What We Think

This entry-level Panasonic plasma has a few things going for it, but a couple of performance issues pull it down.

A lot of the recent excitement about flat-panel TVs has been about massive, 100-inch and larger screens, but 42-inch plasmas have long been the most economical flat-panel option. And they've become more so as a bevy of new manufacturers have turned the flat-panel market into a fierce battleground. That's great for shoppers, who now have a pretty good selection of budget plasmas from which to choose. But it's been tough on the big players, who have to either match plummeting prices or deliver enough features or performance to make up for the premium they charge.

The new Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-inch plasma HDTV is a case in point. At its typical $2,500 street price, it will cost you a few hundred dollars more than many entry-level 42-inch plasmas. But while it offers a few nice extras, a close look at its performance reveals it to be something less than a great bargain.

Certainly better-looking than a lot of budget plasmas, the TH-42PX60U mixes a silver plastic housing and stand with a black plastic bezel around the screen, which should blend in well in most living rooms. The speakers are permanently mounted below the screen, which is likely to fit existing home theater furniture better than a side-mounted design.

You won't find many fancy features in this TV. For example, a CableCARD slot and its best friend, the TV Guide onscreen programming guide, are absent, though we didn't miss them. Likewise, there are no overly complex color-decoder controls, but they're also unnecessary for this set. The nicely sized remote control is comfortable to hold and most of its important buttons are within thumb's reach, though the channel and volume controls are slightly too close to the bottom for my hand. Unfortunately, it lacks backlighting, but then most budget flat-panels' remotes do.

SETUP Most of the TV's inputs can be found on the back panel. Chief among them are a pair of HDMI jacks that accept anything from 480i through 1080i signals — they'll come in handy if you try to jack in one of the new high-def disc players or a standard upconverting DVD player alongside your digital cable box. The two component-video inputs accept the same range of standard and HD signals, and you get two inputs with your choice of either S-video or composite video (with stereo audio). An RF jack lets you connect an antenna to capture digital or analog off-air broadcasts through the built-in tuner. The Panasonic TH-42PX60U doesn't have a VGA input, however, so if you want to use a computer with this TV you'll need either a Media Center PC or another computer with a video card to feed one of the regular video inputs. An additional S-video input and another composite-video input are behind a door on the front panel to connect temporary sources, such as a camcorder. There's also an SD card slot so you can easily view photos.

I found the menus simple and intuitive, and Panasonic wisely resisted sprawling the picture controls over many different screens, choosing instead to group them all together on one menu for easy access. Color temperature control includes Cool, Normal, and Warm settings. I found Warm to be closest to the industry-standard neutral gray, though even at this setting the screen still had a reddish cast. After some quality time in the TV's service menu (see Test Bench for details), I was able to bring the color temperature very close to dead-on across the full range of brightness levels for which we calibrate. I also tinkered a bit with the Black Level control in the user menu. As expected, the Dark setting delivered darker, more natural blacks, but, unfortunately, it also obliterated much of the detail in dark scenes. The Light setting proved a better compromise, so I left it there for all my critical viewing.

The Panasonic also offered a nice range of controls for tweaking picture geometry. The aspect-ratio options selectable from the remote include five choices that cover most any situation. Plus, the TV's Zoom setting can be adjusted in the picture menu to raise or lower the picture, in case essential information is cut off along the bottom edge. The vertical stretch can also be tweaked to your heart's desire.

PICTURE QUALITY Besides its great story and wonderful special effects, the DVD of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a veritable torture test for televisions. This first chapter of C.S Lewis's classic series of adventures exposed the Panasonic TH-42PX60U's problems, while also highlighting the things it does well.

Early in the film, when Lucy (Georgie Henley) first steps into Narnia, the magical land is covered in snow. The Panasonic did a nice job of preserving detail in these bright scenes. It did crush the most intense whites, causing a loss of fine detail in the brightest parts of the forest, such as some of the snow-blanketed branches high in the trees. But this wasn't as bad as I've seen in a few other flat-panels, especially some LCDs. And despite it, I still saw Lucy's footprints in the snow, and much of the other detail in the snowy trees.

In the following scene, when Lucy wakes up from her nap in the house owned by Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy), I noticed that the TH-42PX60U has some trouble with dark source material. The house's walls are mostly made of stone, but the Panasonic failed to reproduce most of their fine texture. This very dark scene also revealed the TV's tendency toward false contouring, a visible banding that occurs in what should be a smooth transition between two areas of the picture with different degrees of brightness. Thankfully, this banding was most prominent in transitions between dark portions of the picture, which hid the effect somewhat as long as scenes weren't too dark.

The Short Form

$2,500 ($2,700 list) / 40.2 x 30.3 x 12.8 IN / 70.5 LBS / PANASONIC.COM / 888-843-9788

Plus

•Solid color performance •Dual HDMI inputs

Minus

•Poor shadow detail •False contouring •Slightly soft picture

Key Features

•42-in diagonal 1,024 x 768 screen •2 HDMI inputs •Built-in ATSC/NTSC tuner •Rear inputs 2 HDMI, 2 HDTV-compatible component video, 2 composite/S-video, all with stereo audio; 1 RF antenna/cable •Front inputs 1 S-video; 1 composite-video; 1 stereo audio •Rear outputs 1 composite-video; 1 stereo audio; optical digital audio

Test Bench

Color temperature had a slightly warm or red cast out of the box with the Warm color temperature preset, but this was corrected with adjustments in the service menu. After calibration, the grayscale tracked within ± 60 K of the standard 6,500 K, except for one + 110 K spike at 30 IRE (the dark end of the scale) — mostly excellent performance. Color decoding was on the mark, showing no red or green error. The TV was unable to fully resolve 720p or 1080i multiburst test patterns. Full Lab Results

Color rendition, on the other hand, turned out to be one of the TH-42PX60U's strong suits. Thanks to its impressively accurate color temperature, it did a great job of faithfully presenting the cold look of the Narnian winter and then transitioning to the warm glow of the fire inside Mr. Tumnus's house. Colors on DVD were well-saturated, too: As the children enter Aslan's camp in Chapter 14, the red, gold, and yellow tents, as well as the lush, green grass, looked natural and vivid.

When I switched over to HDTV, I found the color just as pleasing. Viewing a recent episode of Commander in Chief on ABC HD, I found the red, blue, and gold on the American flags lined up behind Mac (Geena Davis) appropriately majestic and eye-catching.

This Panasonic's 1,024 x 768-pixel array isn't quite enough to fully resolve 720p HDTV, and our resolution test patterns confirmed this. Still, both 720p and 1080i sources looked good, if just a little soft. For example, the interior of the White House on Commander in Chief looked great, with details such as wood grain in the furniture easily visible. At the same time, very fine details such as the individual strands of Geena Davis's hair were lost compared with their appearance on sharper sets we've tested.

BOTTOM LINE As 42-inch plasma TVs go, the Panasonic TH-42PX60U is fairly typical. It does some things wrong, such as its sketchy shadow detail, and some things right, like its solid color. But in the end, its overall performance didn't equal its price tag, and that will make it a hard sell among knowledgeable shoppers.

Full Lab Results
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