dave_corbitt's Full Review: Panasonic TH-50PF10UK 50 in. Plasma TV
Panasonic TH50-PF10UK
ALERT: Major rewrite as of February 19, 2008
A Really Good 50” Plasma Monitor
In today’s world of new technology flat screen HDTV monitors, you basically will have a choice of only a couple of types of display technology. As consumers get more comfortable with HDTV and the new world of technical specs that go along with it, bigger screens become seductively attractive. Who doesn’t want a big picture on a sleek flat gadget that hangs on the wall? Once you get over being dazzled by the large size of a new HD image, it’s time to pay attention to the details and look for things the way a broadcaster does with a keen eye for color accuracy, correct contrast curves, accurate white points and color temperature tracking, stable and deep black levels, and fine resolution of detail without any artificial edging effects.
Right now you can choose between LCD, Plasma, or rear screen projected DLP, LCOS, or LCD. CRT’s, as good as they were for so many years, are dead so don’t even go there.
Panasonic has built some pretty darned good 50” 16:9 Plasma displays with it’s 9 and 10 series units. These are pro units with features designed for broadcasters but they are affordable enough to appeal to regular consumers too. These are the TH50-PF9UK and its updated replacement, the TH50-PF10UK. I’ll write a second review on the 9 series once I finish this one on the 10 series to show the subtle differences between the two. We use them in a professional studio setting where the once ubiquitous Sony BVM series are now impractical, too small, and almost impossible to get due to shutting down of CRT production worldwide. This Panasonic plasma is huge compared to the old Sony BVM monitors but just the right size for a master control room, a small screening room, or an audio or video workstation such as an Avid edit room or an audio mix room.
For the home theater buff, this monitor will give you excellent color, good image size, contrast ratios approaching CRT, and a variety of optional input boards to suit a variety of needs.
A wealth of menu functions will allow the tech savvy owner to customize performance and achieve excellent calibration. Here’s some of the tweaks for the techie:
Black Extension Adjusts the gain in the lowlights to give or take away shadow detail.
GAMMA Now here is a welcome tweak long ignored by most monitor manufacturers. You can select your gamma curve as either “S” curve to emulate film, 2.0, 2.2, or 2.5. The last one is the one most accurate for calibrating a look similar to what is seen on traditional Mastering Monitors so if you want that movie to look the way it did in the telecine suite, select 2.5 gamma.
AGC Yuck, turn this OFF.
There are six controls for adjusting the RGB balance in highlights and lowlights. This is for serious calibration only folks and if you don’t have a color analyzer system of some kind, stay away from these.
ASPECT CONTROLS Many ways to distort the image to force fit a 4:3 image to a 16:9 screen. There are various stretch modes and then there are the normal 4:3 and 16:9 modes to display the image as it was intended (depending on the original source).
MULTI-PIP You want to see more than one show at a time? OK. Give it a go.
And now for some other details:
Colorimetry:
Color Accuracy is absolutely a necessity for any professional monitor. Industry standards for color primaries are described in what is commonly called Rec 709. The Panasonic series of Plasma Monitors do not exactly adhere to Rec 709 but you can fudge them by bringing down the color saturation levels about 10% to bring the Red and Green primary CIE coordinates very close to where they should be. This then gives you a very close match to Rec 709 and the old standby Sony BVM imagery. It would have been really nice if Panasonic had seen fit to build in some LUTs (look up tables) to map the color space to match Rec 709 but they didn’t so you will have to fudge it. If you can accept this fact, then you’ve won the hardest battle. At a price that is about 1/8 the price for a 24” BVM and a picture that is huge compared to the BVM, this fudge is not so hard to accept, even in a high end pro installation.
Warning: If you are particular about color accuracy, you can only adjust color saturation on signals that are NOT RGB. So you can adjust saturation with composite, analog component, and HD or SD SDI ONLY. RGB HDMI signals and VGA are RGB so you will NOT be able to adjust saturation to trim the colorspace to approximate Rec 709. The rarer form of HDMI with Component Digital Signals can be adjusted but it is an uncommon format.
Option Boards:
You can order various input boards to suit your types of signal sources. Most home users will probably want an HDMI board and maybe an analog composite and component input. The 10 series comes standard with a dual HDMI card in one of the input slots. There are three slots in the back for installing the input boards of your choice. Two of them are taken up by standard boards that come with the monitor, but they can be swapped out if you want. The standard boards are a dual HDMI and an analog component/RGB with analog L/R audio. A non removable slot is for VGA input for PC use. For you pros out there, you will want the HD-SDI input or maybe the SD-SDI for those not yet working in HD. These are extra cost so look in to this, do your research, make sure you get what you need.
Resolution:
True 1920 x 1080 P. This monitor will show you every single pixel of a true HD 1080 signal. No interpolation, no remapping, no pixel sharing. You will see your HD signal the way it’s supposed to be seen. Nice.
You can purchase other options for this beauty such as a hefty wall bracket that can be angled down if you want, a strong stand with wheels to roll the monitor around from room to room, and plastic removable speakers that hang on the sides of the monitor (yuck).
Delays:
Any new technology video monitor will add internal processing delays to the video as it converts from Interlace to Progressive. This applies to LCD, Plasma, and DLP systems. The Panasonic has approximately 70 ms of image delay that you must compensate for to get perfect lipsync. Most A/V receivers for home theater use will have adjustable audio delays so the picture and sound can be made to sync up. For the pro, you need to make sure you design in audio delays to your monitoring to match the image delays. If you use the cheap speakers that hang on the sides of the monitor, the monitor has built in delays for the audio that goes through the monitor. But if you are at all concerned about audio quality, you will use all outboard audio processing so just heed my advice and you'll be fine.
Refinements in the 10 series over the 9:
The TH50-PF9UK was a very fine Plasma also and immediately preceded this model. You may still be able to get one from your dealer but make sure you get a good discount if you do. Here is how the 10 is different from the 9:
#1 The 10 series has a new anti-reflective coating that reflects less ambient light than the older glass. The 10 reflects 1% of ambient light whereas the 9 reflects 2.3%. That may not seem like much of a difference but it is noticeable and will give a slight improvement in contrast and brightness.
#2 The 10 series comes with a dual HDMI input boards in slot 2, the 9 series had a DVI-D input. HDMI trumps DVI-D any day.
#3 Aside from the above, the 9 and the 10 are pretty much the same for features and electronics, colorimetry, resolution, and available options.
Summary
A good monitor at a very good price, a real contender for the pro to replace those CRT monitors you can’t get anymore.
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