The projector was replaced by a cheap but good flat 21″ CRT, which I purchased on EBay for about A$220. It’s been in use for 2 years, but it was finally time to make an upgrade. Enter the Panasonic 50PV60A. It’s a 50″ medium-HDTV plasma display, with a resolution of 1366×768, 1080p processing and 2 HDMI inputs.

I managed to negotiate a price I was very happy with, bundling it up with a Topfield HT7000S HD decoder. This is a perfect combo for free to air Australian television.

I’ve been running it in since purchase time in August 2006 with brightness and contrast settings of about 50%. I will continue to do so until it’s reached close to 1000 hours, then it is free for all. For the the first 200 hours I was quite particulate about using the zoom function when viewing 4:3 material, but I’ve since relaxed that bit. I’ve yet to see any burn in so I must be doing well.

The upgrade is a massive one, and it makes for an extremely cool home theatre system. I’m not going to the movies any more, and am really looking forward to when the 2nd generation of HDDVD players come out and titles become generally available.