Panasonic VIERA TC-P50GT30 50-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The picture quality this TV puts out is crazy good. Colors are bright and vibrant without being over saturated and unrealistic. Blacks are inky black, and shadow detail is great as well. One of the reasons I bought the GT30 over the ST30 is the THX mode which gives really good out of the box picture without any aftermarket calibration. If you're into tweaking the picture though, there are two professional picture modes that allow very in depth picture controls.
1080P Source Material with a high bitrate (such as blurays or Vudu HDX) look incredibly sharp and stunning, while not looking sharp to the point of unrealism as some LCD's look. 720P sources look very good as well if a bit softer. 480i/p sources look alright. I only spent a few minutes watching SD and the experience was unexpectedly unimpressive. Motion on the GT30 looks very smooth and realistic without displaying the terrible "soap opera effect" that 120/240Hz LCD's seem to suffer from.
I tried using the Viera Cast software that Panasonic builds into these Tv's and I found to be pretty laggy. It wasn't very responsive and I found the design to be a little on the ugly side. Vizio and Samsung have much more polished media platforms built into their Tvs. It's possible Panasonic will improve performance with firmware updates in the future. If I was planning on using Viera Cast I would mark my score down but I have a Media Center PC and PS3 that replace all the functionality Viera Cast offers.
3D performance is very good. So far I've watched Tron Legacy on 3D bluray and played some 3D PS3 games; the 3D picture is very immersive and THX color accuracy remains very good in 3D mode. I've had bad experiences with 3D crosstalk on a friend's Samsung C7000 LCD and it can get very annoying and distracting. Thankfully I haven't experienced any of that on the GT30 in a dark or light viewing environments.
I've heard some early reports of the GT30 exhibiting floating blacks when viewing material that changes from a darker to a lighter scene suddenly. I haven't experienced any of this. I watched Black Swan on bluray to test this and black levels remained dark and consistent throughout with no slight jumps in brightness.
I'm also very impressed with the design of the GT30. It's about as thin as my Motorola Droid and it looks stunning mounted on my wall. Panasonic has traditionally lagged behind the likes of Sony and Samsung when it comes to the design of their Tv's but they really stepped up their game with the GT30. Having a TV that looks almost as stunning when turned off as it does when turned on is an unexpected plus.
Overall the GT30 is an incredible TV that makes no compromises when it comes to picture quality. If you want to spend more money, the VT30 it will probably improve upon the GT30 in some way when it's released but I'm having a hard time coming up with things they could improve outside of their Viera Cast platform.

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3D Technology Checklist
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