Plasma TVs are hardly new, but for me it didn’t register that the technology had “arrived” until I starting seeing ads for them on TV. Yes, thanks to companies like Pioneer, when you sit down to channel-surf there’s a chance you’ll see new flat-panel sets that make your current model seem old, fat, and downright sad in comparison. Are Pioneer and its ad agencies trying to whip the public into a frenzy of techno-lust? If so, they’re off to a good start with the PDP-4340HD.
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FAST FACTS
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| DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) display, 44 1/8 x 25 3/4 x 3 7/8 inches; Media Receiver, 16 1/2 x 3 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches WEIGHT display, 67 3/8 pounds; Media Receiver, 13 pounds PRICE $10,500 MANUFACTURER Pioneer Electronics, www.pioneerpurevision.com, 800-421-1404 |
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KEY FEATURES
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• 1,024 x 768-pixel native resolution |
Of course, nothing stifles lust like a bucket of cold water, and with this TV the $10,500 list price may have the same effect. I’ve seen it offered for thousands less on various e-commerce sites, although Pioneer’s strict Web sales policy means you’ll sacrifice your warranty if you buy it from an unauthorized dealer — a huge risk to take on a big-ticket item.
The 43-inch (diagonal) widescreen display has a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels. Its outboard Media Receiver — a slim, component-size box that hooks up to the TV via a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connection — handles the A/V switching and video processing, and an HDTV tuner is built in for off-air digital broadcasts and unscrambled digital cable programs. The PDP-4340HD also has the distinction of being Energy Star-compliant. Basically, this means it won’t soak up gobs of current in standby mode, inflating your electric bill and hastening the planet’s decline. The Pioneer is one of the best-looking plasma sets I’ve ever seen, and its screen merges almost seamlessly into a thin, black glass frame with gently rounded corners. Besides a logo, the only features on its front are a power button and a pair of green LEDs to indicate if it’s on or in standby mode. A supplied tabletop stand (not the one in our photo) lets you swivel the display 30° left or right, and it also comes with side-mounted speakers.
The Media Receiver’s three sets of wideband component-video inputs include one on the front, and it has five digital video inputs: two HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) and two i.Link (FireWire) jacks on the rear plus a VGA-type RGB input on the front. Any of the off-air analog and digital antenna/cable connections on the back can accept a direct cable feed.
Pioneer’s remote control is long, slim, and packed with buttons. But most of the buttons are logically bunched into discrete clusters, and the fully backlit keypad lets you find the one you want in a dark room. I was surprised to see eight direct-input keys for quickly switching sources — a new record in my experience.
You can toggle through picture presets by hitting the A/V Selection button, and pressing Screen Size lets you switch between the display modes. These include 4:3 (displays standard squarish images with gray sidebars), Full (for HDTV and widescreen DVDs), Zoom, and two stretch modes called Cinema and Wide. All modes functioned with standard-definition 480i (interlaced) and 480p (progressive-scan) signals, but not high-def programs.
Setting up the PDP-4340HD to tune in digital broadcasts was a pain owing to the Media Receiver’s unresponsive onscreen signal-strength meter. No matter where I put the antenna, the meter indicated a weak signal. But when I finally gave up and let the Auto Channel Preset function fly, the receiver registered most of the digital stations in my area. Not only that, but it now said the signals were strong!
Along with the faulty meter, the Pioneer lacked any sort of electronic program guide (EPG) for digital broadcasts. Strangely, this feature was detailed extensively in the manual. Not that such a thing ultimately matters when you have a high-def cable box with its own interactive guide, but after reading the manual I was looking forward to using the EPG to program HDTV recordings on my JVC D-VHS deck. As it stood, I had to set the deck up to manually record HDTV broadcasts fed from the Pioneer’s i.Link interface.
Tweaking the Pioneer’s picture proved easier. The TV offers loads of flexibility: you get a custom User setting for each input, and you can adjust the various picture presets and store your changes. You can also use the digital video noise-reduction adjustment to smooth out background grunge on VHS tapes and analog TV, and there’s an MPEG noise-reduction setting to smooth out noisy-looking DVDs.
A new Pioneer feature that you’ll find on the PDP-4340HD is the Advanced PureCinema mode for viewing film-based programs on DVD. Instead of standard 2:3 pulldown (see “Home Theater,” page 36), it uses 3:3 pulldown, bumping up the screen refresh rate to a speedy 72 cycles per second — a more accurate match for the 24-frame-per-second film original. According to Pioneer, Advanced PureCinema can deliver smoother motion on scenes with fast action, although to my eyes the difference was extremely subtle.
Like other Pioneer plasmas I’ve tested, the PDP-4340HD looked very good right out of the box with only minimal adjustment. But a few additional tweaks made its picture look even better (see “in the lab”). In the surprisingly funny Bad Boys II DVD, the Pioneer displayed clean colors and punchy contrast during the outdoor scenes. The trees and grass surrounding the Cuban ecstasy kingpin’s mansion came across with rich green hues, and shadows looked satisfyingly deep in the mid-afternoon sunlight. The set didn’t perform as well in tougher dark scenes, like the one where the Boys, posing as exterminators, gain entry to the drug honcho’s basement — blacks looked more like dark gray, although this is the norm for plasma sets.
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PLUS
Stylish looks. Extensive video connection options. Excellent video performance for a plasma set. MINUS Expensive. Unresponsive signal-strength meter. No electronic program guide for digital broadcasts. |
If DVDs looked good on the Pioneer, then well-lit HDTV programs were stunning. A college basketball match between USC and WSU airing on HDNet appeared crisp and completely seamless, with the bold reds of the player’s uniforms clearly distinguishable from the more muted reds on the court’s painted surface. Picture detail was a slight notch below some of the higher-resolution plasmas I’ve tested, but the image was sharp enough to reveal scuff marks on the polished wood planks.
High-def movies recorded on Dish Network’s DVR 921 hard-disk recorder also looked solid on the Pioneer. In a scene from Die Another Day where James Bond unwinds in a hotel room after getting out of prison, the intricate play of light on the cellophane wrapping of his new shirts came through clearly, and I could even see the condensation on the side of a champagne urn. But what most impressed me was the TV’s natural color rendition: the skin tones of the international cast — including Koreans, Cubans, and Brits — all looked utterly real.
Pioneer has an excellent track record in plasma TV, and the PDP-4340HD is yet another in a long line of impressive sets. Design-wise, it stands head and shoulders above most plasma models on the market — this is one TV people are bound to do a double-take on even when it’s turned off. And with its extensive, up-to-date connection options, advanced video processing, and Energy Star certification, it’s worthy of your techno-lust even with its higher-than-average list price. That old TV of yours starting to look tired? I’ll bet it is.
In the Lab
Color temperature (User preset/Warm color temperature setting before/after calibration)
Low window (20-IRE): 7,767/6,727 K
High window (100-IRE): 6,653/6,516 K
Brightness (User preset/Warm color temperature setting before/after calibration)
45.4/42.9 ftL
With its Warm color temperature selected in the User-present menu, Pioneer's PDP-4340HD displayed excellent grayscale tracking, emasuring close to the NTSC standards of 6,500 K through most of its randge. A slight blue bias at the low end was corrected via grayscale calibration using service-menu adjustments. (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician with specialized equipmetn, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or call the Imaging Science Foundation at 561-997-9073.)
Picture overscan was 3% on all sides which is average. Using the color-decoder-error pattern on the Avia test disc, I measured only a 5% deficiency on the green channel, while the red and blue channels were spot-on. At 43 ftL post-calibration, the Pioneer put out a satisfyingly bright image. Its 3-D digital comb filter performed extremely well when a composite-video connection was used, with minimal cross-color artifacts visible on either test patters or TV programs.
—A.G.