My spouse and I bought this HDTV two years ago.  After seeing this Pioneer Elite next to other brands of plasma & LCD TVs, it was immediately apparent how great the picture quality was.  While watching a dark jungle scene, other LCD and plasma screens showed black in areas where the Pioneer was able to show the deep greens of the trees & plants.  We have the TV mounted onto a media lift system that is buit into a media/bookshelf cabinet made by Ethan Allen, and the TV looks fantastic in it.  We had to remove the side speakers for the TV to fit, which didn't matter since we already had a surround sound system with better speakers to hook up to it.  We couldn't be more pleased with this TV, although it was a bit more expensive than we'd have liked, but we knew it would be worthwhile for all the hours of entertainment it would bring.  Unfortunately, Pioneer exited the TV business last year and no longer makes these great TVs.  I believe Panasonic bought the division from Pioneer but I don't know if the quality is the same.

AJBrown

Poway, CA

After many months of agonizing over which TV to buy... this is what I ended purchasing. I did many side by side comparisons with multiple brands and narrowed it down to Sony and Pioneer Elite. Of course, I paid an arm and a leg and then some to get this in 2005, when flat screens were just starting to pick up speed. It hurts a lot to see comparable televisions costing a fraction of what I paid then, but at least I got to enjoy it when I wanted it. We had one issue over these many years of heavy usage. We kept it on a vivid setting for the whole time--even through playing hours of video games on PS3 and hours and hours and hours of watching ESPN. The ESPN logo burned onto our lower right corner of the screen. It was most noticeable on white screens or lighter colors and really bothered me to have that logo burned on the screen. I called the customer service and it was past the warranty. But they said, hopefully it isn't a permanent "burned image" on the screen-- so they mailed out a "cleaner" for the screen. It was essentially a DVD of a screensaver. Just waves across the screen for awhile. We ran this for several hours and the image was less noticeable. We waited another night and ran it for couple of more hours and the logo was gone. (whew!)

jkmin79

Kalamazoo, MI

Nearly 2 years ago, my husband got his heart set on an HD plasma TV. I thought our old one was fine, but he talked me into finding an HD plasma. He did all the research and, once our tax return arrived, he went out to find this TV. He ended up finding it nearly 50% off the retail because it was being discontinued. He was super excited and told me how good the picture would be...and it was! Where our old TV screen was grayish and the colors appeared grayed, this one is vibrant. "The black is SO BLACK!" is what we kept saying after we got it. It was a huge change. The HD quality is great as well, and it's even nicer now that our local TV provider has nearly all channels available in HD, and we have an HD Tivo. I don't have much to review about the remote control ease-of-use because we use Tivo nearly all the time, but when I do have to go into TV menus, I find it easy to find what I want. It has a ton of hook-ups, so we have various video game systems, the DVR, etc plugged in and none have to be switched out for others. We can easily hook up our computer to the TV to view web videos, and my husband easily charges all his electronics/video game controllers via the USB ports. Overall, a great purchase, esp. since we tend to stay in for movies now more than we go out, and can enjoy great quality entertainment.

cjnm

Loveland, CO