Home > Consumer Reviews > PANASONIC 46" PLASMA TELEVISION WITH FREEVIEW

After a week of ownership I am able to pass on some of my experiences with the first flatscreen TV in this country to have built-in Freesat, which offers limited access to High Definition broadcasts without having to pay for a separate subscription service.

Let me make one thing clear though. For normal, non-HD broadcasts the picture quality is not quite as good as the best antiquated CRT televisions. I have a Panasonic 32" Quintrix model of c. 2001 vintage and while its smaller screen may be an advantage in terms of clarity and detail, there can be no doubt that it is better (if only slightly)than any of the latest plasma or LCD monitors. It's only when you use a Blu-Ray DVD or watch an HD broadcast that the tables are turned, and using this TH46PZ81 for playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on a Playstation 3 is absolutely spellbinding.

I chose this model mainly because of its built-in Freesat tuner. Basically, you connect it to your satellite dish directly, so it might be necessary, if you still want to retain a set-top satellite box (such as SKY) to split the aerial cable such that both the TV and the set-top box have their necessary inputs from the satellite dish. Freesat is the ace up this model's sleeve but there's a lot less HD broadcasting on Freesat than I would like; it's mainly BBC-HD and very little else. ITV and Channel 4 broadcast occasionally but only a few times a week - I just hope this changes in the future. But watching a David Attenborough natural history programme on BBC-HD is a great experience and when it's as good as it is, in terms of picture quality, it's easy to forgive and forget.

I have just watched a football match for the first time (at home) on HD - the ITV broadcast of a Champions League match between Man United and Inter Milan. For anyone thinking of buying a big flatscreen monitor and who likes fast-moving sports, this is where LCD models fail in particular, and even plasma types too, if it's a 'normal' broadcast. A fast-moving ball can leave a slight vapour trail across the screen in a fashion not seen on a top-flight CRT. But the good news (and it's something of a relief!) with High Definition, it's better than anything. The picture wasn't dramatically, jaw-droppingly better than a normal ITV Sport broadcast, but it was nevertheless a clearly noticeable improvement and there was a total absence of vapour trail. It's when you see sport displayed like this that your investment makes sense. It's superb - but again, at the moment football on Freesat is a relatively rare event and I look forward to the total extinction of ordinary transmission and a comprehensive move towards HD for every single programme. That's when you enjoy even a boring programme just for the sharpness of focus and added depth of field.

Playing standard DVDs the picture quality is excellent, and often better than a top-notch CRT but this will of course depend on the quality of the source player. I use a PS3 via HDMI and also a Panasonic DMR-EX87 using SCART connectors, the quality is of a very high standard and I'm hard to please.

I plan to update this review in the coming months as I get to know the TV better; for example I have yet to utilise the Viera link facility so cannot comment on it just yet. In these early days though I am very satisfied with the picture and sound quality and I am convinced, not surprisingly, that you cannot do better than this at the price - it really is fantastic value.

UPDATE May 2009

I have dumped the Scart leads for HDMI for the DVD player and this was a worthwhile (albeit small) expense as the picture quality was slightly improved. I have also started using my Panasonic HD video camera's SD card facility for the first time, for still photographs, and the payoff is very satisfying - so convenient to take the SD card out of the camera and insert it into the TV, and the picture quality is very clearly better than that of my Nikon digital camera.

To run Sky as well as Freesat, it's necessary to have a second cable running from the outside dish - this can cost up to £100 for the parts and labour but makes life a lot more convenient. The alternative is to manually remove the satellite cable from one and feed it to the other, which gets rather tiresome after a while.

My main gripe continues to be the lack of HD transmissions on Freesat. There's only one dedicated high-definition channel (BBC HD) with ITV only doing HD sporadically - to access such programmes in HD you simply press the red button on the remote control. ITV offer on average about one programme a day in HD (usually films or TV dramas, but also documentaries and Champions League football). I had been under the impression that Channel 4 would offer HD on Freesat but apparently this will not be happening for the forseeable future, so you would need to pay a monthly subscription via Sky or a cable provider to access C4HD. That continues to be a disappointment for me, although it has nothing to do with the Panasonic TV reviewed here. I am still completely satisfied with it and consider it the best value plasma screen on the market.