Panasonic Viera TC-P50VT20

Internet Features (7.00)

The Panasonic TC-P50VT20 features Panasonic’s ‘Viera Cast’ set of streaming internet content. Panasonic has been trying to expand its content partnerships, but it’s still looking a bit thin. Out of the box, the TV can only pull content from YouTube, Amazon Video on Demand, Pandora music, Picasa, and Twitter. There’s an image advertising Fox Sports as coming soon, but it’s not here yet. Twitter is also coming soon. If you move on to the second page of apps you find Bild.de, a German-language tabloid paper, and Tagesschau, a German-language news channel, and Bloomberg stock price quotes.

Where’s Netflix, we ask. Where’s all the good stuff? Why are two of the three video content providers in a foreign language? If you want to see streaming internet on a TV done right, look at the new Sony KDL-46EX700. It features over thirty content partners with a ton of video. We’re not sure why Sony seems to be the only one getting it right, but there’s simply no contest right now. We only hope that both Panasonic and Samsung make some strides early this year to bulk up their features.

Local Media Playback (9.00)

Boy, talk about a rush job. Panasonic and Samsung are sloppy right out of the gate with poor, crashy software for reading photos. Ideally, the Panasonic TC-P50VT20 can display photos from either of its USB ports and the SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot. The interface is the same for all of them. To access photos, plug in your thumb drive or memory card, then select either Viera Image Viewer or Media Player from the Viera Tools menu. Making slideshows of your photos is easy, and the TV offers a lot of options for customizing, including speed, transition effects, background music (including cheesy pre-loaded music samples), and more.

The problem is simple yet confounding. The first time we put an SDHC card in the slot, it could read the content just fine. We were able to make all the slide shows we described above. But for whatever reason, the TV seems to have cached the data and held onto it with a bear grip. No matter what happened, the TV thought that the card with the original seven photos was still in the slot. We swapped out the card, changed the data on the card, plugged in thumb drives and card readers, etc. to no avail. Even stranger, there’s a little blue light that illuminates on the TV when a card is inserted, and the light never turned back off. Even turning the TV on and of didn’t help. It simply froze. All other functions on the TV continued to work normally.

The problem is simple yet confounding. The first time we put an SDHC card in the slot, it could read the content just fine. We were able to make all the slide shows we described above. But for whatever reason, the TV seems to have cached the data and held onto it with a bear grip. No matter what happened, the TV thought that the card with the original seven photos was still in the slot. We swapped out the card, changed the data on the card, plugged in thumb drives and card readers, etc. to no avail. Even stranger, there’s a little blue light that illuminates on the TV when a card is inserted, and the light never turned back off. Even turning the TV on and of didn’t help. It simply froze. All other functions on the TV continued to work normally.

Other Media (2.00)

The Panasonic TC-P50VT20 can connect with other Panasonic devices, including camcorders, through a feature called Viera Link. With this, you can sync with devices like a Panasonic Blu-Ray player or home theater system, or use the big, 50-inch display to check on a network camera (or a whole series of network cameras). For more detail on this, go to http://panasonic.net/pcc/products/netwkcam/.

Other Models in the TC-PxxVT25 Series
For more information on other models in this series, check our Series Comparison Page.
Panasonic Viera TC-P50VT25 50 in.	Panasonic Viera TC-P54VT25 54 in.	Panasonic Viera TC-P58VT25 58 in.	Panasonic TC-P65VT25 65 in.