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The Short Form
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| $10,000 / PANASONIC.COM/BUSINESS/PLASMA/PREMIERE_SERIES |
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Snapshot
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| Panasonic’s Premiere plasma lives up to its name, but at a premium price |
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Plus
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| • Stable, filmlike picture • Punchy contrast • Natural-looking color • Excellent shadow detail • Impressive industrial look and build quality |
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Minus
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| • Plug-in input card options may be limiting • Expensive for its size class |
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Key Features
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• 65-inch (diagonal) screen • Wide color gamut • 60,000:1 specified contrast ratio • 18-bit video processing • 16 user-adjustable picture memories • Interchangeable plug-in input cards • Optional stand TY-ST65VX100, ($1,000) • 61¼ x 36½ x 3¾ in; 152¼ lb |
On first glance, I was impressed by the Panasonic’s heft and construction. A black, brushed-aluminum bezel with a raised logo surrounds the screen. Around the perimeter is another 1 [1/2 ] inches of black masking that further surrounds the image. All of this substantial framing adds to the TV’s wow factor even before it gets turned on. Panasonic’s matching tabletop stand (model TY-ST65VX100 ) is a sturdy plastic affair that looks fine but doesn’t quite live up to the panel’s high-end aesthetics.
Around back, you’ll find only two fixed connections: a standard 15- pin RGB PC input with audio and an RS-232C control port. Other inputs reside on optional plug-in cards that can be swapped based on your needs. Many of the available cards are for professional applications. But the unit comes standard with two HDMI cards, each with a pair of ports, and my sample was outfitted with a component-video plus stereo audio card. (Installers take note: An infrared pass-through card is also available.) Though Panasonic neither provides nor sells optional speakers for the 65VX100U, it has an internal amplifier along with spring-clip connections for a pair you might provide yourself. There are no composite- or S-video inputs (not even on optional plug-in cards), and no convenience terminals on the front or side for jacking in a camcorder, camera, or game console. Granted, the dearth of inputs won’t be an issue when an A/V receiver or external switcher is used, but I can see it causing headaches in some installations.
A few basic controls are hidden under the bezel on the TV’s bottom left . Its supplied plastic remote — a likely throwaway in custom installs — is nicely weighted. There’s a big Menu button above the navigation cluster, and direct buttons nearby for all the inputs. Rockers traditionally used for volume and channel are labeled Input and Video Menu here . The latter steps you through the picture presets: Standard, Dynamic, Cinema, and Monitor. The Aspect button walks you through several options that vary with the input signal; for high-def these include Full (16:9), Zoom, Just, 4:3, and Horizontal Fill. The 1:1 “pixel-for-pixel” mode affects the Full mode when it’s selected and can be chosen as the default in the setup menu.
SETUP
The 65VX100U’s menu system had just enough cool video options to satisfy my inner tweak without overwhelming me with useless features. Panasonic’s Cinema preset provided the best starting point, though I was at first tempted to use its Monitor mode, which is intended for professional video post-production . However, I quickly learned that this mode’s purpose is to clamp the brightness level of highlights, with the effect of reducing the picture’s overall punch. Bottom line: Monitor mode is not recommended for regular consumer use.
Helpful video adjustments include a white balance control with a full set of gains and cuts , a Black Extension control to “deepen” blacks, and a multi setting gamma control. An unusual option allows the set’s internal video scaler to be turned off so that an external video processor can be used . I loved that the TV’s menu button always remembered both the last submenu it had visited and the last item selected, which streamlines setup. You can also store up to 16 sets of customized adjustments to create presets that can be recalled via the menu or a button on the remote.
Out of the box, the Cinema mode’s Warm color temperature option displayed an overly reddish balance, but this was easily adjusted for during calibration (see Test Bench) and the Panasonic ended up closely tracking the industry standard 6, 500-K gray across its full brightness range. After some experimentation both with test patterns and with subjective viewing, I ended up notching up the Black Extension from its 0 setting to 1, and left the Gamma control at its default 2.2 preset. The AGC (auto gain control) auto contrast function remained in the default Off position.
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PERFORMANCE
The 65VX100U comes with some impressive specifications , including 60,000:1 contrast ratio and 18 -bit video processing, which helps the TV display smooth gradations of light with no visible banding artifacts. Both were immediately obvious in the picture. While watching an episode of the series How the Earth Was Made on the History HD channel, I was quickly struck by the Panasonic’s punchy contrast and color, and its overall smooth, stable image. A scene as mundane as a scientist sitting in a chair in an office setting looked invitingly lifelike, with a natural skin tone and subtly rendered highlights. Details like the fine, short gray hairs on his balding head and the fabric of his black- and-white checkered shirt simply popped off the 1080p-rez screen.
Switching over to singer Keyshia Cole’s performance on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show showed off the Panasonic’s ability to reveal detail in dark parts of the image. I could clearly see ripples of fabric in t he black bow Cole wore on the waist of her pink strapless dress, and plenty of fine detail in the texture and pinstripes in the dark black suits worn by her band. The same qualities were also evident in an early scene in the Blu-ray Disc of the movie Australia in which an Aborigine boy witnesses the murder of a white settler that takes place in a lagoon. The details and depth in the shadowy clumps of giant swamp grass were obvious, as were the undulations in the wet skin of the victim’s black horse as it leaps from the water. The Panasonic didn’t deliver blacks quite as deep as our reference Pioneer Kuro plasma or some of the LED-backlit LCDs I’ve tested. But blacks looked sufficiently dark, and the Panasonic’s ability to draw out details in shadows while maintaining bright highlights elsewhere on the screen was exemplary.
I found colors to be accurately rendered on the Panasonic. In the aforementioned lagoon scene, the differences between the light green swamp grasses and darker green lily pads were easily discerned and looked as they might in nature without seeming cartoonish or overdone. Likewise, the set did a nice job delineating the range of skin tones in Australia, from the tanned, rugged face of Drover (Hugh Jackman) to the pale, fair complexion of Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman). The blue skies behind the film’s vistas were rich and striking, and the Outback’s sandy tundra came across convincingly.
BOTTOM LINE
A select few TVs I’ve reviewed made me want to drop the test discs and just sit back and watch them , with every click of the HD cable box holding the potential for another engaging visual experience. Pioneer’s Kuro plasma models qualified, and so does this Panasonic monitor. Its image offers film like smoothness and stability and rich, natural color — qualities that are rarely found even in the best LCD models. Sure, the TH-65VX100U may cost a pretty penny. But it delivers one pretty picture.
TEST BENCH
Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard
Color |
Target X- |
Measured X |
Target Y- |
Measured Y |
Red |
0.64 |
.669 |
0.34 |
.322 |
Green |
0.30 |
.266 |
0.60 |
.659 |
Blue |
0.15 |
.153 |
0.07 |
.068 |
With the Panasonic Cinema mode and default Warm color temperature selected, its grayscale measured slightly toward red, reading as low as – 829 K off the 6, 500-K standard . Calibration brought grayscale tracking to within ± 82 K. The color decoder test revealed a -2.5% error on red, -7.5% green, and 0% blue; color points against the SMPTE HD standard were reasonably accurate for red and blue but somewhat over saturated for green, though all three points seemed to adhere closely to the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) standard.
Overscan, the amount of picture image hidden behind the set’s masking, was 0% for the Full aspect mode with the 1:1 pixel setting engaged and 2.5% with it off. The set fully and cleanly resolved 1080i/p, 720p and 480p signals via its HDMI inputs; some noise was visible in the finest portions of both 1080- and 720-line signals via component video. The Panasonic aced all of the Silicon Optix HQV HD and standard DVD tests, though it required its 3:2 pulldown mode to be engaged for the film-resolution loss tests on both discs. Jaggies tests for both discs showed good deinterlacing of 480i and 1080i signals.
The set’s noise-reduction circuit did a good job cleaning up video in standard-definition programs without noticeably softening the picture; you can keep the NR menu control set to the medium or high setting most of the time without worrying much about additional loss of detail. However, the internal scaler didn’t do much to sharpen SD content that was soft to begin with, and that included much cable programming. On the other hand, good SD looked great: Parts of an excellent DVD transfer of the movie American History X appeared almost high-def-like on the Panasonic’s giant screen.