To the best of my knowledge, this is a world exclusive: a review of the slightly gimped but still absolutely excellent UK version of a higher-end 2009 Panasonic Plasma.
You may be reading this thinking that you could never own one of these, because you're worried about Plasma screen burn, or power consumption (or even worse, you've listened to the idiot at Curry's or the Sony Centre who's told you that Plasma is an inferior display technology). Please, get the hell over it and stop putting scare stories above high quality video. The power consumption is actually very low for a 50" screen, and the chances of screen burn on a properly looked after (that is, not run on the comedy "Super Bright" mode) NeoPDP screen is either non-existent or incredibly minute, depending on who you ask.
To summarize:
- The THX mode has FANTASTICALLY accurate colors which seriously improve the image quality. It is VERY hard to find a TV that gets this right.
- The greyscale is also excellent.
- The standard-def scaling isn't very good and there are no film cadence detection options, but that's not a big deal: just use an upscaling DVD player.
- And on top of this, you have the inherent advantages of NeoPDP: fantastic contrast, fantastic viewing angle, fantastic motion resolution.
Lyris, I was wondering if you could be of some help? I'm gearing up to buy a new 37" (max) TV for my room and retire the 26" I have into my parents room. However, I've been out of the 'loop' for a while and don't really know what TV is currently the best buy? I know in the past it was usually Sony TV's, but is this still the case?
For 40 inch-ish LCD TVs, the better Samsungs and Sonys are still the best picks, I think. Samsung probably gets the edge for its calibration features.
Hmm interesting. Always remember Samsung from the early affordable HD Ready LCD days, and they weren't that highly regarded. I'm assuming they've improved dramatically? Oh and any particular model numbers? Don't they all release their new models during the summer?
I've got the 40" Sony KDL-W4500 and can highly recommend that set (though I believe its been replaced by the KDL-W5500 now).