Product Review
 

Panasonic 50PV700 (TH-50PX700U) 50" 1080p Plasma TV

Part III

September, 2007

Ofer LaOr

 

Picture Quality

As always, I use a small number of movies and sequences I am very familiar with, which demonstrate various capabilities (or lack thereof) of the displays I test.

The first movie in this specific test is Narnia. This movie, in glorious 1080p, really shows off how high contrast works on plasmas and LCDs. Many movie scenes here have dark figures standing in glaringly white snow. Mixed scenes like these tend to lose details both in the high IRE (white detail) and low IRE ranges (black detail). Detail in this Panasonic plasma was excellent in both ranges, likely due to the lower gamma setting chosen by Panasonic, but this was at the expense of a slightly less three-dimensional image.

A particularly tough image was during the escape scene of The Fifth Element (which I have been using for this test in various formats ever since the first Superbit version came out quite a few years ago). The policemens' uniforms are pure black, and in most displays it's quite difficult to make out any patterns on them. With the PV700, I could see some detail on the uniform even despite the bright lights on their chests.

Detail level was also very high when Lilu was crawling through the ventilation tunnels en route to her unsuspecting taxi. This scene contains both bright lights shining on her face against a dark stained ventilation tunnel. Both her face and in particular, the badly red-colored/blond rooted hair were in full detail.

For the SDTV tests, I used satellite programming and broke out ye olde DVD. Satellite looked good, although 4:3 conversion should be improved by Panasonic, not because it's not great, but just because something works well doesn't mean you shouldn't improve it. The unit has MPEG NR (Noise Reduction) which works well (not as well as an external processor, mind you), but it does have some good impact on an overly compressed image.

This capability is also quite useful for those who like high sharpness. I've witnessed quite a few people become impressed by artificial sharpness, although no real detail is added – only edge enhancement (EE) halo artifacts. Increasing sharpness with a high NR ratio may help alleviate some of the artifacts that sharpness alone produces. Personally, I would prefer dialing down the sharpness to the point where it produces as little EE as possible.

The SD Card

The SD card slot opens with a slight touch to the front panel. When the SD card is inserted, it gives off a nice bluish light. This is a very stylish solution, and images pop up right away. Navigation could not be simpler, and I easily found my way around. It's simple to rotate the image and make a nice presentation.

My only wish is that the slot were a universal one, so that I could insert a disk-on-key, or even a memory stick from my Sony camera.

Aspect Ratios

As I mentioned earlier, one of the aspect ratio adjustment modes, called "JUST", which is a Non-Linear-Stretch (NLS), tries to squeeze 4:3 content into a 16:9 screen by deforming the sides of the images and losing a bit of information from above and below the image. It does work well, but if anyone from Panasonic is listening – please add more adjustment features to this aspect ratio menu item (or maybe an additional variation of it). This feature has not been touched since at least 5 or so plasma generations back, and although it still works fine, I find myself coveting additional options. This mode only distracted me when watching news with stock-ticker headlines at the bottom (does anyone still try to read those?)

In addition to this mode, the unit offers a native 16:9 mode and two variations of Zoom (one anamorphic zoom and one 4:3 zoom).

All modes include about 4-5% overscan in all video inputs, and I could not find a way to turn this off, although none of my sources need overscan.

Remote Control

The remote is a far cry from the professional Panasonic remotes, meaning it feels solid, well built and well designed. Sadly, Panasonic has not considered that people might actually be using a smart remote and neglected to add discrete input access. Also, the remote does not have a separate Power On/Standby button. I understand the approach, after all grandma might not be able to figure out she needs to press two different buttons to turn the TV on or turn it off.

Conclusions

The 700 series is a good, solid performer, and Panasonic-lovers worldwide will buy them without regret. The new non-reflective front panel is a bit distracting to me, and it does take some getting used to. There are definitely enough inputs for almost any size system I can think of.

Lack of Native Rate is a glaring omission and Panasonic should definitely address the issue. Also, I would also love more access to the calibration features that professional sets receive – if Panasonic is worried about abuse, they might want to hide these under an "Advanced" menu.

- Ofer LaOr -
 

Mr. LaOr is Editor of Hometheater.Co.Il, a Hi-Fi magazine published in Israel. He is also the moderator for the AVS Forum Video Processing section.

© Copyright 2007 Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity

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