Panasonic VT20 - Black level

[giosipiano]

Hi guys,

I bought the Panasonic TX-P42VT20 roughly 3 weeks ago, and am very happy with the picture overall, but still unsure about the blacks.

Most of my viewing is done in the evening/night, and when my side-lamp (~40W) is turned on, the black-bars on the TV are as black as the bezel .

Amazing .

However, as soon as I turn off the lamp and attempt watching in a dark room, the black-bars are suddenly significantly brighter, and bordering on grey.

I've attached a photo from the FlatPanelsHD review site, and you can clearly see how dark the blacks are on the reviewer's VT20 - mine are nowhere near that dark, unless I have my side-lamp on .

I have roughly 250 hours on the set (can't be any 'rising blacks'), and C.A.T.S is turned off (can't be this). I've been using THX mode, and have also tried adjusting the Professional 1 setting. I've also tried the review's calibrated settings.

The PS3 is outputting 1080p@24Hz correctly, 'Video Output' is set to 'Automatic', 'RGB' is set to 'Limited', 'Super-white' is 'On', 'HDMI Deep Colour' is 'On', and it's connected with a Belkin gold-plated HDMI cable.

Am I doing something wrong? Has the reviewer tinkered around with the photo to make it look darker? Is the PS3 the culprit? Or am I just expecting too much out of the display?

Like I said, I am extremely happy with the display overall and it looks stunning with the side-lamp on, but I would like to know why I can't get that level of performance in a dark room.

Sorry for the long rant, and any help will be very much appreciated

Please feel free to vote on my Poll as well

Thanks