As long as your 3D glasses use the same technology as your images, they will work. However, if you'd like to enhance your overall user experience, here are a few additional aspects to consider. Battery: Active 3D glasses need a power source, which is usually a rechargeable battery. Ideally, you want a battery that can charge in just hours but can last for months on standby. Panasonic has also added Film Cadence Detection to its Plasma televisions this year. On the UK models, this option is called “Clear Cinema”. We’ll find out how well this works later on in the review. Two options to help prevent, or to alleviate Plasma display Image Retention, are also helpfully placed in the picture menu. We’re glad to see an easy shortcut to the “White Scrolling Bar” pattern being made available to users – it’s been present on Panasonic Plasma displays for some time now, but hidden away in the service menu. If you do have a marathon session of TV viewing from a channel with a particularly garish fixed on-screen logo and find it lurking around afterwards, then this “screen wipe” should sort things out. 2D Calibration Passive 3D glasses: have polarized plastic, and each eye sees its image, creating volume. By the way, this technology is used in movie theaters. TC-P50GT50, TC-P55GT50, TC-P60GT50, TC-P65GT50, TC-P50ST50, TC-P55ST50, TC-P60ST50, TC-P65ST50, TC-P42UT50, TC-P50UT50, TC-P55UT50, TC-P60UT50, TC-P55VT50, TC-P65VT50, TC-P42XT50, TC-P50XT50, TC-L47DT50, TC-L55DT50, TC-L47WT50, TC-L55WT50

Remember to turn the power off and unplug active 3D glasses for cleaning. Also, don’t use any chemicals or liquids to clean your 3D glasses. FAQ TC-50AS650, TC-55AS650, TC-60AS650, TC-50AS660, TC-55AS660, TC-60AS660, TC-55AS800 TC-60AS800, TC-65AX900 Active 3D glasses: These glasses have polarized glasses with a battery built in. The glasses synchronize with the TV and alternately darken the glasses in the glasses. These glasses are more expensive and require periodic battery replacement.

During the company’s London convention, we were able to speak with a Panasonic engineer regarding this mild annoyance, and from what we gather, it is the result of a motion-adaptive dithering algorithm built into the TV. Our understanding is that the TV’s video processor adds dither noise to areas of fast motion, in an attempt to conceal posterization, while keeping more sedate areas of the picture clean. The “fuzzy double images” effect occurs because the noise is only added to moving areas. As we understand it, the only alternative would be to drive the panel in a way which resulted in the entire screen being covered in a uniform amount of dither noise, which would result in a rougher-looking image (remember Pioneer’s Plasmas?), albeit without the sudden transition from smooth to rough around moving areas. Given the choice, we would probably keep things the way they are now, because there’s a lot to like about Panasonic’s (mostly) clean Plasma images.

There has been much talk online of Panasonic Plasma TVs exhibiting a “50hz bug”, but we saw no evidence to suggest that these “noisy edges” occur only with 50hz material (in fact, the FPD Benchmark disc is 60hz). Logically, they should also appear with 24p input as well, although the low frame rate of 24fps film means that motion artefacts probably won’t be visible. The reasonably accurate Greyscale performance that the TX-P42GT30 produced “out of the box” in the THX picture mode meant that images were largely free of unwanted colour casts, without any specialised calibration work being necessary. Of course, that’s also an option for users who want to squeeze every last drop of performance from the plasma TV.Clip-on: Some 3D glasses, usually passive glasses, are available as lightweight clip-ons. If you already wear prescription glasses, this might be a better option for you. In 2013, plasma TVs were discontinued; this was the last year of plasma TVs; Panasonic held the plasma TV market for the longest. Panasonic’s calibration menus have been improved this year. The on-screen slider control now appears fixed at the bottom of the screen, which is an improvement over last year’s models. On the 2010 displays, the on-screen graphics sometimes covered up the area of the screen that was being read, obviously skewing the measurements. Secondly, the low-end controls seem to have much more scope for adjustment this year: they are much less coarse. The TXP42GT30 retains Panasonic’s signature “clean” Plasma look: the Plasma panel’s driving method results in only a very small amount of fine noise being added to the image. Oddly, we did notice that when we displayed static, single-tone test patterns, the top 100 or so lines of the GT30 displayed a higher amount of subtle noise compared to the rest of the image. We’re not sure what the cause of this is or if it affects every unit, but we mention it for completeness only (we weren’t troubled by it).

DX900, DX800, DX780, DX750, DS630, DXW904, DXW804, DXW784, DXT786, DXF787, DXN788, DXX789, DST636, DSF637, DSN638, DSX639, DXC904

Panasonic has given most of its lineup a refreshing new menu redesign for 2011. The menus are now drawn in sleek transparent grey, which matches the design of the GT30 itself quite nicely. Some of the menu options have been re-arranged so as to appear in more logical positions: for example, the [3D Settings] screen is now accessed from the [Picture] menu, rather than from a generalised Setup menu. Additionally, with the two “Professional” picture modes, the settings are now accompanied by visible numbers, which is new for the UK variant models and is helpful during the process of finding the best picture settings (which we’ll do in the “Calibration” section).

TC-P50ST60, TC-P55ST60, TC-P60ST60, TC-P65ST60, TC-P55VT60, TC-P60VT60, TC-P65VT60, TC-L65WT600, TC-P60ZT60, TC-P65ZT60 The lenses of polarized 3D glasses are easily damaged. When cleaning, use a nonabrasive cloth on one side of the lens at a time. Types of 3D glasses Polarized: A polarized 3D image uses a different type of polarization for each image. Correspondingly, polarized 3D glasses feature a different type of polarization in each lens to allow each eye to only view one of the superimposed images. This type of 3D glasses is also passive, but it’s preferred over anaglyph because it allows the viewer to experience 3D images in color.Note: Our Panasonic TX-P42GT30B review sample was calibrated using Calman Professional, the industry-leading video calibration software. 2D Mode Greyscale We weren’t surprised to see the Panasonic TX-P42GT30B resolving all 1080 lines of resolution from the scrolling test chart on the FPD Benchmark Software test disc: Panasonic’s other 3D-capable HDTVs using the newly formulated phosphor material have performed just as well.