Panasonic TC-37LZ85 LCD HDTV Review - Performance: Viewing Effects

We were quite impressed by the Panasonic TC-37LZ85 impressive viewing angle, especially for an LCD HDTV. Reflectance can be a problem if you have a bright light right in front of the HDTV.

Viewing Angle (11.05)
Although you may get a great viewing experience from an HDTV when sitting direclty in front of it you'll notice that as you increase the angle of your view the picture on the screen undergoes some changes. In this test we look at how well the HDTV holds up at wider angles. First we look at the contrast ratio across 90 degrees, which is graphed below.

The red line indicates the point at which the contrast ratio fell below 50%. The Panasonic TC-37LZ85's performance in this test was exemplerary, it was able to hold 50% contrast ratio out to 68 degrees from center, for a total viewing range of 136 degrees. This is almost twice the average viewing angle we've seen from other HDTVs. We also look at how well colors hold up as you vary your viewing angle, and we were quite happy to see that the Panasonic TC-37LZ85's colors hold up quite well, without the washed out or inverted colors you see on some other HDTVs. This makes the Panasonic TC-37LZ85 a solid choice for larger rooms where you may have people looking at the television from a wide range of angles.

Reflectance (6.0)
The Panasonic TC-37LZ85's screen does reflect light quite a bit, we were able to make out a clear pattern with our LED light source. That said it also does a decent job of diffusing the light, and you really need to shiine the light direclty on the screen and then look at it at the exact same angle to find it exceptionally annoying. We found that while watching a movie you may have some trouble with dark scenes if the light is shining right on the screen, but otherwise it shouldn't be a major problem.

Video Processing (1.0)
As with most HDTVs the Panasonic TC-37LZ85 offers a variety of different video processing options in the menu that are supposed to address certain problems. As is also the case with most HDTVs these options actually don't do much that is discernable. You can see below what we actually saw (hint: No change is popular), and you can see from the score above what our overall impression of these features are: just leave them off.