BEGINNINGS:

I bought an RCA 29” tube TV back in College which was about 1995 as my first TV after moving out of my parents house. I still have it and it works fine, despite the fact the greatest advancement it contains is it’s S-Video connector. Regardless, now I’m married with kids and many things have changed in the electronics field. I have a Tivo series 1 that has changed my TV viewing life since I got it, and when I found out Tivo had finally come out with a High Definition capable unit (Series 3) I had my justification for finally buying a new TV.


HOW I DECIDED ON THIS TV:

I received the my Pioneer 5070HD from an authorized Pioneer internet reseller on September 15th 2006, just weeks after it was released for $3,019.00, a price much lower (about $700.00) than what you can get at Best Buy or Circuit City, etc. Pioneer had just called their 22 or so authorized resellers informing them of a price drop just hours before I started my price shopping! Nevertheless, this TV was still a few hundred bucks more expensive than almost every other brand name. I read that it was because it has the best picture, because it was a Pioneer brand name, because of a half dozen things that people claimed this or that. I had to look for myself.
I love having the latest bleeding edge electronics. I probably spend a week researching professional and user reviews on the internet about different plasmas, and interviewing the guys at Video Only and other local electronics stores, fishing for knowledge, info and opinions. I spent hours at my Best Buy looking at the 50 or so plasma screens they have on display there, including this one.
I noticed that looking at this TV side by side, the other TV’s seemed crisper and sharper. I contemplated this and realized that they were not crisper or sharper at all, but rather the Pioneer was softer and blended better. It made for a much more realistic picture and most importantly, it made standard definition TV look GREAT and not pixilated or blurry like the other sets. This was important as I will explain in a minute.
After seeing the TV in person and realizing that although not every plasma review ranked it as the best (most did), none of the reviews ranked it in a low category. I don’t usually spend my money on things unless I’m sure every dollar is being spent well, and I wasn’t sure if that would be the case here. I took a chance I rarely took.


FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

The unit arrived. I had the delivery guys put the box into my living room. That box was as big as the sofa! It’s funny, but in all my excitement, I was still astonished and pleased in the way Pioneer packed this TV. Instead of taking the TV out of the box, you take the box off the TV. It would have been awful if it were the other way around, as this TV is pretty heavy. Another nice thing I realized is that it was already pre-mounted on it’s stand. No assembly required. Just plug and play… except the plugging took me the better half of three days to finish doing. Not that it was especially difficult, rather I have about two dozen video and audio components to network to each other.
After getting everything hooked up, I turned it on. The only thing that came to my mind was ‘holy cow’. It looked very different in my rather large living room. It was bigger, brighter, and definitely the center of attention. Did I mention it was bright? I turned on CSI Miami. The intense colors flying into my eyeballs suggested I was on some kind of hippy hypnotic drug trip. It was unreal. I had to turn on power saving to it’s maximum level to reduce the brightness. I then turned down the color and brightness to below normal settings. I felt I was watching TV projected into my eyes by laser beams. It was beautiful!
I hooked up the speakers that came with the TV for looks, and a lack of room I could store them. Pioneer did a great job by putting the speakers across the bottom of this set instead of the sides. Side speakers look stupid to me. Big stupid ears. This TV blended the speakers into itself perfectly. They also sound great, not as good as my 5.1 surround AV unit with 15” speakers, but much better than I expected from little guys that are attached to a TV.
The color of this TV is a sheen black piano finish. It looks so classy and goes with everything. It has every audio video connector you could possibly ask for, including HDMI which my new AV unit didn’t even have that was less than 1 year old. This TV definitely has a wow factor to it when viewed.


EXPERIENCES:

I only watch DVD’s and my TIVO series 3 through this TV. I looked for dead pixels when I got it and didn’t find any. Here it is 10 months later and still none. I don’t know how other plasmas are but when switching resolutions it takes about 2 seconds for the picture to switch and adjust. The menu system is pretty self explanatory. There are some popular features this unit lacks, such as Picture in Picture and pre configured picture modes. But you know, every feature this TV lacks is honestly a feature I would never use anyway.
I can tell that this TV has all of it’s focus and engineering on picture quality, not gimmicks. When I go into Best buy 10 months later, compared to the newest TV’s they have, the 5070HD still looks to have the most natural picture, and maintains the best looking design. I never really got what people meant when they said Pioneers have the best picture but now I know. It is very hard to explain, but they do. It’s not artificial looking, the colors are intense and true.
I’ve since watched 5 seasons of 24 on DVD on this set. Nothing like seeing Jack lay the smack down on bad guys in wide screen Pioneer plasma! Everything is working great still. I really like the auto off feature where it turns itself off after a pre determined amount of time of non-usage. The kids always walk away without turning it off. I would like to say something good about Pioneer support, but cant since this TV hasn’t given me an excuse to call them.


CONCLUSION:

I am very glad I spend the extra cash on this unit. I know I got a quality item and don’t worry about weather or not there is anything significantly better out there. I would definitely recommend this TV to anybody. I got the 50” screen because my couch/viewing distance is 11-13 feet away from the surface of the TV. That is about the perfect size to distance ratio. Any bigger would diminish the picture quality, any smaller… well, small is bad. Here is the viewing distance to screen size calculator:
http://www.dtvcity.com/plasmatv/plasmascreensize.html
Pioneer has recently announced a newer model of this called the 5080HD for about a thousand bucks more. Looking at the specs I really cant see where that grand is going. But hey, it’s a Pioneer… the only brand I’ll ever buy.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 3,019

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