How to set the screen for optimal viewing on the Panasonic TC-L37X2 37-Inch 720p LCD

[BrieDanielle]

I bought my Panasonic TC-L37X2 37-Inch 720p LCD HDTV with iPod Dock last summer. I noticed right away that when you first turn it on, the picture is bright and clear, but within a few seconds, it becomes dull and faded. At first I tried brightening the screen, and while it did get brighter, it still had a fade over it. I assumed this was the energy saving feature, and I left it alone to see if I could get used to it.

There are times when it bothers me, and times I don't notice it at all. But now that I have my whole home theater system set up, and am using it a lot, I wanted to see the picture clearer. Chris Boylan is always talking about how amazing the picture is in HDTV, and I've never noticed anything special at all.

So I pulled out my manual the other night and went to disable the energy saver, only to find out that it wasn't set. It was already set to "standard," rather than "saver."

So I'm at a loss. I really thought it was the energy saver, and I still think it somehow is since the screen starts out bright and beautiful and only fades a few seconds later when something kicks in. Whether I choose to continue to watch it the way it is, or not, I need to know how to change it to normal. Because this cannot be normal.

Thanks.

[MrBoylan]

It sounds like you're describing the effect of the C.A.T.S. feature - it's an ambient light sensor that is designed to adjust the image brightness and contrast based on actual room lighting. You can turn this off in the picture settings menu if it bothers you.

In terms of optimum settings, well the optimum picture settings depend on a number of things, not the least of which is... you guessed it, the ambient lighting in your room. In general, the "worst" mode to use is the "vivid" setting as this is really just set-up for the brightly lit showroom floor. The whites are washed out, the blacks are crushed and the elevated sharpness makes everything look pretty unnatural. For most content, "Standard" or "Cinema" modes should look pretty good, particularly if your room has average to low lighting. Also, again in most cases, the backlight setting should be turned *down* to enhance contrast and detail, and the sharpness control is usually best left around 1/3 of max. I must add that we have not reviewed this specific set, though, so these are more general recommendations based on experience with other sets. A properly calibrated TV can actually look a bit dark if you're used to the hyper-real settings of a "vivid" or "dynamic" mode. But when your eyes adjust, you start to notice details in the content that you may never have seen before.

And as for HDTV looking great, yes HDTV does look great. The better the TV, and the better the content, the better it will look. Your TV is a very nice set for the price, but it is after all an entry-level model: 720p resolution (not 1080p) and traditional CCFL backlighting with no advanced motion processing. Even so, if you feed it good high definition content, it should look pretty sweet. By "good HD content," I mean Blu-ray Disc or a high quality HD feed from cable, satellite or over the air. From earlier conversations in threads on the forum, I believe your cable feed is not HD, so really the only HD source you could watch on your TV would be Blu-ray. Upconverted DVDs are not HD, and streaming sources such as Netflix and Amazon VOD, while convenient, are also not the highest quality HD content due to bandwidth limitations and heavy compression. So if you have not done so already, buy or rent a few Blu-ray Discs if you want to see your TV at its best.

Also, keep in mind that picture settings for one input are independet of those from another input. IOW, if you set your TV up properly for the HDMI 1 input (Blu-ray), these settings will probably not carry over to your cable box input. This is done by design so that a set can be optimized for the various sources plugged into it with different picture settings for each.

Anyway.. I hope that helps, and I'm not trying to be condescending about your TV. It's a solid set for the money, but it isn't going to be able to match the performance of a top of the line 1080p plasma or LED/LCD set.

Regards,

-Chris

[BrieDanielle]

Oh yeah, I know it won't have quite the same detail as the 1080 would have, but I have a very (VERY!) small room, and in my research prior to buying the TV, I was told that 1080 would actually work against you if you have a very small room. So in addition to the good price, it was a deliberate decision on my part to go with the 720. And I don't think you're condescending.

Thanks for your help. I'll try your suggestion with the C.A.T.S. feature.

[MrBoylan]

Oh yeah, I know it won't have quite the same detail as the 1080 would have, but I have a very (VERY!) small room, and in my research prior to buying the TV, I was told that 1080 would actually work against you if you have a very small room. So in addition to the good price, it was a deliberate decision on my part to go with the 720. And I don't think you're condescending.

Thanks for your help. I'll try your suggestion with the C.A.T.S. feature.

Well I would say 1080p is always better, small room or large, as it gives you more pixels which means more detail. The only time it could potentially work against you is with lower quality sources that may look better with *less* detail. But even a standard 480p Wii game looks pretty great on a good 1080p set. Anyway.. let us know if the CATS setting is the issue you're seeing.

-CB