Cheap Panasonic TC-22LH1 22" LCD Flat-Panel TV (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of Panasonic TC-22LH1 22" LCD Flat-Panel TV

Fantastic High Definition (HD - 1080i) performance. Good to excellent Standard Definition (SD - 480p) performace with some minor reservations.

Detail:

Physical: This is a nice looking set, the silver with the chrome trim looks elegant. Fit and finish looks good. I think it looks better than the TC-32LH1. Speakers mounted below the screen. The base is secure and does not swivel. However, the screen does tilt forward and backwards from upright. The remote is small, handy, but isn't full of buttons, no backlight (except for the function selection). Detachable panels for hiding cables. Not a whole lot of room for manuvering thick audio and component cables behind the panels. If the panels are used I would recommend flexible thin cables with the smallest plug possible. VESA compatible for mounting. Outboard power supply. Mechanical switch for complete power off.

Features: Video settings can be saved for each device selected! Has MPEG noise reduction and black and white crushing capability (I set mine to "0"). Stereo enhancement, separate bass, treble and balance. No clock. No PIP. No 720p. No DVI (but has HDMI/HDCP). Two wideband component inputs, two composite/SVID inputs. L&R Audio output. No subwoofer output. Has WIDE, NORMAL, JUST (stretch the very edges of the picture, and FULL scaling capability.

Performance general LCD: Excellent black levels for an LCD. Better than a Samsung LTM225W. At or near the black level performance of the Toshiba 26HL83 which I think has one of the better "real world" LCD black levels. Very little smearing with movement indicating a fast response time. Based upon the Samsung LTM225W with a specified 16ms I believe the Panasonic is at least that fast and maybe a bit better. Viewing angles are good. Maybe not the *widest* but still good enough for fairly oblique viewing. Did not find a single bad pixel or sub-pixel.

Performance HD: Watched HD via a Zenith HDV-420 and a SciAtl 3250HD -- every signal upconverted to 1080i. I have no HD generator such as a B&K 1253. Exellent color (see SD/DVD below) which I suspect will be verified with the HDNet test patterns Tuesday morning. The picture is sharp with lots of detail. There is good detail and color even in low level scenes. Despite the rated contrast level (500:1) the effect seems to be much greater than that. There is a realism to the black levels that contributes greatly to the "beliveablity" of the picture. Overall, the HD viewing experience is the best I've seen from an LCD set.

Performance SD/DVD: Utilized a Sony RDR-GX7 with component out set for progressive. No video EQ settings used. DVE, Avia used along with various dics: Lawrence of Arabia (Superbit), Singing in the Rain (new transfer). Many of the DVE and Avia patterns were reproduced incredibly well. As best I can tell through the filters, there is no red, blue, or green push. The Avia flashing color bars are almost spot on with only the green flashin hue/tint (yellow/cyan) being just slightly off. The Panasonic's color temperature of "Neutral" seems to have the best overall color temperature performance. "Warm was too reddish while "blue" was too bluish. The "Neutral" seems to have only a very slight tilt towards blue. The only issues I have with the SD picture seems to be some residual egde enhancement (even with the 22LH1's sharpness set to -30), some "stairstepping" with diagonal lines, and a bit of what looks like "speckling" duing scenes with movement -- as can be seen in the Avia's moving Zone Plate pattern. None of defects are very annoying in my opinion and I haven't completely ruled out the source devices. None of these defects is seen when viewing HD (1080i). Using one of the 1080i upconverting DVD players may reduce or eliminate these defects (my speculation, not verified). Overscan was less than 5%. Overall, the SD viewing experience is good to excellent.

Performance OTA/SD: Good, fairly sensitive NTSC tuner, auto programming picked up all local strong stations and some weaker low-power stations as well. The NTSC picture was a bit soft with the "stairstepping" of diagonal lines noted but enjoyable with good color and contrast and should do nicely in a pinch.

Performance Sound: For a TV of this size, excellent. Plenty of volume. Clear highs and the bass actually has a bit of "oomph". The set utilzes some small woofers so it actually sounds pretty good for simple, standalone, stereo.

Performance Remote: Works well. Somewhat intuitive. No dedicated buttons for input device -- must scroll through. Tip: utilizing the channel up or down button takes you to the "top" of the list. If on Component 2, instead of scrolling through the other devices to get back to Component 1, just change the channel and then press the video button one more time to get to Component 1. Not very flexible for controlling other devices -- basic functions only. Some delay noted when pressing the menu button -- it takes a moment or two for the menu to appear. Fairly wide remote angle.

Overall: I think this is one fine TV: Fantastic HD picture, good to excellent SD/DVD picture, and the features work well. Only the SD/DVD issues keep it from being a full 5 stars. I'd rate it 4.5 stars. It's a keeper.

Very early impressions + some words after 18 months
24 December 2003... <
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>These are very early impressions of the Panasonic, as I've had it less than 12 hours as of this writing. <
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>The TV seemed to look bigger in the store. My entertainment center dwarfs it. But otherwise it's a good fit for my viewing environment, as my couch is less than 6 feet away. <
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>It has an ample supply of video inputs: two composite/S-Video (each can be one or the other, but not both simultaneously), two component video, and one HDMI. All five can be called up independently. There is also a built-in over-the-air tuner, but it is non-HDTV. <
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>There are four viewing modes named "normal", "just", "zoom", and "full". "Full" expands the frame to the full width of the 16:9 display. "Normal" is the traditional 4:3 frame ratio shrunk to fit the display top-to-bottom with black bars on either side (there is a setting to tweak the width of this shrunken frame, by the way). "Zoom" is 4:3 enlarged to take up the full width, with the top and bottom of the frame cropped out. <
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>"Just" mode deserves its own paragraph. It's similar to "full" but is designed to make a 4:3 frame look more agreeable when stretched. Basically, the middle part of the frame is stretched out less than the extremities. It's a very subtle difference, but it does indeed make it more pleasant to watch a 4:3 image stretched in this manner. <
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>The picture is very sharp and clear--so sharp and clear, in fact, that the most minor imperfections in the signal will jump right out, whether they be noise in a broadcast signal, digital artifacts from something like a TiVo, etc. This is what made me waffle the most between giving this thing 3 or 4 stars. I may modify my rating later when I update this to a more complete review. <
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>18 June 2005... <
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>It's a year and a half later. The TV has grown on me, and I remain happy with it, maybe even a little happier than before. Its quality has not diminished in the least in this time. I give it 4 stars now. <
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>One feature that I forgot to mention that I've since really grown to appreciate is the picture settings: brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc. These settings can be tweaked and stored in three banks: "normal," "vivid," and "cinema." This enables you to make different settings for different viewing situations and switch between them quickly. Indeed, you may not have to switch between them at all, since the TV always remembers which mode you last used for each input (for example, "cinema" for your DVD player and "normal" for your cable box). <
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>The only thing that remains an annoyance to me is switching between all of the video inputs. There is but a single button for doing this, which rotates through all seven inputs. The on-screen display always tells you which input you've chosen, but the screen always takes a little time to come back whenever you switch, meaning you have to wait a bit to see which input you're on now. So switching inputs becomes a bit tedious, unless you happen to have a really good memory for what order they come up in the rotation. <
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>I think that's all for now. I think this TV is an even better value now that the prices have come down further from the $2000 when I bought it!