Panasonic VIERA TX-P42GT20 (TXP42GT20B) 42inch 3D Full HD Plasma TV With Freeview-HD

They are also 600Hz scanning. Now, if you take a standard TV which scans at 50Hz, meaning there are fifty pictures per second making up the image, this TV has Panasonic’s latest technology, which is 600Hz Intelligent Frame Creation. It fills in extra frames of information, so if you are watching any sport or movies – anything with any fast movement in there – it is going to control that action really well; you are going to get no delay or drag in the image on the TXP42GT30.

They have a contrast ratio in excess of 5 million : 1 native contrast – an extremely high contrast level. As I have said before in some of the other video clips, the contrast ratio is one of the most important factors to look for in a TV; the higher the contrast ratio, it is a general good guide that the better the picture is going to be. At 5 million : 1 contrast, you are then achieving a good inky black level. Because the black level is so good, you get a really good natural colour palette, great depth of field, and good detail in the darker areas of the screen as well.

So, you have got a good scanning ratio on here, it has got HD tuners, and you have also got a really high contrast as well.

This Panasonic TX-P42GT30 TV is also 3D ready. It does not come with the glasses but when you buy this TV, if you decide twelve months down the line that you would like to get into 3D technology, you don’t have to change your TV – it is already built into this particular range; you just have to buy some of Panasonic’s active 3D glasses, which I will show you in just a few moments as well.

So that is a general rundown of the TV – as I said, extremely good high specification. You have got internet services through this TV, it is also Wi-Fi ready – which, yet again, we will have a look at some of those features in just a moment.

Before we get into those features and some of the menus on this TV, I want to take you through the sockets on this TV. It is one of the slimmest plasma TVs you will buy at the moment.

Okay, so first of all, here we have a side view of the TV. It is extremely slim. If you take the TV at its slimmest depth, you are only actually looking at 3 cm in depth at it slimmest point – extremely slim. Let’s run through the sockets just on the side here. They are all recessed as well so it makes itself extremely useful for wall mounting. You have got basically, starting at the bottom here, you have got 1, 2, 3, 4 HDMIs all in a line coming down here – so four HDMI sockets.

Just above that you have a USB. You have then got an SD card reader which will take high definition footage through the SD card as well – you have got an SD card reader there; so if you have got a digital still camera, pop your card in and you can have your photographs coming on there or from a high definition video cam just straight into the SD card slot. And just above that you have got the common interface slot on there so if you want any pay per view content you have got a common interface slot on there as well. So on the side there you have got four HDMI sockets, USB, SD card reader and common interface.

So here we have the back of the TV. The sockets are mounted and recessed just underneath here. It gives an excellent explanation of what those sockets are just above here. So you have got things like Component, AV2 and Audio Out. All these sockets are recessed. You have got Freeview HD which is your coaxial socket there for your aerial, and just next to it just there as well you have got your satellite connection. But, yet again, they are all recessed so it lends itself very nicely to be wall-mounted.

Now, these sockets under here – one of the sockets that you haven’t got on here directly is a Scart socket. But to get the TV so slim, what they do is basically give you adapters for that. So what you would have underneath here, there would be socket for this cable to plug into, which will be just mounted there. You plug that into there, and then under that you have then got a Scart socket where you plug your Scart lead into.

To be honest with you, now the majority of components that you buy tend to have just HDMI, so they have dropped the Scart off there to make the panel even slimmer. But if you have got anything using Scart, just use that adapter. Yet again, they give you several other adapters, which I will show you in just a moment, to connect into various applications on the back of this TV into these sockets, which we will go through in just a few moments with you.

Okay, so let me just take you through some of those adapter leads we were just looking at there. First of all you have got adapter to Scart, which plugs into the sockets just underneath where I have just shown you on the rear of the TV.

You have also got other adapters as well, for things like Composite Video – so if you have got like a Wii games console you can use Composite Video. You have also got Component adapters as well, as well as audio adapters. So you have got things there for Audio, Component and Composite. All of these come in the box with the TV. But, as I said, the chances are, if you are wiring, say, Sky HD into this, a games console such as a PS3, Xbox 360 you are going to be using HDMI. If you have got a modern DVD player, it is going to be using HDMI. A lot of these sockets – things like Scart – are tending to go out of production now. If you buy and DVD player it tends to have HDMI on now, so they tend to be using less and less of these particular sockets on the back of TVs, which allows them to get the TVs even slimmer. But, as I said, if you are using any components which still use Scart, then you have got adapters to wire up for that as well.

So, let’s run through some of the menus on the TV. First of all, that is the remote control you get with the set, it has got Panasonic’s brand new menu system on here as well. On the remote control, we just press the Menu button which is just up here, and it will click into the menu system for you. Now, as I said before, this TV is also Wi-Fi ready as well. It does have an Ethernet port on the rear, which was just to the side of the aerial socket. If you go down to… well, we will go through the Picture Settings first of all, where we are here. So, press OK in the centre of the remote control and it will take us into Viewing Mode. At the moment it is on THX. We can go through various preset modes from the manufacturer, such as Cinema, Normal, Dynamic and back to THX. What this does, it presets to a determined level the contrast, brightness, colour and sharpness.

Now, if you are watching a movie on DVD, there are some movies which are recorded in THX. If you select the THX setting on here, it will set it up for that movie exactly the way the filmmakers wanted you to view that movie, so you get an exact portrayal of the contrast, brightness and colour.

If we come down from there, you can go down from this and tweak it up to wherever you want it, so you can adjust things like the contrast, brightness, colours to however you want it on there as well.

You have also got Panasonic’s CATS system which is an automated adjustment for you. On the front of the TV you have got a little sensor which is constantly measuring the ambient light of the room. If we switch that on – I don’t know whether we will see it on the screen here but we will just have a look for you – you will see the picture itself vary slightly in the brightness and contrast content. So you can have that On or Off. If you switch it on, as I said, it will keep the picture at optimum performance for you.

If we just come out of that menu for a second, you have also get the 3D Settings as well. In just a moment I will show you the 3D glasses for the TV as well – but the 3D technology is built into this TV so, as I said, if at a later date you wanted to adapt it to 3D, you can do so – you just need to purchase the glasses from Panasonic.

You have also got Advance Settings on this TV. If you access those, as well as just the standard settings that we have just seen for the colour, contrast and brightness, if you go into the Advanced Settings, you have got things like Intelligent Frame Creation. If you are watching something with extreme fast movement, if you switch it on it will give you an even better control over that for you as well, so you get no delay or drag. You have got things like Clear Cinema, Resolution Enhancer – if you are watching a standard TV programme, say on Channel 5 or any other channel which is not in high definition, you can switch this on and it will give you Mid or Max – it will give you different options in that menu there, where it will increase the resolution of that image for you, to give you sort of like a pseudo high definition image, even on a standard definition programme that you may be watching.

If we just come out of there for a moment and drop down to the Sound Menu, you have got adjustments in the sound menu for Music and Speech which give you the general day-to-day operations for bass and treble. However, if we come out of that menu and go into the User Menu, you have got a little bit more variation there. It clicks up a graphic equaliser onscreen where, if we go into that, you have then got adjustments for bass at the far end there and then you have got adjustments for all the mid-tones that you can adjust on the TV as well, and then through to the higher frequencies. So you have got a little bit more variation over the overall tone of the sound.

The sound quality on this TV as well is exceptional, it is extremely good. The speakers are tucked away just underneath here but they are firing towards you – they are not firing down or to the back of the TV; it is throwing the sound out towards you as well. It has got a really good sound system on here. It is 10 watts per channel on all three models, so 2 x 10 watts on all three screen sizes.

If we come down from there you have got Surround Off first of all, which gives you the standard stereo sound; V-Audio which will then throw the sound out at a wider angle for you, and V-Audio Surround which will attempt to get the sound out and around you as well. So you have got different sound modes there.

If we come out of that menu, you have got then the general Setup Menu on here which takes you through things like Network Setup and so forth, and DVD Tuning. The tuning on this TV is done automatically, so when you get the TV, you just put your aerial into the back of the TV, switch it on – now the On/Off switch is tucked away just here, it is just to the base of the TV just there – the TV itself, just while we are having a look at this, the actual surround of the TV is in a high-gloss black finish with a slight silver trim just round the edge of the screen. As it comes down to the bottom here it fades then into sort of like a grey steel finish there as well. They are on a swivel base, so you have got a swivel base on this particular model. It comes with the tabletop pedestal stand. You can well-mount this – so you can take it off this – you can wall-mount it, there are wall fixtures on the back of this TV which are 400 mm by 300 mm. So, On/Off switch just at the front there – when you switch it on from new, the set will tune itself in and set itself up. There is nothing for you to do, it is completely automated.

Now, regarding internet connections on this TV and what you can pick up, you have got a button here which says Viera Cast. If you press the Viera Cast button it will load into Panasonic’s Viera Cast system and it will give us various website options onscreen. You have also got Skype facility on this TV so you can make Skype to Skype phone calls. You can buy a Skype camera from Panasonic, plug it into the back of this TV, and if you make a Skype to Skype call, no matter where they are in the world, they are free of charge as well. Now then, you have got things like Facebook you can get onto through here; you have got YouTube, BBC iPlayer…

On the keypad you have got Up, Down, Right and Left – you would just go along to the section that you want to get onto – let’s have a look for you there… So we have highlighted BBC iPlayer in blue – if we just press OK which is in the centre of the remote control just there. It is now logging onto BBC iPlayer – so you have got catch-up TV functions through this TV. It will load up BBC’s iPlayer website in just a moment and then you will be able to select whichever TV programme you may have missed that you want to catch up on.

As I said, you have got various other websites – that was the first page you just saw on there – there are other pages which we will go through in a moment. So, there we are, it is loading up BBC iPlayer’s website which we will see in a moment. Yet again, using the keypad, Up, Down, Right and Left, you can then go along to various different programmes and you go through all of the content details on here. So if you want Wonders of the Universe, you just then click on there and it will now start to load up that programme for you. So, as I said, you have got BBC iPlayer services through here, which are accessed through the Panasonic Viera Cast system. It has loaded up now – it says Play; we just click OK again and it will now start to load that programme up which will just take a few seconds for it to do so. There we go – it is on there now – just turn the volume up… And it is as quick and easy as that. So it is almost like having an additional channel on the TV – as I said, you have got BBC iPlayer on there.

So we will just come out of there now, and we will got back into that Viera Cast again and just load it up again. So, as I said, you have got BBC iPlayer up here, but you have got various other websites that you can get onto. You have got Eurosport down there, you have got YouTube, so you can access any sort of YouTube clips on there.

If you go down to More Information which is just here, click on More and it will change on here now, so you have got things like Twitter on here as well, Cine Trailers – so if you want to have a look at what is showing on Cine Trailers you just press OK – so if you are thinking, “Well, we’ll go out to the cinema tonight”, you want to have a look what is on at the cinema, you can have a look at various cinema trailers to see if you like that movie and whether you think it is actually worth going and watching. And, yet again, you would just click on any of those, click OK and go onto that Cine Trailer as well.

So, you have got a TV here which is extremely high specification: as I said, you are looking at 600Hz, 5 million : 1 contrast level, Freeview HD, Freesat HD tuners, 3D ready as well. Picture quality and sound quality are second to none – it is an extremely hi-spec TV.

This particular TV is on demonstration in our showroom, in both Bolton and Leeds. If you would like some more details, either go to our website, which is www.soundandvision.co.uk, where you will find hundreds more video clips on there – not just on TVs, but on amplifiers and speakers and home cinema systems. Or give me a call – my name is Chris – on 01204 861 861 if you would like some more details.

And we will now just give you some snapshots of the glasses and some close-up shots of the TV itself.

Thank you.