Panasonic Smart VIERA TX-L42E30B 42-inch Full HD 1080p Internet-Ready LED TV with Freeview HD

I purchased this Panasonic TV from Amazon on friday and it was delivered the next day by courier. The TV was well packaged, and there was no damage to it.

Set Up:-
I opened the box and removed the TV, remote and the small pedestal. I am using the stand that comes in the box, it was in two parts with screws to hold it together. After placing the TV face down on the sofa I fitted the stand using the supplied screws.
I then placed it on the shelf and plugged in the Sky HD box (HDMI), Bluray player (HDMI), DVD player (Scart) and Netgear RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N USB 2.0 Adaptor. Bearing in mind that this TV comes with four HDMI ports and three USB ports it gives you plenty of options for connecting other devices.

I plugged the TV into the mains and switched the power on, up on the screen comes the set up options. this guides you through tuning in the TV and setting up the Wireless network. Its all very straight forward and simple to use. It took about 10 - 15 mins and the TV was up and running and connected to my wireless network.
Picture Quality:-

This TV was purchased to replace a five year old 32" panasonic lcd which I though had a good picture. This new TV blew the old one out of the water, the standard definition free view is better than what the old TV could do with HD! The colours are bright and well defined and black is actually black. I have not noticed any blurring of the picture its very smooth and natural looking.
I was very impressed with the SD picture, so I tried a bluray film (limitless) to test it out fully, and what a shock i had, I can honestly say this is the best picture I have ever seen on a telly. I could not believe my eyes!!

I still have a shock now when I watch the TV even after three days of using it, it just blows me away.

Sound Quality:

Now this is a LED TV, and is very very thin, the size of the speakers must be very small to fit into the unit, but saying that the sound it produces is very good, I would not go as far as to say its excellent, but it is very good.
Connectivity:

This TV comes with Three USB Ports two on the back and one on the side which can be used for hard drives, memory sticks, wireless adaptors or a usb keyboard. There are four HDMI ports, three at the rear and one on the side, one scart on the rear. There are also component in, audio in and out and a pc input on the rear. there is a headphone socket on the side along with an AV input and an SD card slot for viewing photos and video.

This TV comes DNLA enables that allows you to access any DNLA computer or storage device on your home network. I have used this feature as I have a lot of videos on my computer from home made films to downloaded ones from iTunes. They all play on the TV, which I think is great as I dont have to create DVD's to watch on the TV anymore saving time and the environment.

This TV comes with a feature called Vierra Cast, its an internet portal that allows you to access things like the BBC Iplayer, Facebook, twitter and youtube. I have used the Iplayer yesterday to watch top gear, but had to adjust the settings to basic quality as my internet connection is quite slow. saying that it was a smooth picture without any pauses or breaks but I wish I had a faster connection to the internet to be able to experience the high quality broadcasts.

I think the TV is very good value for money and cost my around £550 from Amazon. I would definitely recommend this set to anyone who is looking to purchase a new TV as I can't find any fault with it at all.

Had been looking at the TX-L32D25B for a while as it won 32" TV of the year in a well-known magazines 2010 awards issue. However that's now gone end of line and whilst still a cracking TV I really wanted something which was going to be around for a couple of years. As the set is brand new for 2011 there were no reviews to help out the decision process but as it's basically the new version of the D25 I went for it on the basis it (hopefully) would be at least as good as that set.

I needn't have worried!

Out of the box and set up in under 10 minutes, the TV shows a remarkably good picture on a Freeview standard def broadcast. I'm quite happy spending time tweaking and testing out all the various picture options on TV sets to get a better picture but this one was extremely good without touching anything. We've just gone fully digital in my area and with the TV featuring a new Freeview HD tuner built in I noticed that it had picked up a couple of the HD channels when it was running through the channel scanning process at startup. After hunting through the guide I eventually found them down in the 50's. Switching to BBC 1 HD it was immediately obvious how much more improved the picture quality became! I was watching the Chinese GP qualifying at the time and with a multitude of picture sources (in car, computer graphics, live commentary etc) on the go, the normal BBC 1 feed was ok but not brilliant. Switching over to the BBC 1 HD feed was a completely different story though and the set really started to show its potential! Blacks were excellent, really dark but without total loss of detail. Skin tones were pretty much perfect. Motion handling was excellent, as good as I've seen on many top of the range LCD sets which cost 5 times as much!! All in all very impressive, and I hadn't even watched a DVD yet.

Hooked up my blu-ray system and started working my through various DVD's and blu-rays to try the set out. All proved to be superb and I've yet to find something that causes concern, it's that good! I'm still a big fan of plasma for larger screens, but I am mightily impressed with the performance of this LCD and would not hesitate to recommend it should anyone be looking for a 32" TV around this price range. It definitely responds better to HD sources, so if you've got a strong Freeview signal in your area already, or you're due to get switched over totally in the coming weeks/months, and can get Freeview HD, then this TV will not disappoint. It's good on normal Freeview but you'll get the best out of the set if you can watch the HD channels instead. Similarly, Sky HD, compared to normal Sky, will yield the same results.

Five stars without hesitation, this is an excellent set and likely to be a front-runner in this category for a long time.

I rely a lot on the reviews on Amazon, and have rarely found that they have been wrong, or misleading, and so when I considered this TV I was somewhat dissapointed with the reviews, and would normally have just not bothered investigating the product further. However, the wife and I had just been to John Lewis to look for a TV, and of their great variety of stock it was this one that really impressed us. So I was in two minds. After dithering over the weekend we decided to go for it.

Amazon, as always, gave awesome service, ordered mid afternoon, it was here at 9am the following day! Easy to setup for a simpleton like me. First thing I did was to see if it suffered from any of the failings as mentioned in the other reviews. The HD channels appeared not to exhibit the increase in sound volume, check that off the list. As much as I peered I couldnt see any ghosting, going well so far. Back light issue, Gordon Bennett! There is a stripe along the bottom of the screen of increased brightness, its not just visible, its almost distracting. On a dark image its nasty, on lighter images its hardly visible. But now I see why other reviewers were so upset by this, for a decent quality TV, its a bloomin great failure in quality. Decided we would use the TV a couple of days and see if this was something acceptable to us, or not. Meanwhile, investigated the TV futher.

We have no interest in all the connectivity bells and whistles, its really for just watching TV and a DVD once a month. So the TV pic and sound quality are paramount. The picture quality is fine, looks excellent in HD (doesnt everything?) and not so good in SD. There are few picture calibration options with this (and I susepct all) Panasonic TVs, this isnt a TV where you can fine tune and calibrate the image, basically you can just play with contrast and brightness, and frankly they dont make a huge difference. However, the image is good, and the colour rendition seems very lifelike, it lacks that saturated brilliance of some TVs we've seen, but I suspect over time the more natural colours will win out over that in yer face saturated brilliance. Sports looked fine, no noticeable lag or ghosting. Was very dissapointed in sound, and I am not a finnicky sound person, whether I had it on the options of voice or music it sounded like it was inside a barrel, muted and dull. So messed with User sound setup and basically just randonly clicked the bars on the equaliser, and it was much better! I guess spending an hour or so fine tuning the sound would improve it further. So my recommendation if you get this TV is to use User option in Sound, and play with the sound equaliser until the sound appears good to your ears.

This is a good TV in my opinion. Its solid yet not heavy to lift, everything seems to work as it should, and a bit of time doing basic user calibration helps. However, the simply horrible back light bleed at the base of the screen is really unforgivable, and its 50/50 at the moment whether we return it because of that.

By the way, when we visited John Lewis on Friday evening it was £799 and they wouldnt budge on price, saying they had already reduced it to price match. Came home, straight onto Amazon and it was £584. Sorry JL, we love you, and your 5 year warranty, but £215 price difference is just too much.

Anyway, if you are considering this TV, and reading this review then I urge you to read all the reviews for it, as there seems little doubt that it will have lower screen back light issues to some degree, from either the minimal to the horrible. I would give the product between 4 and 5 stars if it werent for the back light issue, as it is, I really cant give it more than 3 stars.

Update 5th August 2011:
We returned the TV to Amazon due to the backlight and sound issues. And replaced it with a Sony Bravia which was truly lousy, returned that and got a Samsung, which wasnt too bad except it had backlight issues as well, and returned it! Then read some of the latest reviews on this Panasonic and it seemed maybe there is a later version that is improved. So thought, what the heck, let's see if the issues are fixed.
Well, I am happy to report, its great!! All the things that were good about it are still good, and the backlight issue is gone, also the sound is much improved.

My advice based on this experience is if you get one of these TV's and it has backlight and/or sound issues then return it and replace it, as there is every chance you will get a cracking good TV for your money. I really dont know if its a case that some of the TVs are better than others, or whether its an old v new stock case. But if you get a good one it absolutely knocks the socks off Sony's and Samsung's offerings in this price range, better in every facet - sound, image, connectivity, build quality, even the stand is a better product. A good one is really worth having.

So I have changed my original review rating of 3 stars to 5 stars. I hope this saga helps you in some small way with your decision making.

And I must add that Amazon's service has been spectacular. Next day deliveries and pick-ups for returns. No quibble refunds.