Panasonic PZ81 Freesat Plasma TV Range

Posted on May 9 2008 - 3:28pm by Richard Sharp

Panasonic PZ81 HD Freesat TVWe touched on this briefly when we announced the launch of the Freesat service, but we thought it would be the ideal time to take a look at the range of Freesat inclusive HD TVs that are being launched by Panasonic. Available, we believe, sometime in June these TVs represent pretty much the entire hardware range that the average tech savvy consumer can actually get excited about.

The PZ81 series offers three different models of plasma television; the 42 inch, 46 inch, and 50 inch versions. The televisions obviously come with a built in Freesat tuner as well as the features that have made Panasonic televisions some of the more popular entries to the market – 3 HDMI outputs, Ethernet port, SD slot, and the V-Real 3 processor.

We believe there will also be two smaller LCD Freesat televisions although these won’t be available until some time in October.

Freesat has launched with a reasonable 80 channels of SD and HD televisual entertainment and this figure is due to increase to more than 200 by the end of the year. The release was a somewhat quiet affair and, in our opinion, there were very few reasonable pieces of hardware available at launch. The set top boxes represented pretty much the entire range, with no televisions and no PVR options available as yet.

2 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. barry littler May 14, 2008 at 5:50 pm - Reply

    i want a freesat box with bulti in hard disk drive i already have a satelite dish so i am gonna fit it myself i dont want to buy one and then have to replace it a year later due to something new coming out as ihave spent thousands over the years doing so what could you reccomend

  2. Matt May 15, 2008 at 12:57 am - Reply

    Hey Barry – the honest answer is that I'd strongly suggest waiting.

    The options at the moment are just plain pants. There's new TVs available in June with built in receivers, but I've not managed to find anything remotely close to a Freesat PVR, or anything similar, thta's available at the moment.

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