I was in Costco yesterday and I spotted a Panasonic Viera TX-L32E3B for £205. It was ex display, but it came with a 5 year guarantee. I read the reviews before I bought it and nearly all were favourable so I thought I may as well get it for that price (it's £400 most other places).

My previous TV was a Samsung. I bought it a few years back for £350, so it was budget even then, and it's only 720p.

Anyway. The TV came with 'dynamic' mode on as default, which of course is rubbish. I tweaked the settings to the way I like it; turned the sharpness right down, toned the colour down so that people's faces look lifelike and not like umpa lumpas etc. This is where I ran into some issues though. In order to make it bright enough, the brightness and contrast need to be up full. Even then, it still isn't enough. I think this may be down to some sort of power saving mode. When the input goes dark (like a black background on the credits or title on a TV show), the screen dims. When it goes bright again, it lights up. This seems very silly to me. In dark scenes, the last thing you want is for it to be even darker.
The TV does has power save mode and C.A.T.S, which detects ambient lighting conditions. These are both turned off.

The other issue I have is that things don't look as sharp as they did on my older 720p screen. I play BF3 on the xbox. I have switched the xbox to 1080p from 1080i but the text looks jagged, as if the sharpness needs turned down, buts it's already down the lowest. Looking at the edged in-game, especially the sides of buildings and on the mini-map, the lines are very jagged. I have a very good eye for detail, so this may be me bein picky, but I reckon the in-game quality isn't as good as on my older screen.

I don't know what I can do to fix these problems. They are spoling what is an otherwise excellent TV. Can anybody help?

I can't help you with the brightness settings, but Battlefield 3's native resolution only runs at 1280x704 and is upscaled by the console, so it's not the best reference point. I'm not surprised that it looks worse at 1080p than it did at 720p.

Ah that may be why. Thanks.

The brightness issues sounds like a fault.

It sounds like the TV is still using some sort of dynamic brightness or black level control.

To have it dim when the picture is showing credits on a black background does sound like dynamic controlling. It dims the back light to help reduce the bleed you get on LCD TV's that make blacks a dark blues.

The picture mode needs to be in Normal or Cinema. Also check through all the settings etc for any kind of back light, black or other "enhancers".

I think that's exactly what it's doing. The thing is there is definitely not a feature like that turned on. In fact all the features are turned off. I'm going to see if I can ring Panasonic and if they say its a fault I will return it.

If it helps I had a Samsung TV 5-6 years ago that did this. It was a Dynamic control intended to produce better black levels.

The only way to turn it off was to enter the service menu which can be dangerous.
If you have checked everything and have the TV in Normal mode etc then its worth the call.

for the price you paid you could have bought a Panasonic Plasma instead. You will get a picture twice if as good as LCD around that price range. Although the smallest they do is entry level 37" ones.

Make sure the tv isnt scaling overscan.
1:1 pixel mode, full or whatever... should be set to on.
As said the xbox or ps3 both tend to run 720p or even sub 720p, and scale from there.. so double scaling would be awful.

I prefer the plasma picture myself too, but not sure where I might get a 37" Panasonic plasma for 200 quid range - do tell

I've fiddled with the overscan but I left it on because the edges on TV broadcasts were annoying me. I will switch it to off though.

And for the person saying they would have got a panny plasma for the price I paid... for 200 pound the TV is an absolute bargain, I'd love to know where you would get a better one for the same price from.

Do you really see edges on tv broadcast?

I've never seen any problems with the supposed over scan areas personally.

On some outside camera footage in news programmes you can occasionly see a black and white dashed top line. It dissapears when you return to studio shots.

Yes, like you say it's mostly on the news but it quite common. My dads Panasonic plasma is the same. It doesn't really bother me, I just assumed having overscan set to 'on' is the same as the default areas other TVs, and having it set to 'off' was viewing more of the area than you really should.

I guess the channels in your area have to catch up with the times. American networks did have some issues a while ago but they fixed them, overscan isnt' an issue anymore.