Panasonic Viera TX-32LZD81 32in Freesat HD LCD TV Review

I’m absolutely delighted with this purchase after some thoughtful research, including of course Trusted Reviews. It’s a wonderfully clear TV and, most important for a non-technical person like me, an absolute doddle to instal. I just plugged the old Sky cable coming in from the aerial into the back of the Panasonic, and it was ready to watch with all the channels literally in second.

However (and here’s the thought for other would-be purchasers), I hadn’t considered the other rooms in the house with old-style TVs. It appears that I can’t take an output from the Panasonic to the aerial socket to then feed satellite TV to the rest of the house. So I now either have to buy a stand-alone freesat receiver box to receive the incoming line from the aerial, which means I might as well have just gone for one in the first place with an ordinary digital TV (i.e. without freesat built in) for less money. Or I have to pay for a new 4 line in set-up from the aerial, one to serve each of the TVs, and buy a normal set-top box for each of the standard TVs to convert them. The outcome is that I have a TV which I love which I’ll probably be watching late into the night because I can’t see any TV at all in my bedroom after digital switch-off without considerably more cost.

I bought this TV about a month ago for £665 from a high street shop with 5 year warranty, after my 10 year old Panasonic died. I wanted HD and Freesat and after reading the reviews my choice was 32 LZD 81.which fitted the size of the room. Setting up was easy and the picture is exellent on all inputs, but on BBC and ITV HD there is no difference in quality between Freeview and HD both are super pictures. Is this normal?

Hopefully these comments may help someone considering purchasing this TV, I have had 4 months to play with this TV since treating myself at Christmas after reading many reviews, its worth travelling a few miles to ensure you get the 5yr warranty, the price I paid is still over £100 less than I can get locally without the 5yr warranty,
Now the TV, first bad points, well one I can think of, after it's done an overnight update it won't switch back on,just sits there with the led flashing, (this has happened 3 times in 4 months)no biggie, just turn off at the mains for a minute to reset itself,
Good points, the picture out of the box is good but not what I'd describe as excellent, but spend a little time setting it up & I'm sure it will be well worth it, I downloaded a test card & went through the TV's many settings until I was happy with them all, now I WOULD describe the picture as excellent, not even rushing to close the curtains in bright sunlight as with previous TV's,
Auto set up in freesat is great,inc BBC-HD (connected to the same quad LNB that I am using to recieve sky) but if you enter Other SAT (non freesat mode) and run a 45 minute scan for all satellites you will find many more signals than those available on freesat at the moment, in fact so many signals that it's not possible to store them all on the TV's 1000 presets, of course a lot of these are encrypted, but you should be able to pick up all "free to view channels" on astra 2A-2D & Eurobird 1, without moving the dish, I have over 500 sat channels stored including Luxe HD, enough to keep most people happy I think,
Very happy with the sound, it's possible to set up volume corrections on each mode, freesat, DVB, AV, HDMI etc so there is no more having to turn the sound up & down as you go from DVD to TV to freesat etc, my laptop linked to the TV provides an adequete picture and sound from the laptop is also available on the TV via an adapter,
One note re Carolines comments about not being able to send freesat to other TV's via the RF lead is true, but if you go into the link settings it's possible to set AV1/AV2 to TV out and then I think you should be able to scart out the channel being watched on the TV to a video sender if you wished, although I use this facility to viera link to my panasonic DVD recorder which works great on Direct TV record & Timer programming on both freesat & freeview
IN CONCLUSION, although I have probably spent a total of several days setting it up over the last 4 months, in my opinion it's the best TV we have ever owned & perfect for our family's requirements and with the ethernet socket hopefully about as future proof as is possible for any TV to be, it will be interesting to see if any new services will be provided via ethernet in the future, I have not tried the common interface up to now but I understand reading comments in various forums that it is possible to recieve pay to view, setanta etc, if I can help with any questions about this TV please contact me at at94@btinternet.com

Further to Marks comments about hooking up a video sender to AV1 or AV2 - yes this works OK but only if you have the TV switched on at the same time as the TV receiving the signal in the other room. Does anyone have a suggestion how I might watch Sky News in bed even if the TV downstairs is turned off?