I'm looking at purchasing a 36" HD Ready set soon. I've been looking at the Sony Xbr and I just saw the new Panasonic HD ready sets. I felt the Pana had a better picture. Any advice or experience with these?

I use the Sony XBR Wega 400 (36) and the RCA DTC 100. I'm very pleased with the HD and standard sat. performance.

Sony XBR is a superior product to the Panasonic--had one took it back!

I had a Panasonic 10 yrs. ago. (Quasar). This set cost $1000.00. The picture tube went all green after 2 yrs and panasonic wouldn't do anything to fix it. The same thing happened to my relatives. They replaced the tube and 2 yrs later it happened again.Panasonic's customer support sucks. I haven't bought anything from them since this happened.
I now own a Sony 35" XBR. The picture is great. It's also had it's problems, but at least the Sony support has been there and helped me out.

I am very familiar with the Panasonic 32" GAOO, which is the forerunner to the new TAO sets, and uses the same internal line-doubling. I will say without hesitation that if the 36" had been available when I bought my RCA, I would've gotten the Panasonic without even thinking about it.

The internal doubler is miraculous and provides a stunning picture on DVD, and it is capable of 1080i 9and of course everything in between. The XBR 400 series, while costing a lot more, cannot help a cable picture at all, as far as I can tell. Their DRC "technology" is an odd matrixing of the line signals, and to my eye only emphasizes the flaws in a regular cable signal, whereas the Panasonic makes the cable signal look a whole lot better than it is.

Also, the Sony shows me what looks like artificating and image delay, so that many images off regular broadcast look pixelated and posterized. A football game? You can almost see a shadow of every player as he moves, while the redraw tries to keep up.

I've been looking at the XBR 400 series since they arrived, and I've seen a number of configurations and tweaks. In the end, it's always the same: on a regular cable picture, you can bloody well count the number of black horizontal lines of resolution. On a higher quality source, it is beautiful, however. ... Mike

Mike,

Dittos....

randy

Are the XBR's any better on digital cable vs. regular cable TV? Please say yes.

I just saw the 36" panasonic and the picture was incredible even in a store with 200 tv's. Should I worry about quality problems compared to the XBR?

Chad, if you mean "long-term freedom from problems" when you say "quality": I've had a Panasonic 19" GAOO since the brand line was started at least 10 years ago, and it is still a stunning performer. Never been serviced. The 32" Panasonic with line-doubler is almost two years old and is also still perfect. ... Mike

neopolaris--

One thing to keep in mind about digital cable. Most digital cable systems I've seen do not provide a superior picture to analog cable. In fact, all the analog cable channels on a system can end up looking worse when you have digital cable because they are not digitized at the cable company and sent out digitally. Instead, they are sent out as an analog signal and simply passed through the cable box, typically with some degradation of the signal.

The digital channels (typically pay channels like HBO and Cinemax) are beautiful though. XBR's would probably make those images look fantastic.

You might want to try www.audiosurvey.com and see what kind of reviews people gave to these 2 manufacturers. You can also check out www.audioreview.com. and get reviews from people who own these sets.