The Perfect Vision
Panasonic TH-50PX77U Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
HDMI version 1.3 is starting to appear on many TVs and other A/V devices these days. The TH-50PX77U implements this version of HDMI with CEC (Consumer Electronics Control), which Panasonic calls EZ Sync HDAVI (QQQ need to find out what this stands for). CEC allows multiple HDMI-connected devices to be controlled from a single remote and automatically select the appropriate input, mode, and so on for the intended activity.
Adjustment Notes
Cinema picture mode was closest to ideal, though contrast and color saturation were too high and brightness was too low. Interestingly, sharpness seemed to have little effect on ringing; a little edge enhancement was visible at its highest settings. When setting a picture control, the rest of the menu disappears, but the control slider remains in the same location as when the entire menu is visible; also, the menu returns after only 2 seconds of inactivity, making it impossible to carefully consider the setting. Interestingly, grayscale measurements in windows yielded different results than full-screen gray fields, which were more toward green than the window measurements.
Test Discs
On the HQV Benchmark DVD, detail was generally good, but there was some banding in the highest horizontal frequency pattern. Jaggies were moderate. Video and MPEG noise reduction can only be turned on or off; both were pretty subtle, but they did reduce the noise without softening the picture much. The set’s processor picked up 3:2 pulldown very slowly at first (>1 second), but quite quickly after that.
Switching to the HQV Benchmark HD DVD, jaggies were invisible, and the video resolution loss test was solid as a rock. Not so with the film resolution loss test, which exhibited lots of flickering in the next-to-highest-frequency horizontal and vertical boxes.
Microsoft engineer Stacey Spears' test HD DVD revealed that the set never picks up 3:2 pulldown at 1080i, though the montage of images on that disc looked better than expected based on the 3:2 test. The set crops more than 30 pixels from the sides and bottom and 24 from the top of the image.
Technical Ratings
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