Jon Reed: blog

A very good friend of mine will be throwing himself down a Fire Station’s drill tower (abseiling) to raise money for an amazing little boy called Dominic Francilla.

“Dom Francillia is a cracking little boy, nearly four years old and lives with his parents Gary and Sarah and his two year old brother Joshua (whos is equally smashing!) in East Grinstead. Dominic was diagnosed with Periventricular Leukomalacia ( PVL ) at eight months and subsequently given a diagnosis of Spastic Diplegia Cerebral Palsy. This condition primarily affects his gross motor skills and is therefore unable to walk or sit independently (although I’m quite sure he is at least a little mobile; tractors don’t put themselves in washing machines, do they Dom?).”

Have a read, and consider donating to this most excellent cause: http://blog.mikepearce.net/dominics-fund/

I decided to buy this TV for many reasons, the main one being: it’s simply a superb TV. Some top-line stats:

• VIERA Full HD LCD Television (1080p)
• Wide Viewing Angle with IPS Alpha Panel
• 50,000:1 Contrast with Intelligent Scene Controller
• Smart Networking with VIERA Link
• VIERA Image Viewer (AVCHD/JPEG)
• DVB Tuner (Digital Tuner)
• 178 degree viewing angle
• 24p playback
• 3x HDMI connections
• Composite, S-video, Audio, Component, PC, CI, USB inputs

The full specs are available on the Panasonic web site.

I bought the TV from the John Lewis site for £449, most of the awards the TV has one were reviewed when the TV was about £600.
EDIT: John Lewis have increased the price by £50 to £499, and is now OOS (1st Jan 2010)

Some of the awards are as follows:

	If you have a Which? subscription, this is the full review
	See the full review from HDTVtest.co.uk (an awesomely techy review it is too)

John Lewis delivered it on 29th December, pretty impressive – only ordered it 3 days beforehand, and not many delivery companies delivery during the xmas period. Massive box!

Unpacking & Installation

Unpacking & setting up was easy; as soon as you turn the TV on, if it detects a DVB signal, it starts tuning. Very good tuner, better than my Panasonic DMR-EX77 DVD & HDD recorder.  Even though that will upscale Freeview to 1080p, the picture seems a little over-processed, and there is a lot of noise.  Using the in-built tuner in the TV, creates a much nicer image.  Maybe I just need to play with a few settings.

The DMR-EX77 support Viera link with my TV, and it allows me to turn on/off, control the whole system with just the TV remote.  This is a very nice feature.  It is worth noting that the DMR-EX77 only supports HDAVI Control, whereas Panasonic are up to v3 now; this latest version allows the tuners between the TV & DVD recorder to be a little more intelligent, allowing you to pause live TV.

The EPG in the TV is the same one that I’m used to in my DVD recorder, but its MUCH faster & much cleaner. The resolution of the menus are much higher too – looks much more professional.

Picture Quality

This is where the Panasonic L32S10 really stands out; especially from my 4 year old 26″ LG LCD TV.  The colours are dramatically better, and the 50,000:1 contract ratio benefits can clearly be seen. The difference between 720p (the best my LG could handle) and the 1080p on this set is clear as well.  One specific example was when I was watching the new Start Trek film; I’ve now seen this in DVD, Blu-Ray 720p, Blu-Ray 1080p & IMAX cinema.  It wasn’t until I watched it in Blu-Ray 1080p that I noticed in a scene towards the beginning of the film, where Captain Kirk is beaten up in a bar, that the model starship (USS Kelvin) he is playing with is actually a salt mill!  The salt falling from the mill is so fine that I just wasn’t able to see it before in lower resolutions (Not sure how i failed to see it in IMAX though!).

Gaming is another place where this TV really stands out.  As mentioned in other reviews, the lag time on this set is EXTREMELY small. Guitar hero (reliably) informs me that the delay on my LG set was about 35ms, but on the Panasonic L32S10, calibration always comes outs at 0ms.  This is already showing its benefits in CoD:MW2 multiplayer

Conclusion

An extremely short ‘review’, I know, but I’ve only had the 32LS10 for a very short amount of time.  However, in that time it has not failed to impress. High build quality, high picture quality.  I cannot comment on the sound quality (it’s connected to a Sony surround sound system), but I would assume like the majority of LCD TVs that the in-built speakers are not up to much.

I realise that you can get much bigger TVs, for much less money – Tesco are even selling a 32″ 1080p TV for £199 – but I would still recommend this TV to anyone, I don’t think you would be disappointed.

This is just another quick post to show a quick picture of just how slow my iPhone is. So slow that I can take screenshots of it doing things it shouldn’t.

Combine this the fact that I’ve had months of incoming phone call problems, outgoing phone call problems & data problems (O2’s apology); and my girlfriends Android phone is looking better and better!