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Hi Guy.Only three companies make plasma, and you won't buy from two of them. Fortunately, Panasonic makes excellent sets. The higher you go of the line, the better the picture and the more bells and whistles. On the player side, I would opt for Oppo. Their players are stellar for video and audio purposes.
I own 2 Panny plasma's, and will buy a 3rd if I have any $ left over from my basement build project for a family room and HT down there.I own a U model 42, and a VT30 55. Both are excellent units. I would go exclusively with 1080p were I you, the $ difference is minimal now.Not sure how to recommend a panasonic plasma in your price range, that should make itself evident at the time based on what Best Buy, Future Shop or 2001 Audio Video have on sale when you want to pull the trigger.
Go Panasonic all the way. Their plasmas are first rate and their bluray players rate very highly as well. As to which models to look at, you will want to wait until closer to your buying time. Like all manufacturers, Panasonic are about to roll out their 2013 models but there are very few details on how they will compare to the older 2012 models.
I have a Samsung 43 inch plasma, which I like a lot. It doesn't have a lot of connections, though (no computer monitor connection, for instance), but then it was only $400. I use it in a bright during the day living room. It's 720p, but it's so far away from where I sit (about 10 feet) that I couldn't distinguish between 720p or 1080p at that distance. It replaced a Samsung 32 inch LCD, and the plasma has a much better picture.
I bought a 55" Panasonic Plasma around three months ago and love everything about it EXCEPT that RCA analog connections for "audio out" are a thing of the past. The "digital out" also annoys me as it passes either PCM or Dolby 5.1 according to the feed and you can't tell it to mix down 5.1 to 2 channel. (I don't listen to anything other than 2 channel stereo.) So, you are limited to audio out from either the DVD player or your cable box/DVR recorder unless you feed the digital signal to a 5.1 or better receiver. I've had the worst possible experiences with product support from Korean companies myself and swore I would never, under any circumstances, EVER buy anything from Samsung and LG again. So that leaves Panasonic, in spite of connectivity limitations. I researched DVD/Blu-Ray players ad nauseum and there were too many gripes about firmware, support, and buggy networking issues with the Panasonic players, so I bought a Sony BDPS790 player ($250.00), which has stunning video performance (and RCA outputs for sound, which is increasingly less common.) Turns out, as far as streaming goes, I'm out of luck. I have all Apple computers at home and apparently the Sony will not play well with anything Apple (incompatible security protocols) and I've just given up on trying to stream video. If you don't care about streaming video service, the Panasonic players get great reviews as far as a disc playback machine.
Hi ctviggen and all Audio Circle members.Thanks for your comments, however, as I mention in my original post, I will not buy any Korean products and if you give me one Korean made TV I will trow it in the garbage.You have 4288 posts and I've never read/saw anything from you up to now.Guy 13
You must set your audio out to PCM on your DVD menu.
