Comments on: Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ850U Review

By: Reggie Perrin

Reggie Perrin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:00:42 +0000

“I spoke with a Panny rep yesterday and he noted that the 800 has not been manufactured in several months. Most probably why they are expensive and not readily available.”

If the 800 is gone, and with Pioneer no longer doing 42″, then there are no more high end 42″ plasmas anymore.

46″ 800 = $1500
42″ 800 = $1770
46″ 850 = $1380

42″ 800 on clearance = $1770. 46″ 850 on sale = $1380… this is a $390 difference. Amazing.

RIP

By: TheBestPlasmaTV.com

TheBestPlasmaTV.com — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:36:55 +0000

Thank you for the comments regarding the price guys!

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:50:37 +0000

I spoke with a Panny rep yesterday and he noted that the 800 has not been manufactured in several months. Most probably why they are expensive and not readily available.

By: Reggie Perrin

Reggie Perrin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:17:58 +0000

In the US, on this date internet sellers are offering 850s for less than the 800s. In fact, there have been online pricing making the 50″ 850 less than the best priced 800 42″.

Panasonic’s other lines don’t have effective noise reduction. I ordered the 850 only because it was over one hundred less than the 800. If both were equal priced, I would pick the 800 and keep it in THX mode.

RIP

By: mark

mark — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:26:11 +0000

The 800 and 850’s use 1/2 the watts of the 80& 85 series.
the same or less than LCD’S
see Cnet’s reviews

By: TheBestPlasmaTV.com

TheBestPlasmaTV.com — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:24:33 +0000

Usually Amazon.com has good prices for HDTVs. You can click the “Buy from Amazon” button at the top-left of the review. They also offer free shipping (generally).

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:02:18 +0000

Pricing should still be on the way down. Bought the 850U (and using all the features - well worth the extra) . Bought in Australia from Bing Lee .. google them…. for $2400 which is around US$1500.

By: charlie

charlie — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:13:42 +0000

Purchased 58″ 850U online at Cleveland Plasma, should have it next week

By: Helen

Helen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:40:59 +0000

I am set on buying, I ‘m just not sure where to purchase or what a good price is.
Has anyone bought theirs online?

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:32:26 +0000

There are some other differences that I think are important because I plan on having a HD camcorder in the near future.
1) The SD slot on the 850 supports viewing videos stored in MPEG2 or AVCHD (AVCHD is used by most of tapeless comcorders these days if not all and if they don’t they now the will in the future).
2) 850 has Digital Cinema Color or wider color gamut which can reproduce the colors that digital movie theaters can reproduce (search for Digital Cinema Initiative). Of course you have to have an HD camcorder that records these extra colors to see it. I’m guessing that pretty soon these movies created for digital movie cinemas will be transferred to DVD or blue-ray in the future.

Not as important but fun is the Vieracast. I don’t really want to have a PC hooked up to my tv and booted everytime or left on all the time whenever I want to just check the weather or see youtube on my tv.

So the 850 is more costly, but if being able to pull out your SD card from your HD camcorder and seeing it on your TV without cords or transferring it to dvd first is important than I think the 850 is worth it…at least to me.
Tim