The Audience is Viewing

THX, as a company, has an interesting "job" so to speak: work with companies to help them design better performing products. Their work with audio is well known, but home video is a new realm for them, which you can read about in Seal of Approval.

Panasonic plasmas offer a great starting point. Rarely underwhelming, Panasonic's displays are usually aimed towards the mainstream market, with performance to match. That is to say, good, but rarely great. To say I was intrigued by the idea of these two companies working together would be putting it mildly.

800-Series
Each size in the 800-series from Panasonic (42, 46, 50) is THX-Certified for video. They occupy the higher end of Panasonic's line. The 850-series is a little more expensive, $300 more for the 50-inch, and while you lose the THX certification, you gain VIERA Cast, which gets you YouTube videos and other internet content that Dennis talked about last month in his "In the Box" feature. While that stuff is cool, I'll take the promise of better video quality.

The base swivels slightly left and right, which is a nice touch. The menus are fast and easy to navigate, but when you try to make an adjustment, they revert back to the base menu way too fast. This will drive your installer/calibrator nuts. The remote has big buttons (and big labels), but it's not backlit and isn't anything to ditch your current remote control solution for.

The first indication that the TV has been worked over by THX is a mode in the picture menu labeled, shockingly, THX. Switching to this mode moves the picture settings around significantly, as if fleeing from the garish out of the box Vivid mode. You would expect these settings to set your TV up perfectly, but unfortunately this reveals the first of two limitations with the THX certification.

No TV, even those within the same model line, is exactly alike. So the settings used on one TV aren't going to get a different TV dialed in. The only way to do this would be to set each of these settings for each TV before it leaves the factory. In the volume that Panasonic deals with (and the price they sell for) this is impossible. All this means is that for the primary settings (contrast, brightness, and so on), you'll still need a setup disc.
    
The same is the case with the color temperature. It's a little off the D6500 standard, with the darker images being a little warmer than brighter ones, but it's close enough that most people probably won't notice it.
    
Dark?
The other thing you'll notice immediately is how dim the 50PZ800 is. This is actually a "feature" called C.A.T.S., which the manual claims optimizes contrast, but in reality just limits the overall light output (technically, reducing contrast). Turning it off revealed a decently bright image.
    
One feature that I was particularly excited to try out was a 48Hz mode. When you watch movies (24 frames per second) on a normal TV (60 frames per second), a 3:2 sequence has to be used, tripling the first frame, doubling the second. This creates a mildly distracting jutter. Some TVs, like Pioneer's KURO plasmas and certain Samsung 120 Hz LCDs, can instead show a multiple of 24 (72 Hz and 3:3 in the case of the KURO, 5:5 in the case of the Samsung). Panasonic's 48 Hz allows you to view a 2:2 sequence, which does remove the jutter, but replaces it with flicker. If you've ever watched a TV in the U.K. (50 Hz), you know how distracting this can be. A surprising trade off for sure, and one that I couldn't accept. I'd rather not have 3:2, but the flicker was bad enough that I couldn't watch it.

A few lines between friends
The 50PZ800 can reproduce every pixel in a 1080p signal, with no edge enhancement and commendably little noise. In fact, it had some of the lowest noise levels I've seen in a plasma.

It can de-interlace 1080i correctly, but sadly can't pick up the 3:2 sequence from 1080i material. Scaling is good, but not amazing. There are some jagged edges on diagonal lines. This shows the other limitation of THX. The performance is better than other Panasonic plasmas I've reviewed, though still not quite as good as some of their competitors. There is a limit to how much tweaking THX can do to video processors undoubtedly picked a year earlier more for their cost than their outright performance. If you have a decent scaling DVD player (or BD player), you'll probably never notice this.    
    
Black level and light output are both less than a KURO (the current benchmark), and accordingly, the contrast ratio is also lower. You won't, however, be disappointed with the performance of the 50PZ800, though, as it still creates an image with depth and punch.
    
The only area I was disappointed with the 50PZ800 was in the color points. Reds and greens were a little more oversaturated than I would have expected from something that had been tweaked by THX. They're still more accurate than most flat-panels (save most Samsung LCDs, which tend to be spot on accurate in this regard). While the image created was fine, and never cartoony, when the ability is clearly available to adjust the color points (Vivid mode is even less accurate), it's too bad they couldn't dial it in closer.  

But in the end…
Gripes aside, this is one of the best Panasonic plasmas I've seen, and one of the best TVs you can buy right now. It creates a punchy, reasonably accurate, extremely low noise image. At $1000 less (and more accurate than) a Pioneer KURO, it makes a strong case for itself for value as well. THX has certainly helped out Panasonic here, and I can't wait to see their next collaboration. This audience member, at least, is viewing.

DESCRIPTION: 50” (diagonal) 1080p plasma television; built-in swivel base and speakers.

RESOLUTION: 1,920 by 1,080 pixels

CONNECTIONS: Four HDMI inputs (one on front), one RGB-PC, two component, three s-video shared with a three composite inputs (one on front), one RF/antenna input, Ethernet, SD Card slot, Composite video, stereo analog and optical audio out.

DIMENSIONS: 33.4 x 49.9 x 15.3 inches (hxwxd) (including stand)

PRICE/CONTACT:$2,499
800.405.0652, panasonic.com

For more on what THX looks for with their video certification, check out Seal of Approval.