Panasonic Viera TH-50PY850 (50-inch plasma)

Source: http://asia.cnet.com

Panasonic’s crown jewel among its 2008 plasma TVs, the Viera PY850-series is brimming with the latest technologies the consumer A/V industry has to offer. Aside from a future-proofed full-HD panel, it’s theoretically superior than the Pioneer LX Kuro with a promising 30,000:1 native contrast. That’s not even taking into consideration its motion-enhancement function, a galore of HDMI inputs and other mouth-watering addons. Is this handsome S$6,999 (US$5,146.32) Panasonic a potential "Kuro" killer? Here's our report for your reading pleasure.

Design

The TH-50PY850's styling is a departure from last year's boxy outlines. It's now based on a refreshing-yet-subtle horizontal arch design used throughout its 2008 flat panels. Draped in gun-metal, the angled arch is also cleverly used to conceal the onboard stereo speakers and is further accentuated with a mirror finish in the center. For the final touch, Panasonic has gone borderless through its "sheet of glass" framing. Like the LG PG60, this basically eliminates the thick panel frame of lesser models, giving both TVs a seamlessly flat front that stands out from their peers.

New horizontal arch design with concealed speakers.

To maintain its clutter-free facade, Panasonic has housed all the onboard controls, auxiliary A/V inputs and an SDHC card slot behind a flip-down cover. The spread of ports covers just about everything necessary, too, from headphones to standard composite-A/V and 1080p-ready HDMI. On the back, there're four cooling fans for ventilation. These run silently and are pretty effective in keeping our review unit cool despite running non-stop for two weeks. Rounding it up are a T-shaped swivel stand which can be traded for a wall bracket and two cable ties for wire management.

The same old 2007 remote controller is making a comeback, right down to the overall layout and button selection. On one hand, you'll probably appreciate its ergonomic ribbed bottom, large keys and multifunctional Panasonic VCR/DVD controls. But on the other, we're not particularly impressed by its cumbersome A/V input toggle button and selection list combination. That said, you do have an option to label individual inputs or to skip it altogether by programming the menu to hasten the switching progress. This is in addition to the dedicated TV and SDHC card shortcuts.

Programmable selection list to filter out unused inputs.

It seems like things didn't change much for its software menu, either. Nested within the submenus is a relatively modest array of configurations to fiddle around with. While most of the essentials are present, advanced variants are limited to just noise reduction, proprietary color and motion enhancements. Default picture mode-wise, there're four choices available, including "Eco" which automatically optimizes picture quality based on the room's ambient lighting. Each of these settings can be independently assigned to any of the video inputs and further customized to your personal likings.

Features

Under the hood of this 50-incher is the Japanese company’s generation-11 full-HD plasma panel. It offers three-fold native contrast boast to 30,000:1 (1,000,000:1 dynamic), 25 percent better color gradation at 5,120 equivalent steps and an extended 100,000-hour panel life over the G10 panel. Another interesting development is the Viera's glossy screen which is somewhat a reversal of the PY700's matte anti-glare finish. The TH-50PY850's native contrast is technically 50 percent higher than our reference LX Kuro, though it’s worth noting that most 2008 plasma entries have such ratings, so it may not be wise to base your buying decision on these numbers alone.

For technophiles, this Viera is outfitted with the most advanced visual technologies Panasonic has under its belt. These include the highest-end iteration of its in-house video-processing engine or V-Real Pro 3, 480Hz Sub-field Drive for video and 24p Real Cinema for film materials. When combined with its Intelligent Frame Creation function, the Sub-Field Drive minimizes resolution lost during motion reproduction with over 900 lines of details. Real Cinema works similarly with the latter, except that it’s designed to suppress judder. Lastly, there's x.v Color for richer hues.

To set it apart from the rest of its siblings, the TH-50PY850 has out-of-the-box photo and video playback via a memory card slot. The former supports up to 10-megapixel JPEG, and the latter, AVCHD-encoded clips. As for storage capacity/format, the manual said it'll accept up to 16GB-, 2GB-, 1GB- and 128MB-sized SDHC, SD, miniSD (via an adapter) and MMC media, respectively. Interestingly, a 1GB MMC card worked fine in our test. The AVCHD bit is a unique feature for Panasonic/Sony HD videocams, too. This supposedly enables a shoot, transfer and direct play proposition minus the hassle of having to scramble for an HDMI cable.

Upgraded 1080p24-ready HDMI and AVCHD playback-enabled SHDC card slot.

Panasonic has thankfully addressed its earlier HDMI shortfall by embracing native film 1080p24-compliance. At the same time, it's also upping the ante by upgrading the panel with a whopping four HDMI 1.3 terminals. Numbers-aside, these HDMI ports sport the latest Viera Link CEC functionality for one-remote operation of compatible Panasonic products. Those planning to hook up the TV to a home theater should also benefit from its optical audio output which relay sound digitally, including Dolby Digital. What could have been better, though, are the dual 1080i-only component and 1,366 x 768-capped PC inputs.

Performance

You'll need to reduce ambient light to tap the PY850's potential due to its reflective screen. Furthermore, we've picked up panel internal reflections which affected sharpness slightly, though burn in or image retention was minimal during our review, even for games. Tuning to Singapore's MediaCorp TV broadcasts, most of the stations were displayed in clean grain-free visuals, void of common artifacts we normally observed on lower-end models. Comparing it side-by-side with the LX Kuro, the Viera was better in handling smooth scrolling news ticker, but lost out in sharpness.

Switching over to the synthetic Avia test pattern, the SpyderTV Pro-calibrated TH-50PY850 was absolutely brilliant in this department, scoring perfect results for the grayscale tracking and color decoding. To verify some of these observations, we traded Avia with Blade 2 using our Pioneer DV-S969AVi DVD player and were greeted by revealing shadows that unmasked intricate warehouse structures during the ninja assault scene. Its 480p upscaling quality was spot on as well, evident in the standard-definition HQV benchmarks on both the jaggie "waving flag" and noise reduction tests.

It was a completely different experience altogether for the pristine 1080p24 Blu-rays. Aside from an instant boast in clarity, there was also nice image depth when we took Pixar's Cars for a test drive. This was rendered in rich saturated colors and Kuro-like inky blacks. Furthermore, flesh tones were just about right in Casino Royale with fluid motion throughout the Madagascar chase scene sans strongly visible distortions. It was a similarly strong showing in HD-HQV, thanks to the almost flawless jaggie and video resolution loss tests. Nonetheless, there was some details lost during the film resolution leg.

The same level of fluidity and crisp visuals were garnered in the PlayStation 3 Ridge Racer 7 and Xbox 360 Need For Speed ProStreet. Tapping on the 1080i component output of the latter did not compromise picture quality, but stepping up to 1080p caused a weird screen alignment error (this may be an isolated case). While most plasmas deliver soft PC text at non-native resolutions, this Viera was able to deliver sharp fonts at 1,024 x 768-pixel. Unlike the Xbox, formatting was accurate border-to-border, though fade diagonal and circular banding were slight issues for our color chart.

Shutterbugs will definitely be delighted by the JPEG playback's print quality and responsiveness, presented in their original aspect ratio and clocking in at an almost instantaneous thumbnail preview and blazing fast 2-second load time for individual images. We were out of luck playing back downloaded AVCHD files, but was reassured that it should work effortlessly with videocam-recorded media. Wrapping it up was the powerful 31W loudspeakers which belted out strong bass and extended treble. Good stereo imaging was another of its forte, reaching reference level with a 50 percent volume buffer.

Print quality and lighting-fast JPEG playback.

Taking everything into consideration, the Panasonic TH-50PY850 is mostly on par or even better than our reference Pioneer LX Kuro in motion reproduction and features. At almost half the price of the latter and with limited comparable 2008 entries plus a proven anti-judder engine, this Viera is probably one of the best options for a full-HD plasma TV. Alternatively, there's the Samsung Series 6 at a similar S$6,999 (US$5,146.32) pricing, but until we've scrutinized its 100Hz processing, we would suggest you stick with this Editors' Choice winner--making it twice in a roll for Panasonic.

Return to Top

Local navigation area begins from here.

Footer navigation area begins from here.