James Segars
With continual and frequent advances in LCD/LED technology, the abandonment of Pioneer’s Kuro/ELITE Plasma line, and potentially game-changing energy conservation legislation looming overhead it would appear that the days of Plasma Display Technology are numbered. Moreover, the high-cost/high-value paradigm that has long since ruled the Home Theater market has been forced to evolve under the pressure of a stressed economy with people instead opting for low-cost/high-value products whenever possible.
This is sad not only because of the hard times faced by all, but also because an exceptional display technology is facing extinction, or at the very least, exclusion from major retail outlets because the market might not be “viable” in the not-so-distant future.
I myself, am a huge advocate for Plasma because I believe that it offers unparalleled picture quality, and the finest black levels to date. Plasma ensures a reference quality viewing experience regardless of the content or the viewing conditions/angle, one that will leave an everlasting impression on you.
Thankfully, in spite of everything, Panasonic is clearly intent on keeping the Plasma technology alive, offering up new, bigger, better and thinner plasma displays than ever before. One such plasma display, the new TH-65VX100U, was sent to me for review. Over the course of my two week loan I did my best to put it through its paces and at the end of it all, I began to wonder what might happen if I had an extra $6,250 dollars laying around. Assuming this was excess cash, money that was not going to be missed, would I opt to purchase the display? Would it be worth it?
ARRIVAL AND UNBOXINGOne sunny afternoon in early October, a mysterious crate showed up at my house (see picture above). I was told that there would be some helping hands to move the display into the living room, but none were provided. Luckily, the crate had casters on the bottom, and the entire weight (plasma included) was just slightly over two-hundred pounds and while that is certainly too heavy for one person to lift and navigate around the house I was fortunate that my brother was in town (thanks, Mike).
Once inside, I flipped and twisted the clamp locks on the front half of the removable crate, and repeated it on the rear half. After this, all that was left of the crate was the base. I debated whether or not I should remove the unit from the crate entirely, but I found it all-too convenient to simply keep the Plasma on this movable platform. And so I rolled the display into place in front of the living room window, locked the wheels down, and began running the necessary power and HDMI cables in order to get the display up and on.
Before I proceed, I’d just like to say that I hope that every owner of this Display gets one of these fantastic crates to go along with their set. This packaging far exceeds the standard heavy-duty cardboard that most every display is shipped in these days. Consider if you will, the fact that with this crate, you can safely and assuredly move or ship your Plasma anywhere in the world (the airport stickers on the exterior of the case would certainly support this theory) without fear of damaging it. Personally, I think that’s a dream come true, so much so that if there were an option to have this type of crate over a traditional throw-away box, I would throw down the extra cash (if necessary) just to have one of these on hand.
A “CERTIFIED” TWEAKERFirst and foremost, it should be stated that I am not ISF (Image Science Foundation) certified, nor am I a trained THX Professional calibrator. I am — like so many AV/HT enthusiasts — a self-taught “tweaker.” I use that word to describe my standing in the world of calibration professionals because I am not certified and true professionals would have a cow if every “tweaker” proclaimed themselves a “calibrator” — but at the same time, I am very passionate about the science and the craft of calibration. Therefore, because I possess a basic knowledge and a genuine interest in display calibration, I feel that I am qualified more than the average consumer to inform them about how the process works. Also, every disc I use to evaluate my displays are available for purchase and they won’t set you back any more than a typical Blu-ray might.
I feel that this is extremely important to mention for a couple reasons: 1) Anyone can perform the most basic calibration processes with the help of the on-disc tutorials or help pages, and 2) Through these basic adjustments, you should be able to get roughly ninety-percent of the total potential out of your display, and if not, you can rest assured that you will have a far better picture than you did when you started in the factory default mode (most of the time, anyway). Now, while you can get close to perfection with consumer grade calibration tools/discs, it should be obvious that they are not an alternative to professional calibration, instead it should be considered a supplement at best. In other words, the only way you can be sure that you are getting the maximum performance or the perfect picture out of your HDTV/Projector is if you fork over the cash to have your display professionally calibrated by certified and trained professionals.
PICTURE MENU/TWEAKINGWell, now that you know about my background and perhaps a little bit about calibration, it’s time to get down to my findings regarding the TH-65VX100U. Much to my surprise, there were very few setup options for the Plasma. I was expecting to find a dizzying array of variable settings, but the picture menu for this display was relatively simple. I imagine most of the advanced controls are tucked safely away in the engineer (hidden) menus, and rightly so.
No matter, I went about calibrating and adjusting the display as best I could with my disc-based patterns. Once more, I was surprised to find that the display didn’t require much adjustment beyond the factory default picture settings. This is good for two reasons: 1) Panasonic has seen fit to turn loose a Plasma that requires very minimal picture adjustment (instead of juicing, and boosting the brightness/saturation) and 2) because the out-of-box defaults are within earshot (mostly) of the tweaked settings, calibration is quick and easy, and if you should so choose (although we won’t recommend this) you can bypass the tweaking process altogether.
Any way you slice it, the picture quality — with or without calibration — can be extremely stunning. In setting the picture menu, I opted for the “Cinema” setting, boosted the “Picture” value, dropped the overall brightness a bit down after running a variety of High/Low Pluge (Picture Line-Up GEnerator) patterns, upped the Tint value by one tick after evaluating color/tint patterns through a blue filter, adjusted the color temp. to “normal”, and left the Sharpness at zero (didn’t notice any pronounced halos on the overscan/sharpness patterns).
ADVANCED MENUAs for the advanced menu, I left much of this untouched if only because I don’t have the proper equipment or know-how to do a lot of the advanced color adjustments. Nonetheless, it’s important to double check the input level, black extension and gamma settings on your set. These two settings can drastically affect your perceived black levels — ranging from uber-crushed to terribly washed out. I found that with my all of my input devices, I achieved the best results with an input level of “0”, gamma setting of “2.2”, and black extension at “0”. Your results may vary, so it’s important to toggle through the settings (preferably while looking at a Pluge pattern instead of a random film freeze frame) but just know that if the settings are not quite right, your picture could suffer significantly. Of course, when in doubt (or if you don’t like what you’ve done) simply restore the factory defaults by (in this case) clicking on the “Normalize” button at the top of the advanced picture menu.
NOISE REDUCTIONThe last item I’d like to touch on inside the Advanced Menu is “Noise Reduction”. Over the course of my two-week evaluation, I tried virtually all combinations of settings under the noise reduction submenu. As for your basic options, you can choose from: OFF, MIN, MID, MAX, or ADV (Advanced). In the end, I opted for no noise reduction at all, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.
For the first week however, I was content with using the ADV setting, and further tweaking the levels of noise reduction categories even further. If you’re like me, and you’re so inclined to explore the advanced Noise Reduction menu, you’ll find that you can tweak each primary category of noise reduction (Video Noise, Block Noise, Mosquito Noise) individually and in incremental values no less, from OFF, to MIN, to MID, to MAX. Through the use of Qdeo’s HD Evaluation disc, I found these settings (Video – MID, Block – MIN, Mosquito – MIN) to yield very pleasing results, with satisfactory noise reduction, while still maintaining a very detailed picture.
However, outside of the evaluation materials, I found the Noise Reduction to be a bit too intrusive and troublesome. At first glance — particularly if there was minimal movement in the frame — everything seemed to be perfect, but if there was a decent amount of movement, or fast moving action, it appeared as though the noise reduction was trying to play catchup with the image on screen, blurring the detail ever-so-slightly — something that we (as Blu-ray reviewers) are trained to look for. I hadn’t noticed it right away, but as usual when you take notice of a irritating anomaly, it’s impossible to NOT see it. And so I ended up turning off the Noise Reduction altogether. Typically, I prefer to disable Noise Reduction when and wherever possible, but I figured that I should give it the benefit of the doubt here on this display.
The way I see it, a slightly noisier/grainier picture is far better than a waxy/scrubbed picture. I know I’m not alone in that preference, but I also know that there are more than few people that can’t stand grain and noise. As for the latter, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
NOTE: A COMPLETE LIST OF MY SETTINGS ARE LISTED AT THE END OF THE REVIEW FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE. SO GOOD IT HERTZMoving on, I wanted to test the handling of 24p(hz) video from my Blu-ray player. With a quick look to the “Signal” menu, I confirmed that the display was indeed accepting and displaying the 24hz signal correctly. Interestingly, but not entirely desirable (so far as I could tell), you can toggle the Refresh Rate from 100hz down to 50hz in the Signal Menu, but you can only do so when the display is being fed 24p/hz content. I dropped the refresh rate to see what effect it would have on the picture, and it caused the picture to flicker quite distractingly. On the flipside, with the 100hz refresh rate (where the display is otherwise locked) the 24hz/60hz signals were free of any apparent flickering, and by all accounts very true to source.
SCALING/DE-INTERLACINGAs for scaling, the display wasn’t quite up to snuff, but I can hardly fault it because this is a feature that should really be handled by the output device, in my opinion. Using the display as your scaler should be a last resort option. Nonetheless, I dropped the output resolution of my HD DVR to 480i and witnessed a smattering of feathering artifacts and blurred detail as the display scaled the SD content as best it could.
Now, with regard to de-interlacing capabilities, the display fared much better, but I would stop short of saying “exceptional.” Using the Spears & Munsil Edge Adaptive De-interlacing test patterns and video material, I found that there were simply more edge-adaptive artifacts when the display was doing the heavy lifting (de-interlacing). This is not to say that the de-interlacing was poor, I actually found it to be pretty good, but the bottom line is that your respective output devices will look their best when they are outputting a progressive (1080p) signal.
Normally, this shouldn’t be a problem, but because HD cable is still output exclusively in 1080i, and in my case, the HD-A30 I use has issues outputting progressive material (firmware update introduced horrible jaggies/feathering), 1080i is the best way to go, and so it’s important that displays should be able to de-interlace properly — and in an ideal world, they should be able to do it flawlessly.
ODD FINDINGSWith the calibration/evaluation process mostly out of the way, after having cycled through countless patterns and evaluation videos, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on this set, and its capabilities. While it is, by and large, a positively stunning set, and its size alone will easily distract and woo you, I noticed a couple small anomalies.
The first is an odd horizontal darkening/additive effect that can be seen when a bright bar/line/object is on the screen. The area to the left and right of the bright object is darkened slightly, but noticeably. In normal viewing conditions, I didn’t notice this effect, in fact it is almost exclusively restricted to simple and limited color schemes (white/black, white/green, etc…). I’ve included pictures of this under the “Miscellaneous Pictures” section at the end of the review. As I said before, it isn’t noticeable under normal viewing conditions, and it is most definitely not a deal breaker for me, but I felt I should make note of it all the same.
Next, I noticed a slight smearing/blurring effect, surrounding bright colors moving rapidly against dark backgrounds. As for an example of this, imagine a brisk panning shot (in any direction) in a pitch black basement, save for the light of a single desk lamp. This blurring delay/smearing is minimal, but definitely noticeable if you’re looking for it. As for what it looks like, it reminds me ever so slightly of the ghosting effect you would see on older VHS camcorders as bright lights streaked across the screen. To be perfectly clear, it is nowhere near that extreme. I don’t want to alarm anyone, or dissuade any potential buyers, but I do think that it too is worth mentioning even if its a minor nuisance.
Lastly (and this is most likely related to the previous anomaly) I found that scrolling vertical/horizontal text occasionally suffered from this ghosting/smearing effect when the text was moving very fast. When it moved at a normal pace, it was next to impossible to spot the effect.
Very Lastly, for those of you that are wondering, there are no speakers built into the display. I hardly think this is a shortcoming or cause for complaint because if you’re throwing down the money for an A-Class Plasma Display you should probably have a dedicated Home Theater setup to compliment the unit. Even still, there are L/R speaker output jacks on the rear of the display should you decide to connect an existing set of speakers, and pass the audio through the unit.
GENERAL USAGE/VIEWINGMy viewing evaluation method was broken up over the course of two weeks. During that time I sampled/viewed over fifteen films on blu-ray/hd dvd as well as select video games and HD cable (FiOS) programming. As for my settings, they are listed at the end of this review for your convenience.
• Week One •Viewed: Transformers, The Dark Knight, Zodiac, Paris Je T’aime, Baraka, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Phantom of the Opera, and Uncharted (PS3 Game).
When it comes to judging a plasma television, you’d be entirely remiss or irresponsible if you managed to neglect feeding it the Blu-ray titles that feature the best, deepest, inkiest blacks on the market. Naturally, The Dark Knight was one of the first on my “to watch” list, and the display soared through the movie with notable ease.
Because there is no dynamic iris (as you might find on front projectors) and no dynamic contrast, you are guaranteed a definitive black level throughout, or in other words, you will bear witness to an exceptionally consistent image where bright images shine, and the darkest scenes are perfectly detailed, with outstanding shadow delineation and stellar black levels. No where was this more evident than with The Dark Knight, which as the title suggests, spends much of its running time wallowing in the shadows of Gotham city.
I particularly like throwing this film at displays because it serves as a litmus test — or bullshit detector if you prefer. Most TV’s handle bright images very well, but if you throw up a scene from The Dark Knight, they simply struggle to reproduce all of the detail found in the deep, dark extremes of the film image. Simply put, it is no easy task, and this Plasma blew me away, to the point where I almost considered swapping out my front projector… almost.
As for the rest of the week’s viewing material, I was primarily concerned with evaluating the color accuracy/saturation with titles like Baraka, Paris Je T’aime, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, shadow delineation and fine black level details in Zodiac, and The Phantom of the Opera, and lastly, I just had fun playing through the first Uncharted game (in time for the sequel’s arrival) and watching Transformers to cap off the week.
All in all, I found that the display presented the wide variety of material wonderfully, and I admittedly had a very hard time prying my eyes away from it throughout the first week, and this isn’t because of the size factor. I am — although I’m almost ashamed to admit it — essentially desensitized to big screens since the installation of my 104” front projection screen.
No, the real magnetism or appeal of the display comes from its exceptional color reproduction, image brightness, and vacuous black level. Positively splendid.
• Week Two •Viewed: Casablanca, Cloverfield, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Youth Without Youth, Blade Runner, The Godfather, Batman Begins, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Having chewed through a variety of challenging films in the first week, I decided that I’d throw an even greater assortment of films at the display during the second week of evaluation; a dizzying array of classic pictures from different decades, up to some of the most recent digitally photographed films of the modern age.
I was genuinely pleased with the resulting image quality. Whether it was the impeccable reproduction of the finely detailed classics like Casablanca, and 2001: A Space Odyssey or the colorful and revealing presentation of the animated classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, this Plasma display “wowed” me thoroughly.
When it came to some of the darker fare (Batman Begins, Cloverfield and Blade Runner) the set performed perfectly in line with my expectations that had been established over the course of the first week’s viewing. All of the dark sections of the image were solid — without being crushed — and finely detailed wherever intended.
Lastly, with Youth Without Youth — one of my favorite Blu-rays — the display presented the all-digital image to perfection, preserving its slight video glaze while also lending a certain filmic look to the material at the same time, and the same is true for Cloverfield (which can be particularly problematic for some displays to present accurately). As the two week evaluation drew to a close, I realized that my time with the display was soon to be over, and that the time would soon come when I had to say…
SO LONG, FAREWELLI’ll be honest. It was no easy task to say goodbye to this stunning Plasma display. If I had the disposable income that would warrant or provoke a purchase such as this one, I would surely drop the necessary money to keep the display. It’s a wonderful piece of hardware, and Plasma is a fantastic display technology, and it would make a fantastic addition/alternative to my current home theater setup with the front projection system. However, the reality is that I don’t have the funds to make that dream possible. I’m also very content with my front projector (HC4900) and the image it provides me. Still though, I can’t argue with the fact that this display positively destroys my projectors black levels. It’s simply no contest. But of course, there are always going to be pros and cons, ups and down in the world of displays. At the end of the day, you just have to determine what you’re willing to sacrifice in order to get what you want out of your system. As for me, I chose a larger (projected) image with satisfactory blacks, over a smaller image with some of the best blacks. Sure, I’m over-simplifying the differences between the two display technologies/methods (front projection vs. plasma) but that’s what it ultimately came down to for me — that and the fact that most entry plasmas were twice the cost of my projector when I bought it.
Price is still a major hurdle for many people when it comes to plasma tvs, and sadly I don’t foresee that changing in the future. But quite honestly though, I don’t see that being a problem for Panasonic either. With the market almost exclusively theirs — after Pioneer’s surprise departure — and a slew of new and exciting advancements in their Plasma line-up, including the forthcoming 3D Plasma displays, there’s plenty to get excited about and assuredly plenty of benefits that plasma can lay claim to if only to secure itself a cozy little niche, and a dedicated fan base — myself included.
This Plasma may not be perfect in every way — taking into consideration the various issues mentioned previously — but it is a stunning set nonetheless.
• Evaluation Hardware/Sources •
Playback Devices:
Toshiba HD-A30 HD DVD player
Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Player
Playstation 3 – 40gb System
Calibration/Evaluation Discs:
Digital Video Essentials HD Basics
Qdeo HD Video Evaluation
Spears & Munsil – High Definition Benchmark
HQV HD Evaluation – HD DVD
• Finalized Settings •
Note: These values should be taken at face value. I am not a certified ISF or THX professional.
* Settings: Picture Menu (Cinema), Picture (+15), Brightness (-9), Color (0), Tint (+1), Sharpness (0), Color Temp (normal), Color Management (off)
* Advanced Settings: Black Extension (0), Input Level (0), Gamma (2.2), AGCAGC (off), W/B HIGH (r-0, b-0, g-0), W/B LOLOW (r-0, b-0, g-0), 3:2 Pulldown (off), Noise Reduction (off)
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