ST50 Owners' Thread - First impressions, Reviews, Tweaks, etc.

I think for an average joe there is very little difference between ST50 and UT50. I did see the UT50 next to ST50 paying a Bluray feed and I must say there wasn't a HUGE difference. ST50 is better no doubt, but considering the price differential the UT50 is a fantastic package.

Contrast and blacks no doubt much better on the ST50.
 
I am really disappointed with the Panasonic brand store and it is only listed dealer on Panasonic website.

He doesn't even have any GT50 or ST50 models and said he hasn't sold any and there is no supply all over India. He insisted on GT30 or the new LED models.

Surprising.i m getting same versions for 42ST replacement that it's not available with company. While many bought this set in pune, delhi, mumbai..which size ur gunning for..
 
Last edited:
He says they are not available anywhere. A month and half ago he said they will be available before Diwali but 2 days ago he said they won't be coming.

Thus Pana plasma business is being ruined by people like him.
 
He says they are not available anywhere. A month and half ago he said they will be available before Diwali but 2 days ago he said they won't be coming.

Thus Pana plasma business is being ruined by people like him.

Another sad part is that even other showroom guys raise their eyebrows when someone goes for enquiring on Plasmas. When I was hunting for a TV, I was not even aware how good a Plasma would be. In fact I was lucky when I visited one of my long time friend's house and happened to see Panasonic ST30. I was shocked because all the while I was wrongly assuming that Plasmas were not worth. It was afer that I went through various websites for nearly 3 months and finally went for ST50. More than the showroom guys, I think Panasonic has failed to advertise how excellent their sets are. Why can't they come out and say loudly that they have the budget oriented excellent Plasmas which can compete with any of the highend reference models ??? Imagine if it was for any other company, they would have blown the trumpet. :sad:
 
Hi just4kix,

You mentioned that you run scroll bar daily for 30 minutes. My set is still in the first 200 hours period and I run the scroll bar for not more than a couple of minutes daily. So let me know what you think and till now, I haven't seen any IR.

Apart from running the scroll bar for 1 to 2 minutes daily, here are other things that I take care during the first 200 hours period.
- Keeping contrast (40), bightness (0), sharpness (0) and color(40). Pixel orbiter is turned on by default.
- Keeping the aspect ratio to zoom2/zoom3
- While watching news channels, I change the channels for ever 10 minutes during the break or advertisements.

Please share your thoughts.
 
Another sad part is that even other showroom guys raise their eyebrows when someone goes for enquiring on Plasmas. When I was hunting for a TV, I was not even aware how good a Plasma would be. In fact I was lucky when I visited one of my long time friend's house and happened to see Panasonic ST30. I was shocked because all the while I was wrongly assuming that Plasmas were not worth. It was afer that I went through various websites for nearly 3 months and finally went for ST50. More than the showroom guys, I think Panasonic has failed to advertise how excellent their sets are. Why can't they come out and say loudly that they have the budget oriented excellent Plasmas which can compete with any of the highend reference models ??? Imagine if it was for any other company, they would have blown the trumpet. :sad:
Manufacturers cannot state their TVs are better than the competitor's. But you are right that Panasonic does not advertise properly the way Samsung, LG and Sony do. Perhaps it is a sinking company and does not have budgets for advertising or maybe they are exiting the TV business (the way Pioneer did).

But I was for a surprise today. I am hunting for an LED TV and particular on Sony. I went to Croma and there was a salesman there who was actually promoting plasma to a group. He was stating all the benefits and was particularly praising LG 50PA6500 which was available for 68,000 or something. He was telling the group that plasma is a better buy than everything all around.
 
When I went to buy ST50 at TMC at hyderabad, the store manager was saying that there were lot of myths about plasmas.But these days the awareness has increased and more people want to buy only plasmas.
When I was asking about Samsung plasma, he was giving his opinion that samsung's current focus is led, not plasma.Panny's focus was always plasma and they introduced leds for the sake of completeness of their portfolio.
 
Hi just4kix,

You mentioned that you run scroll bar daily for 30 minutes. My set is still in the first 200 hours period and I run the scroll bar for not more than a couple of minutes daily. So let me know what you think and till now, I haven't seen any IR.

Apart from running the scroll bar for 1 to 2 minutes daily, here are other things that I take care during the first 200 hours period.
- Keeping contrast (40), bightness (0), sharpness (0) and color(40). Pixel orbiter is turned on by default.
- Keeping the aspect ratio to zoom2/zoom3
- While watching news channels, I change the channels for ever 10 minutes during the break or advertisements.

Please share your thoughts.

Hi just4kix,
I guess you missed my previous post on the burn-in period. My question was on how long should one run the scroll bar ? As I said, I run daily for around 2 minutes, but you seem to run for 30 mins. I wanted to understand if there are reasons to run for 30 minutes. Please share your thoughts.
 
Hi just4kix,
I guess you missed my previous post on the burn-in period. My question was on how long should one run the scroll bar ? As I said, I run daily for around 2 minutes, but you seem to run for 30 mins. I wanted to understand if there are reasons to run for 30 minutes. Please share your thoughts.

sorry to bump into. I have 42UT50D.

there is no definite period to run the built-in B&W scroll bars.

IMO, the best way to "age" the phosphor in screen is to run as much as dynamic colorful content, with contrast (30-40) & brightness (0-5) on less side for initial 200 hrs. Color settings doesnt affect IR. infact, you can just download on pen drive few HD videos and keep in Repeat mode. ideal would be some stuff similar to nature scenery (as in NatGeo, Disc etc) ! Keep the Picture in Normal Mode (there is no harm in checking the Dynamic mode for a while, but dont be tempted now)

just ensure that video is fully covering the screen (16:9). let it run, while you getting ready for office in morning, or working late on laptop (typical!) - but dont keep it unattended for long.

I see above more value than running the boring EA images via pen drive
Evangelos Angelides - Downloads

hope this helps
 
Last edited:
That was a helpful info. In my case, I simply watch more movies (in zoom mode and it was not distracting much) with the minimal contrast/brightness settings. Let me try to download the image on my pen drive and follow what you suggested.
 
Hi just4kix,
I guess you missed my previous post on the burn-in period. My question was on how long should one run the scroll bar ? As I said, I run daily for around 2 minutes, but you seem to run for 30 mins. I wanted to understand if there are reasons to run for 30 minutes. Please share your thoughts.
I did not follow any specific break-in method except the following:

- reduce contrast to 35
- limit watching of letter box mode to no more than 150 minutes per day
- turning on pixel orbiter
 
A slightly off-track question ... I have purchased Belkin Ultimate series surge protector and using it for my ST50. There is a provison for connecting the cable wire from the Satellite dish to the input of the surge protector and another coaxial cable from the o/p of the protector to the set top box. Along with the protector, Belkin has given a coaxial cable for connecting the o/p to the Protector to the input of the set top box.

The problem is - the coaxial cable wire from the dish has one connector which is currently connected to the set top box. Now I want to connect it to the surge protector, but the connector is not compatible with the protector input. When I browsed the net, the are quite a few types of co-axial connectors (Male F type, Female type, etc). Another problem is the Belkin supplied co-axial cable (which needs o be connected from the o/p of the protector to the i/p of the set top box) is not compatible with the i/p of the set top box. I guess we need to buy suitable connectors. Can some one help me on this ?
 
Last edited:
Cool. And thanks for the prompt reply.

So what was your burn in period like? I'm going through a really long thread on a different forum talking about how to burn in a plasma.

Have you by any chance had the opportunity to demo E8000 by Samsung?

I have been hunting for ST50 for few months but it kept getting postponed yet again (and again). Finally, I paid some advance only to learn from the dealer after one week that it may take one more month or more...

I did consider 50ST50 (99K), 42GT50 (99K) and 50GT50 (114K) but yielded to the worldwide overselling with thousands of backorders of Panasonic Plasmas to make my second choice - Samsung's top-of-the-line E8000 (99K).

Expecting E8000 to be delivered tomorrow with a free Philips home theatre, 51 movie pack and a Galaxy Tab 7.0. It is worth a compromise ;-)

Copying others' calibration settings may not help because all TVs vary greatly by model/screensize/country etc. It is better to find what looks good to the eyes of those who watch it. By the way, all those who are looking for break-in slides and other related stuff may wish to see 'here' and 'here'.
 
Last edited:
I did consider 50ST50 (99K), 42GT50 (99K) and 50GT50 (114K) but yielded to the worldwide overselling with thousands of backorders of Panasonic Plasmas to make my second choice - Samsung's top-of-the-line E8000 (99K).

Expecting E8000 to be delivered tomorrow with a free Philips home theatre, 51 movie pack and a Galaxy Tab 7.0. It is worth a compromise ;-)

Copying others' calibration settings may not help because all TVs vary greatly by model/screensize/country etc. It is better to find what looks good to the eyes of those who watch it. By the way, all those who are looking for break-in slides and other related stuff may wish to see 'here' and 'here'.

e8000 with free HT and tab 2.. thts a new offer i have come across.. which area u from.. is the HT offer from MB dealer ?
 
A slightly off-track question ... I have purchased Belkin Ultimate series surge protector and using it for my ST50. There is a provison for connecting the cable wire from the Satellite dish to the input of the surge protector and another coaxial cable from the o/p of the protector to the set top box. Along with the protector, Belkin has given a coaxial cable for connecting the o/p to the Protector to the input of the set top box.

The problem is - the coaxial cable wire from the dish has one connector which is currently connected to the set top box. Now I want to connect it to the surge protector, but the connector is not compatible with the protector input. When I browsed the net, the are quite a few types of co-axial connectors (Male F type, Female type, etc). Another problem is the Belkin supplied co-axial cable (which needs o be connected from the o/p of the protector to the i/p of the set top box) is not compatible with the i/p of the set top box. I guess we need to buy suitable connectors. Can some one help me on this ?

Can you post some photo of the connector and the cable. There are adapters available which allow you to convert between male and female
 
Is anyone using the DLNA feature of Viera. I use XBMC on my HTPC and have enabled DLNA. In the media server option, XBMC shows up without any issue. However playing the actually movie on the TV doesn't give a good user experience. The movies play in jerks. However I am able to play the same movies flawlessly using airplay on apple tv.

I have described my setup here. Any help in resolving streaming to tv using XBMC will help me to use my apple tv in another room on a tv which has zero smart tv features.
http://www.hifivision.com/television/31116-help-panasonic-viera-app-dlna-xbmc.html
 
For excellent sound that won't break the bank, the 5 Star Award Winning Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 Bookshelf Speakers is the one to consider!
Back
Top