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6% of you who contributed to our poll (671 votes so far) are waiting on the new IDTV from Panasonic. Whilst not a massive figure it atleast shows interest in the new integrated Digital TV’s, which Panasonic have today confirmed will be available from June.
The integrated Freesat receivers will be included in 3 of the Panasonic plasma’s, including 42in, 46in and 50in (TH-42PZ8, TH-46PZ8 and TH-50PZ8), along with Freeview and analogue tuners.
The setup will be as straight forward as the stand alone freesat receivers, just connect up to your satellite dish (same setup as Sky), select automatic tune and wait for the channels to appear. You’ll of course have to input a postcode for region specific defaults, but there’s nothing more to it and the scan is significantly faster than Freeview.
The Freesat ready Panasonic plasma’s will fetch a premium of £200 over the standard model, Whilst this may seem excessive, you’ve got to consider the additional technology as part of such a setup, including the AVC HD video decoder, which not only allows you to receive HD picture and sound from the award winning Viera Pro engine, but also allows you to watch HD footage from external sources such as an SD card or video camera. In addition, the thought of one less box, and one less remote might be worth the extra premium (we are talking only £50 here, compared with a £150 stand-alone digital box!).
Good news also comes in the form of an ethernet connection on the back of the TV. Allowing you to take advantage of Freesat’s online services soon to launch, such as iPlayer and Kangaroo.
So if you are considering a new true-HD (1080p) plasma, wait a while longer and benefit from Freesat built-in, as well as a flat screen TV from one of the best manufacturers in the world.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Woo… Very Nice..
But how much..? not that I care as I’ve got the 37″ 1080i version from Panasonic, and that compared to anyone else’s HDTV that I’ve seen before or since blows theres away.. Panasonic and Plasma are the way to go, do even thing of getting an LCD, they are terrible at displaying SD content.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:11 am
It looks very nice and no doubt will have a good picture with its 1080p (1920×1080) instead of the usual 1024×768 of most plasmas even though that will probably degrade the picture for SD. It’ll probably do blu-ray brilliantly.
It hasn’t got a hard drive though, so would iPlayer or Kangaroo be any use at all? I would imagine that the only time this will sell is before any other telly has a hard drive and I wouldn’t be surprised if Humax aren’t already considering one.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:32 am
The flat tv company are selling the 42″, “Now only £1,649.00″ for a telly! I stick to having a separate box, thanks.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Plasma uses too much leccie - will they do an LCD version?
May 20th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Col,
You don’t have to download programmes from iplayer you can watch them ‘live’ on the website.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I haven’t actually used iPlayer but considering that its just streaming media its most likely the same. You need a buffer of a good few MB otherwise any delays in the network will result in an unwatchable stream. Most people don’t have connections above a few Mb/s so they need an even bigger buffer which all takes time to fill before you can start watching.
Whether you plan on watching stuff through that or not, the vast majority of votes on this site have been for a pvr (apparently freesat prefer dtr) with most people saying that they aren’t interested until there is one (only 6% saying they are willing to buy now and upgrade later). How many of the idtv voters would rather wait until there is an idtv with a hard drive?
If Panasonic really are that good and influential people do read posts on this site then hopefully they will see this as well.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Called in at my local Comet branch (Cannock) today, they don’t have any stock of receivers, but told me that there is a large stock of Alba group receivers stored awaiting shipping when the software updates are sorted.
They also tell me the Panasonic TVs with built in receivers should be available in two weeks time. I think I’ll wait to see these.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Ignore everything until the the first Plasma HD with built in harddrive, twin sat tuners and wireless PC streaming…One remote and bingo — It won’t be long!