The first unit I received was determined to be defective. After 24 hours of use, a vertical black line was clearly visible on the right side of the screen. After testing this issue, it appears that the “blue” no longer shows on that row of pixels; used different solid colored images to isolate the missing color.

Called Amazon to report the issue and was instructed to contact Panasonic. Panasonic wanted to troubleshoot and send a technician to service it, however, I opted to exchange since I was skeptical of a unit that had this type of failures so shortly after receiving it.

Amazon was very helpful and shipped the replacement immediately. I am waiting for the replacement unit to be shipped; they are also picking up the defective unit at the same time. 1-star until I receive the replacement. Extra star for Amazon’s customer service.

I will update this review after I receive the replacement. I still have confidence that this will be one amazing TV and look forward to enjoying it.

Update on 6/15/10:
Received replacement from Amazon today; that was fast! I’ll provide another update and complete review after the replacement is proven to be a good unit.

Update on 6/21/10:
I just completed a 100-hour break-in as described in the following forum thread:
[...]

This break-in will evenly age all of the phosphors of the TV for more uniform and stable calibration. It also provides a good way to stress the unit to make sure it’s not defective. The solid color images are also very useful to detect any defects like the one I experienced with the first unit I received.

So now my TV is calibrated and hooked up to my DVD player, DVR, Wii, and PS2. Picture quality is great, especially at night with controlled lighting. In daylight, the picture does get a little washed out. DVDs look okay but not great; I am not using an upscaling DVD player so that could be the reason. I do wish that the TV had a few features: more HDMI inputs, an EPG for ANT/CABLE hookups (when DVR is busy I use the built-in tuner), more Vieracast features, better media support with Viera Tools (it doesn’t support any video formats besides AVCHD).

Overall, I’m happy with the picture quality and value of this TV. Best bang for your buck! Hopefully Panasonic improves their QA as two out of three reviews on Amazon already have similar defects. I give this TV 4/5 stars.

I got this TV yesterday afternoon and watched it for couple of hours trying the different modes Standard, THX… and all looked pretty good, but a little too much color.

This morning I decided to drop the color setting from 50 to 40 which mase it look more natural. As I cleared the menus off the screen I noticed a jagged horizontal red line about a quater of the way up the screen and edge to edge. At first I tried to figure out if it was part of the ‘Morning Joe’ ticker as it sort of belonged there, but when I changed channels I knew it wasn’t.

I explained the problem to Panasonic’s customer service in a nearly hour long call (was sent to three different people). Finally they told me I needed to send them a picture of the line before they would have a service technician call me. I asked them to send me the email address they wanted me to use and they said they couldn’t even though they had my email address and that I’d have to write it down. Nice!

Like the other reviewer I do not plan to accept a repaired TV as I’ve not even had the TV for a day. So far this hasn’t been a good purchase.

I’ll update this review when Panasonic resolves this issue.