is where the problem lies. I have not yet tried component directly from the PVR to the TV. Note that there is no P-NR setting when using component.

One of the main reasons I went with LCD was because the viewing room is very bright and plasma would not have been able to handle it. But there is one small concession with this TV, when the room is very dark, the whites are really bright. Like when you get some of those adds with an almost entirely white screen, it doesn't quite blast me out of the chair, but it is quite bright. This is only a very minor issue. Changing brightness does not really have much effect for this. It would be nice if there was an (accessible) backlight setting.

I have watched some cricket and soccer on the TV and don't have any issues with motion blur. Sure, with fast camera pans there is some slight motion blur but for me it's entirely acceptable.

I've played around with the SD card slot a bit. I'm using a Sandisk 2GB card. This was one of the things I was a bit concerned about because although the manual says 2GB is OK, the compatibility charts on the Panasonic web site weren't entirely conclusive and when I asked Panasonic support they said only 1GB was supported! It's a pity that Panasonic didn't do a little more work to up the resolution for SD card recordings. If you put the recording in full screen, it is simply not watchable, well, you can watch it, but it's blurry. On my 19" LCD PC monitor it looks a little better, but still blurry. (If you download the appropriate video and audio codecs from Panasonic you can watch the recordings on your PC using Windows Media Player.) I'm not quite sure but perhaps the recording functionality could be improved through a future firmware upgrade.

I also played around a little with viewing photographs from SD card but need to look at that further. You need to adhere to the directory structure as outlined on page 40 of the manual. Photos look good, slide shows etc. all seems to work OK, but there is some minor scaling issue that I haven't investigated fully yet. It certainly does not stretch the photos as supposedly the 500a did.

No problems with inbuilt HD tuner, not much opportunity yet to watch HDTV, but it handles the SD broadcasts very well. I was a bit worried that I may not get a strong signal into the tuner with my setup. I have aerial going from the wall into one of those surge protector boards, then into tuner1 on the PVR, out of tuner1 and into tuner2 on the PVR then out of tuner2 and into the TV, so the signal is being routed through a few components. But no problems, the HD tuner handles it all very well.

I can't give any comments on watching DVD as (believe it or not) I don't have a DVD player. I have always used XBMC on the xbox for watching DVDs and my xbox is currently broken. I hope to pick up a DVD player with HDMI some time soon.

Let me say that I was very sceptical about buying either an LCD or plasma, I initially wanted to go with a good quality wide screen CRT, but they are few and far between. I'm happy with the purchase and in most cases PQ is better then my old CRT, which believe me is saying something because PQ on my old CRT was very good.

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Backlight was set to medium by default. I'll try P-NR off but I would have thought it would be beneficial being on as anything that improves picture quality should be good.

Panasonic's P-NR feature doesn't seem to have changed much since they put it in my 15-year-old CRT - it basically just "blurs" the image to remove block noise, and it's really only useful for those rare times you're viewing something like a low-res, badly encoded Xvid file.

The fact that it's on by default on the 500A is ridiculous, but I presume they were trying to make the picture look more "smooth" for the showroom.

It's unsubtle, ugly processing, though, and is best turned off.

Oh, also watch out for the 500A's tendency to turn the audio "Ambience" function back on on a semi-regular basis. Like all such audio gimmicks, it is very important to turn this OFF if you're using the TV's inbuilt speakers.

Why do you suggest this? I've recently changed to this setting and find the picture a lot better ("Standard" was too dull during the day and too bright at night. I got tired of adjusting the brightness and contrast settings)

BTW, I've got the TX-32LX60A

Well, I'm not familiar with the LX60A, but on the 500A the auto-brightness feature seems to over-compensate for ambient lighting, and also seems prone to making sudden unexpected jumps up or down in backlight brightness.

The actual concept of this feature is good, but I don't think it's calibrated quite right on the 500A.

It's a pity that Panasonic didn't do a little more work to up the resolution for SD card recordings. If you put the recording in full screen, it is simply not watchable, well, you can watch it, but it's blurry.

Going by the specs in this TV's manual, the recordings are in QVGA - you're basically blowing up mobile-phone-size video to view on a HD panel :blink:

The SD card recording feature is a gimmick, nothing more.

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I bought mine 2 weeks ago for $2100 cash, not including delivery. According to the back of the set, it's made in Japan.

With only the mildest interest, I was offered one of these for $2100 including delivery, just after Christmas at Bing Lee Pitt Street Mall Sydney.

smith

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Guest webmal

HUGE PRICE REDUCTION :blink:

Dick Smith (DSE) is selling the TX-32LXD600A for $1900, nationwide delivery is only $20. I'm sure they'll do it for $1800 if you haggled in person.

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