To break an awkward silence at a business dinner a while back, somebody went around the table with the question, “What’s the one thing you’d want if you were stranded on a desert island?” When my turn came, I replied, “A plasma TV.” Everybody was incredulous, but I had my reasons. A plasma TV would give me hours of entertainment, be easy to carry or hang on the wall of my cave, and — most important — impress the natives. There’s no doubt that everybody, whether they’re from New Jersey or New Guinea, loves seeing such a big picture coming from such a thin TV.
But while plasma TVs all kind of look the same, that doesn’t mean they’re all created equal. So we decided to check out sets in three different screen sizes to find out just how different they are.
All three models — the 42-inch Zenith P42W34 ($3,800), Pioneer’s 50-inch Elite PRO-1000HDi ($14,500), and the 61-inch Marantz PD6140D ($21,000) — measure between 3 1/4 and 5 inches deep. They also all have wide 16:9 screens, a minimal “all-picture” design, and digital video inputs, and they can display programs from a standard TV tuner, an HDTV tuner, or a computer. Two of them also share high price tags compared with similar-size rear-projection sets — but plasma doesn’t come cheap, especially in the larger screen sizes.
PDF: Features ChecklistZenith P42W34
At $3,800, the P42W34 is by far the least expensive set in this group, yet it has the most conveniences. It’s the only one with a standard TV tuner built in, so it can accept a raw antenna or cable feed — although on most cable systems you’ll still need a box to see premium channels like HBO. With its 852 x 480 resolution, known as enhanced-definition TV (EDTV), it can display an HDTV picture, but there aren’t enough pixels to show every detail.
Surrounded by a simple, inch-thick silver frame, the 42-inch (diagonal) screen is the obvious star of the show. Zenith left the front clean, placing control buttons along the bottom of the frame. My review sample came with a distinctive arc-shaped stand ($299) that increased the designer feel of the panel and optional speakers (not shown, $399) that run off the built-in 10-watt-per-channel amplifier.
An add-on module that juts an extra 1 1/4 inches from the back incorporates RF and A/V inputs and an A/V output. The main integrated jack pack features a copy-protected DVI (Digital Visual Interface) input, a single component-video input for DVD and HDTV (you’ll need an external digital tuner to get HDTV signals), and a VGA computer input.
The outsized remote looks cool, with thin buttons, silver highlights, and a big swath of unused space that slides open to reveal more keys. It wasn’t so cool to use, though. I had to cycle through the numerous inputs one by one, and the identical, unilluminated buttons were hard to tell apart in the dark. I was also mystified by button labels like APC, ARC, and DASP. Zenith should have stuck with actual words like “picture,” “aspect,” and “sound.”
There are three APC picture presets, plus a User setting that remembers adjustments for contrast, brightness, and so on. But I could save only two total User preferences: one for 480p (progressive-scan) and HDTV sources, and one for 480i (interlaced) programs.
Pressing ARC cycled through four display options, including a 4:3 mode with gray bars on either side and a Horizon mode that stretched a standard picture along the sides to fill the screen. When I switched to HDTV, two choices were available: 4:3 and 16:9. A Zoom function let me enlarge or reduce the entire image or magnify sections.
Using the remote, it was easy to activate the P42W34’s PIP (picture-in-picture) and split-screen display. The split-screen mode let me choose between two same-size images split down the middle or one larger and one smaller image side by side. I couldn’t watch two computer or HDTV sources at once, but otherwise just about any two inputs could be displayed at the same time. It’s a neat feature.
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Zenith P42W34
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 40 3/4 inches wide, 24 1/2 inches high, 3 1/4 inches deep |
In the hectic scene when Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) first transforms from built-yet-nerdy lab technician into a mass of verdant rage, the closeups of multiplying green cells were crisp and well detailed — I could even count the pores on the face of the increasingly incensed Banner. But as Banner faces his father (Nick Nolte), I saw striated bands of color instead of smooth gradations from light to dark. The edges of shadows and even some well-lit sections crawled with video noise that looked like a cloud of mosquito-like motes.
This plasma was much happier displaying daylit scenes. I easily made out fine rills of dust on the Hulk’s skin after a bomb knocks him to the ground, and the dust cloud was free of the video noise I’d seen earlier. The billowing was smooth and realistic, though there was some discoloration and contouring in the shady side of the sand dunes.
Scenes set in the Grand Canyon lost a little vibrancy when I turned down the color control to keep the rock walls from looking sunburned. But leaving it a bit below the halfway point made the sky deep blue and the greenery suitably lush as the Hulk leaped like a flea through central California.
For my HDTV test, I cued up the space-shuttle launch on the Digital Video Essentials D-VHS test tape. The TV looked its best with this excellent source. The closeups of machinery and the gantry were full of detail, although I didn’t experience the hyper-real feeling I get from larger, higher-resolution plasma panels. Subtle details were softer, so I didn’t see many ridges in the plates near the nose cone, for example.
Trying both the 1080i and 720p versions of the D-VHS tape, I noticed flicker during some of the 1080i scenes, mostly in menus, text, and other still graphics. To avoid this, I recommend configuring your HDTV tuner to feed only progressive-scan signals to the set.
As “budget” plasma TVs go, the P42W34 delivers an impressive slate of features, even if its picture can’t compete with higher-buck models. But it is a viable option when cash is kind of tight and a big, bulky TV just won’t do.
Pioneer Elite PRO-1000HDi
The 50-inch PRO-1000HDi ($14,500) from Pioneer’s Elite line offers one thing the other two sets don’t: an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) input. This little jack is the next-generation version of DVI, providing a pure digital signal from an HDTV tuner, satellite receiver, or DVD player. Unlike DVI, HDMI also carries audio signals, and it’s compatible with DVI equipment (you’ll need an adapter like Panasonic’s $80 DVI-to-HDMI cable). But I can’t say any more about HDMI because I couldn’t test it — no source components equipped with HDMI outputs were available at this writing.
The Elite PRO-1000HDi cuts a classy figure. Its frame is thick, but the distinctive piano-gloss finish makes it one of the most attractive plasma panels I’ve seen. There’s no TV tuner or speakers, so you’ll need an external tuner even for watching regular TV. You can plug speakers directly into the panel — its puny 2-watt-per-channel amp ensures that the neighbors won’t complain about excess volume.
You’ll need to buy inexpensive adapters to convert the pro-style BNC jacks to accept regular RCA component- and composite-video cables. Otherwise the jack selection is standard fare, with a VGA computer input in addition to that BNC component-video input, which also accepts RGB signals from computer and video processors.
The simple remote doesn’t have backlighting or the ability to control a rack full of gear, which is surprising given the set’s price. It does give you extremely convenient direct access to each input, however. A Screen Size button stepped me through the four display modes: 4:3 with gray bars on the sides, Zoom for expanding letterboxed shows to fill the screen, Full for widescreen images, and Wide to fill it by stretching the sides more than the center, which avoided cropping and prevented the head of CNN’s Aaron Brown from ballooning, but played havoc with the news crawl at the bottom of the screen. The button has no effect on HDTV material, so you’ll have to watch nonwidescreen high-def shows with bars to either side or else change the display mode at the source.
While Pioneer’s menu system uses a simple layout littered with technical terms, it does deliver a few conveniences, including the ability to name inputs using a virtual keyboard. I could save my settings for contrast, brightness, and so on for each input, and the five color-temperature presets are more than most HDTVs offer (Mid Low came closest to the NTSC standard). The PureCinema video processor has settings for HQ (the default), Standard, and off. HQ did a great job of detecting 2:3 pulldown in film-based DVDs and cleaning up jagged lines and other artifacts. Standard, which was less effective, is designed for situations where the video lags behind the audio — this didn’t occur in my tests.
When I turned to The Hulk for some critical viewing, I immediately noticed the sharpness of the text and graphics on the menus and opening credits. So I quickly skipped to the big transformation, when Banner first becomes the Hulk, to see how well the Pioneer dealt with difficult dark scenes. As usual with plasma TVs, blacks didn’t look completely black, but they were exceptionally clean, and shadows displayed comparably fine detail.
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Pioneer Elite PRO-1000HDi
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 49 5/8 inches wide, 30 5/8 inches high, 4 1/8 inches deep |
After being captured, the green rage machine breaks free and bursts into the desert sunlight, and that’s where the Pioneer really started to shine. I almost forgot that the Hulk was a computer-generated character, thanks in part to the Pioneer’s sharp picture. When he gets up after dodging mortars and looks angrily toward the camera, I saw the fine sheen of dust and dirt dulling his green skin, the rippling veins and muscles still clearly visible. I caught glimpses of tiny sand particles in the air as he fell after deflecting a tank round at close range.
Colors also looked lush and alive. The intense rust-colored lichen seen during the Hulk’s brief desert reverie was brilliant, the green of the sage appropriately pale and not oversaturated, the numerous earth tones distinct and realistic. Against all this his green skin stood out like an alien chemical, and his outsized purple shorts seemed downright comical.
Moving on to HDTV, I again watched the shuttle launch on the D-VHS version of Digital Video Essentials. Both the 1080i and 720p tapes looked extremely good, with excellent detail and color. I saw every ridge and knick in the tiles on the nose cone, and the edges of the pipes and struts in the gantry were perfectly clean. The 720p version looked slightly sharper, with a tiny bit of extra crispness along the edge of one of the support buttresses, for example.
The Pioneer Elite PRO-1000HDi isn’t for people on a tight budget, but its striking appearance, exceptional video performance, and forward-looking HDMI input will please those who can afford it.
PDF: In the LabPDF: Features Checklist
Marantz PD6140D
Most gigantic, ultra-thin plasma TVs show up in corporate headquarters and various other commercial venues, and the 61-inch Marantz PD6140D ($21,000) retains a good deal of this commercial heritage. On one hand, this means that its user menu offers extensive adjustments not often found on mainstream products. But on the other, customary TV features like a built-in tuner are nowhere to be found.
Nothing about the 6140D’s smart-looking exterior says “industrial.” Its 2-inch-thick frame is tinged a subtle silvery-bronze, and its top and bottom horizontal edges are angled in for a distinctive flourish.
The minimal remote lacks number keys, backlighting, and the ability to control other devices. Three keys let me choose between DVD/HD, video, and PC inputs; the last two each cycle among three choices. A prominent zoom control allows magnification of areas of the picture, and the timer control lets you turn the 6140D on or off at a set time and even select the input that will appear onscreen.
Calling up the menu, I was startled to discover fully adjustable controls for color temperature, gamma, the color decoder, and other highly technical functions. If you know what you’re doing and have access to specialized equipment, you can use these controls to tweak the picture to near perfection. And there’s no danger of permanently screwing up the picture thanks to reset buttons that return the parameters to their factory defaults.
The menu offers a good number of options for preventing burn-in, which occurs when a still image is left onscreen for too long. These include an adjustable pixel orbiter that moves the still image around the screen, a peak-brightness limiter to combat the intense whites that are most likely to burn in, and a wiper mode that sweeps the screen with a white bar over a period of hours to even out irregularities.
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Marantz PD6140D
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DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 57 7/8 inches wide, 34 3/4 inches high, 4 3/4 inches deep |
Like most other plasma TVs I’ve seen, the 6140D can’t muster a true black — the best it can do is a very dark gray. When the Hulk first encounters his father, he leans his bulky form forward, and once the shadows in his chest and face reached a certain level of darkness, they leveled out to a consistent dark gray instead of getting darker or more detailed, as they would on a good tube-based TV. But the panel did generally display clean, smooth shadows that blended well from one intensity to the next. They also stayed accurate in hue instead of becoming greener in darker areas as on many plasmas I’ve seen.
Both the Hulk and the Marantz hit their strides in the bright desert scenes. The clouds from exploding shells looked real enough to touch, and the dunes shone majestically as the Hulk sailed over them. When he ripped the turret off a tank to use as a shield, I saw shards of metal blowing about in the explosion and every ripple in his skin as he smashed another tank.
Test patterns revealed that the 6140D’s green wasn’t as powerful as it could be (see “In the Lab”), but the Hulk’s almost fluorescent skin looked suitably intense. The rest of the palette was accurate, so I was able to turn up the color control without making everyone’s face red. This resulted in a beautiful vista of varicolored reddish hills, a light blue sky, and deep blue water in the scene where the green man bounds over the Grand Canyon.
The space-shuttle montage on the 1080i version of Digital Video Essentials looked unbelievably realistic. I could see tiny technicians scrambling around the gantry, and the huge screen drew me in with its expansive shots of the shuttle orbiting over azure oceans as well as the minute details of closeups. I could actually see ridges in the white plates near Atlantis’s nose and count the rivets around a window. The Marantz was excellent with both 1080i and 720p material, although the 720p format looked slightly better — at this high resolution and size I noticed smoother lines in the 720p images.
I recently reviewed another huge plasma, the 63-inch Samsung HPN6339, and the Marantz outperformed it in most areas. Granted, nobody would call this $21,000 TV a bargain, but if you’ve got the cash and a lot of wall space to fill, it’d be tough to do any better.
So given your choice, what would you want to take along with you to a desert island? When it comes to wowing the indigenous population with high-definition images, nothing beats a plasma TV. But no matter where you’re stranded, plasma’s combination of a big image and a super-thin form factor can turn any living room — or cave — into an entertainment paradise.
PDF: In the Lab
PDF: Features Checklist