Panasonic VIERA TC-P50GT25 Plasma 3DTV (TPV 95)

Your post reflects a strong brand loyalty as a result of your satisfactory previous experience, and that is commendable sometimes, but not always. Take any industry recent designs and see for yourself, take Chevrolet or General Motors in the USA as an example: cars designed and made by them were of good quality and durability in the 80's and 90's, but just check their misses with recent desingns and design flaws. You cannot say any longer that a company known for their good products is still a recommended one.
I too have and have had several Panasonic items, all of good to very-good quality. BUT the Vieras from some models in 2008 and 2009 have been reported to lose their initial outstanding black levels after a while.
These things are related to "modern" devices that use a lot of software embedded in the IC's called "Firmware".
Previous designs that used much less "firmware" were relatively free of this kind of quirks.

I too was skeptical about firmware performing diabolical tasks; until I confirmed several Lap-Top batteries being still good (I've opened and checked their indivudual Lithium Ion cells to be still within more than 95% of their capacity, and perfectly capable of full recharges... but the damn Lap-top computer kept displaying messages about the "battery is going to be empty in 5 minutes or so...) Believe it or not: firmware can be easily used to lie to the consumer, which believes his battery is bad and rushes to the store to buy an expensive, proprietary new one. It appears that the "intelligent chips" inside the Lap-Top Battery are responsible for signaling the portable computer that misteriously, the battery is no longer good! It can be based on number of charge-discharge-recharge cycles, or calendar days passed, or any other pretext, even when all and everyone of the Li-Ion cells measures and test perfectly OK, but the Lap-Top refuses to remain "on" and displays the message ordering the user to connect the charger immediately!
Why can't firmware be used to reduce the contrast of a Plasma set after 400 or so hours? Why did Panasonic accept the lowering contrast levels were part of the design? Have you read the full text of the C-NET discovery? Have you read the several "Class-Action Suites" placed against Panasonic? They are still available to be read and Panasonic has not denied them.
Until then, lets be sanely skeptical of the manufacturer present day design practices. It is TOO easy to manipulate firmware to do anything, including cheating on the consumers. Remember that designs from the past years could be very good ones, but as older designers (and managers) leave the company, quality and reliability can easily fall down a lot. Incidentally, most Blu-ray players and Microwave Ovens are designed and built in totally different plants from the ones that assemble Plasma Displays... Frecuently a given "brandname" sells equipment made by entirely different assemblers, sometimes a single factory supplies a given product to several manufacturers, which only provide a given "name" to the product; therefore it is virtually impossible to say that every "Panasonic" product was really designed, produced and assembled by themselves. Another thing to consider is that models differ in more ways than just on cosmetic appearance: Models destined to be sold in Japan tend to have more features than those intended for american consumers (my bought in Japan Sharp Minidisc portable recorder made many years ago had SEVERAL extra features that were NOT available in the version sold in the USA).
Best Regards.

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