Impressions after 2 months of usage:
- HD PQ on the set really rocks, now that I am done with the break-in period. I still can't stop admiring the deep blacks and rich, natural colours, much to the irritation of my family ("did you see the contrast in that fireworks scene??"). BTW I am using settings from
here.
- SD quality is not as good as in the other plasmas I evaluated, but isn't too bad either. My biggest issue in SD viewing is the lack of detail in dark areas/scenes, which frankly is worse than on my old CRT. However I have not seen any banding issues like on a previous LCD, and the contrast and colour are still very good.
- The buzz hasn't stopped. If anything, it is louder and I can clearly hear it from 7-8 feet away when the volume is muted. I haven't decided what to do about it, since I don't notice it while watching TV, and frankly I don't want to go through the break-in process again.
- Image retention is a bigger issue than I expected (this is my first plasma). I can't keep the TV in zoom mode forever, and there is clear IR when there are static images for more than 30 minutes (while watching a movie with 2.35:1 aspect ratio for example). So far there is no permanent damage (thank God), and I have been able to get rid of the retained images by running the scroll pattern for 15 mins+. But it does get irritating, and I am always worried about burn in.
Overall I think the TV has been an 8/10 - the fantastic PQ (which mattered most to me) comes with minor but with fairly irritating problems that cannot be ignored. The TV is like a beautiful and loving wife who has a terrible snoring problem.