May 2008 Reviewed by Jeff Van Dyne	Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ77U Plasma HDTV

Description Model: Viera TH-50PZ77U Price: $2799 USD Dimensions: 52.1"W x 31.6"H x 14.6"D (with stand) Weight: 111.3 pounds (with stand) Warranty: One year parts and labor	Features Built-in ATSC, NTSC, QAM tuners 10,000:1 contrast ratio 160-degree viewing angle Antiglare filter Picture setting memory for each input 2 HDMI v1.3 inputs 2 component-video inputs 3 S-video inputs 3 composite-video inputs RF input Optical digital audio output SD memory card slot 100,000-hour panel life Detachable stand

This is a great time to buy a new TV. There are plenty of choices available, and the competition for your dollar is higher than ever. Flat panels are all the rage, and for good reasons. They’ve steadily improved in recent years -- the picture quality of most of them is more than acceptable. But if you just walk into your local big-box store and pick a set off the wall, don’t expect to be completely satisfied with it when you set it up at home. Instead, take some time to understand the pros and cons of each display type and the models you’re interested in. Even with all the recent improvements, choosing the best flat panel for your needs and environment will still require some education and thought.

First, the environment you’ll be using your new TV in will have a serious impact on your selection. A high-power LCD display might be the best choice for a very brightly lit room. In this situation, you’ll also need to take into account the screen’s antiglare capabilities. Most plasma displays have highly reflective screens that will be entirely unacceptable in a brightly lit room, but most LCDs have excellent antiglare screens. However, there are exceptions to every rule; some plasmas -- such as the subject of this review, the Panasonic TH-50PZ77U HDTV -- do very well in this area, and some LCDs have extremely glossy screens. In short, look before you leap.

Once plagued by extremely poor contrast and black levels, LCD displays have made huge gains in picture quality, and the best now rival many of their plasma brethren. However, LCDs are still relatively expensive, and some people, myself included, find highly distracting the pixel lag exhibited by most LCDs during action scenes. This is not an issue with plasma sets, but you should spend some time watching both types of display before you decide whether or not pixel lag will bother you. If it won’t, then an LCD may well be your best choice. If it will, you either need to look at the newer 120Hz LCD sets, which largely eliminate this issue by doubling the refresh rate -- or consider a plasma set.

Plasmas, too, continue to improve. The best are now easily reference-quality displays, but even today’s least expensive plasmas provide a pretty decent picture. Dollar for dollar, a plasma TV will still generally provide a more lifelike picture than an LCD. In general, plasmas have better real-world black levels and contrast. (I also think the colors look more natural.) In addition, most plasma makers now include technologies that all but eliminate the serious problems of image retention and burn-in that plagued early designs. A plasma might be a better choice for a room with reasonably good light control.

The Panasonic TH-50PZ77U is a full high-definition set -- that is, it can display a 1080-line progressive-scan (1080p) image -- but you shouldn’t limit your search to only higher-resolution sets just for the sake of having the latest and greatest. When it comes to hi-rez, I hear many people talking as if they simply must have 1080p or they’ll be watching inferior images. This is not true. From a distance of more than 10’, very few people can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p resolution. Keep this in mind while you’re shopping: If your viewing distance is more than 10’, you could save a small sum of money by going for the lower resolution.

Description and setup

The Panasonic TH-50PZ77U is something of an anomaly in the world of plasma televisions, with anti-glare properties akin to what most LCD screens offer. The Panasonic isn’t as bright as a typical LCD display, but glare should rarely be an issue with it. It also offers better-than-average black levels and contrast at a very attractive list price of $2799. A comparably sized LCD with this kind of performance and without pixel lag would cost about 50% more.

The set itself has a sleek, appealing appearance, with a matte screen and a high-gloss black bezel. Panasonic has wisely forgone the NASCAR-like logo frenzy that so many receiver manufacturers have succumbed to in recent years. The only interruptions on the front panel are the Panasonic logo in the middle of the lower bezel and an understated Viera logo in the top left corner. The Power button is on the lower left lip, but you have to look hard to see it. The few controls on the TV itself are hidden behind a flip-open door on the set’s right side. Panasonic no doubt assumes that everyone will use the remote control, and it seems a valid assumption to me. Also behind that door is an SD card slot that can be used for slideshows when you want to bore friends with pictures from your last family vacation. The rear panel is fairly well appointed, though the lack of a PC input and cable card slot will be disadvantages for some. A third HDMI slot would have been welcome, though I suspect it won’t be terribly long before most of us are doing all HDMI switching through our receivers or preamps. There are three cooling fans along the top rear of the TH-50PZ77U. I could hear them when I muted the sound, but never when viewing normally.

When you unpack the TH-50PZ77U, be sure you have muscled help -- it tips the scales at nearly 100 pounds without its stand. And if you have to hang it on a wall bracket 5’ off the ground, the set’s weight and awkward shape easily make this a two-person job.

Out of the box, the TH-50PZ77U needed a lot of calibration, which I found somewhat difficult. First, when the set was in Cinema mode with its Color Temperature set to Warm -- which is supposed to give the best color temperature and gray-scale tracking -- images were far too dim and yellow. No amount of tweaking in the Picture menu could get this mode to usable levels in a brightly lit room. Standard mode, with the Color Temperature set to Normal, was far more watchable. Unfortunately, the gray-scale tracking left a bit to be desired -- I could see a fair amount of blue in bright whites. It was still in the range of "acceptable" for most people, but not up to reference level.

The next problem showed up after I’d gone through the standard Digital Video Essentials calibration disc. Calibrating the color went smooth as silk -- I soon dialed in what should have been the perfect color and saturation settings. What I got instead was an odd pallor to skin tones that made the actors look ill. A slight shift toward red on the Tint control and a boost in overall saturation in the User Menus improved this dramatically. While it may not have been perfect according to the calibration disc, the result was far more pleasing to my eye.

But I still wasn’t completely satisfied with the quality of the image, and spent a fair amount of time in the Service Menu adjusting a handful of settings to get a better picture. The final result was fairly astonishing -- more detailed, more three-dimensional images of true reference quality. However, the Service Menu is not something the average user should play around in without a good bit of knowledge. If you buy a TH-50PZ77U and you’re a stickler for picture quality, speak to your retailer about the possibility of getting an ISF calibration.

Viewing

If you’re looking for top-notch high-definition content to feed your new TV, then the Blu-ray version of Planet Earth demands your consideration. This documentary series was beautifully shot, and entirely in HD -- I find its picture quality hard to take my eyes off of. These four discs are the closest most of us will ever get to being in many of these places, and once properly adjusted, the Panasonic TH-50PZ77U reproduced their spectacular images with a depth and clarity that rivaled some of the best TVs on the market. Many sets fail in the ability to reproduce shadow detail, but Planet Earth’s dark underground scenes -- one entire episode is devoted to caves -- had more background detail than I was accustomed to.

Spider-Man 3 isn’t my favorite film of that series, but it’s still an enjoyable way to kill 139 minutes. The Blu-ray version has a stunning picture by any standard, and the Panasonic didn’t shirk its duties at all. Color rendition and saturation were nearly as good as anything I’ve seen, and skin tones were just about perfect. The colors in Spidey’s suit were vibrant, with that "pop" we’ve come to expect from flat-panel displays.

Eager to see how the TH-50PZ77U would perform with standard-definition DVDs, I dropped one of my least favorite review discs, Driven, in my trusty Oppo OPDV971H DVD player. Fed a straight 480i signal via its component inputs, the Panasonic’s rendition of the quarter scene was a bit on the soft side. While this would have been perfectly acceptable on a smaller TV, a set like this deserves better. The picture improved dramatically when I let a Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player scale the picture and feed the TH-50PZ77U a 1080p digital signal via one of the plasma’s HDMI inputs. The TH-50PZ77U’s performance with standard-definition material was acceptable in a pinch, but a good-scaling DVD player should help get the most out of this TV.

Nothing, however, can clean up the crud that has infested standard-definition cable and satellite transmission in recent years. It may be digital, but it’s not high-quality. The fact is, only so much can be done with the lo-rez garbage that passes for a digital signal on so many channels today. While these pictures still looked fuzzy on the Panasonic, they were at least watchable most of the time. Hi-def satellite signals came across exceptionally well, though at a close viewing distance the blocking commonly visible in compressed satellite signals was readily noticeable.

Comparison

Compare the Panasonic TH-50PZ77U to nearly any older rear-projection CRT set and it quickly becomes evident that it’s no contest. My Hitachi 46F500 ($1995, discontinued) was a decent TV when I bought it four years ago, but the TH-50PZ77U is light-years ahead of it in color saturation, picture sharpness, and background detail. The Panasonic’s sharpness to some extent cleans up the fuzziness of SD cable signals, which can look very fuzzy on the Hitachi. On the other hand, blocking in HD signals is less noticeable on the Hitachi. The only place the Hitachi really performs better is in the area of absolute black level, but even here, the Panasonic wasn’t far behind. Plasmas in general have really closed the gap with CRTs in recent years.

When I compared the TH-50PZ77U with Panasonic’s own TH-PZ750U ($3499), the 750U had a sharper picture at close viewing distances, though this difference disappeared at anything approaching normal viewing distances. In other respects, once properly calibrated, the two sets were close enough in overall picture quality that you’d have to watch them side by side to be able to see any difference.

The other natural competitor of the TH-50PZ77U seems to be the Pioneer PDP-5080HD plasma, which costs $300 less ($2499). The Pioneer is of lower resolution (768p), but depending on the viewing distance, this may not be a problem. Pioneer, however, is the king of black levels, and it shows on the PDP-5080HD, which would be my first choice in a plasma set for a room with good light control where glare won’t be an issue; its black levels, shadow detail, and color saturation are all top-notch. However, if light control or seeing the reflection of your reading lamp in the screen is something that you think will bother you, the TH-50PZ77U is a better choice. Contrary to what you may read on the Web, the difference between the Pioneer and the Panasonic is not that great; by no stretch of the imagination will buying a TH-50PZ77U get you an inferior TV.

Conclusion

The Panasonic TH-50PZ77U is not the perfect flat-panel TV, but with some careful tweaking it can provide reference-level picture quality. It presents a viable alternative to LCD flat panels for those of us bothered by the slow response times of most affordable LCDs but who need a set with good antiglare properties. I suppose this relegates Panasonic’s 77U series of flat panels to those who don’t like LCDs but like glare even less. On the other hand, the discussions I’ve had with a number of people indicate that this niche market might be extraordinarily large.

Manufacturer contact information:

Panasonic Corporation of North America
Consumer Affairs Division
Panazip 2F-3
One Panasonic Way
Secaucus, NJ 07094
Phone: (800) 211-7262

Website: www.panasonic.com

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