Panasonic Viera TH-42PX77U review

Performance
Overall, the Panasonic TH-42PX77U offers very good picture quality for a 42-inch plasma, beginning with the ability to produce a nice, deep black with plenty of detail in the shadows. Color was mostly accurate too, although we did notice a bit of false contouring and video noise in some scenes.

During setup we adjusted the Panasonic for optimal picture quality in our darkened room, reducing peak light output to around 40 FTl and setting the user-menu picture controls to our liking. We were impressed by the Panasonic's accurate color temperature in the Warm picture preset and Custom picture mode before we made any adjustments at all. Although somewhat redder than the 6,500K standard, the grayscale was very consistent, leading to colors that didn't fluctuate from darker to lighter areas. We did perform a service-menu-level calibration to improve the grayscale. See the Geek box below for results, and for our full user-menu settings, click here or check out the tips section above.

After our adjustments we were ready to compare the Panasonic to a couple of other displays we had in-house, namely the company's own 50-inch "professional" model, the TH-50PH9UK, along with the Vizio V42PHDTV and our reference Pioneer PRO-FHD1. After our adjustments were completed, we sat back to watch X-Men: The Last Stand on Blu-ray, played via the Samsung BD-P1000 at 1080i resolution.

Panasonic plasmas have always delivered superior black levels, and the TH-42PX77U is no exception. In very dark scenes its letterbox bars and fields of black were visibly darker than both the Vizio and the Pioneer, although not quite as inky as the TH-50PH9UK. The night sky during the Terminator-esque, albeit holographic "not too distant future" scene, for example, looked nice and inky, and the black leather of the X-Men's costumes shared the same depth of black. Panasonic's excellent shadow detail in this scene--dark crevasses in the leather and highlights in Rogue's hair, for example--came through in a good deal more detail than with the Vizio. On the downside, in test patterns the TH-42PX77U "floated black," meaning that black areas of the picture became slightly brighter when other areas of the picture reached a certain brightness. This issue didn't really distract from our viewing enjoyment, however.

We did notice a bit more video noise, compared to the Vizio, in some parts of the Panasonic's image, mostly in very dark scenes, such as the fog in the background of the future, or in flat fields, like the white walls of Leech's room. It wasn't really a major issue, especially if we sat further than about 6 feet from the screen. We did notice a bit more false contouring on the Panasonic than the Vizio, however, which appeared most noticeably as distinct lines in areas that should be smooth fades from light to dark, such as explosions in the nighttime final battle or shadows along walls. There were few cases where we found the contouring distracting, however, and it was more prevalent on the TH-50PH9UK then on the TH-42PX77U.

As we mentioned, prior to calibration the grayscale on the Panasonic was a bit redder, or warmer, than the ideal, but the difference was barely noticeable in program material. When Mystique gets shot and reverts to her human-colored self, for example, her skin tone looked very natural in the bright fluorescent light of the truck. The look of Phoenix's skin in the dimmer light of the house, as she chats with Xavier and Magneto, was just as natural.

Like many plasmas, the Panasonic suffered from an inaccurate primary color of green, which made green areas appear a bit bluer and yellower than they should. We detected the difference in the shot of Xavier's mansion, for example, where the grass, trees, bushes, and ivy looked a bit less natural than they did on the excellent Pioneer. Red and blue were nearly spot-on, however, and overall color decoding was very good. Combined with the deep blacks and accurate grayscale, the result was rich, saturated images with plenty of pop.

Speaking of "pop," one of the issues that has plagued plasma TVs in the past is the reflectivity of their big glass screens. Lights, bright objects in the room, and even light fabric from a couch or the shirt of a TV watcher reflects off the glass, which becomes distracting, especially in dark scenes. Of course the best way to control this issue is to eliminate as much ambient light as possible in the room, but the TH-42PX77U, along with its 77U series stablemates, addresses the problem in another way. Its screen is coated with an antiglare compound that, unlike the coating of some previous plasmas we've reviewed, such as the Samsung HP-S5053, actually does a good job of attenuating reflections. We watched TV with the lights on full blast, and compared to the other plasmas, the reflections off the Panasonic's screen were considerably dimmer, blurrier, and less noticeable. We couldn't discern any adverse effect of the coating on the TV's picture quality.

Detail was excellent on the TH-42PX77U for a plasma of its resolution, and we had no complaints about the sharpness of the image with either 720p or 1080i sources. The panel also can accept 1080p sources (as can the Vizio), but it would exhibit strange behavior. After we watched 1080p for about 20 minutes, the picture disappeared. Then after about 30 seconds, the picture came back on, along with a message saying "an error has been detected and recovered." The process would repeat just about every 20 minutes, so we'd recommend avoiding 1080p sources with this set. The Panasonic failed the 1080i film resolution test from the HQV HD DVD, but we found it difficult to see the difference in real program material.

We turned our sights to standard-def next, checking out how the TH-42PX77U handled tests from the HQV DVD, and the results were impressive. The set resolved all of the details of the DVD well; smoothed out jagged edges from diagonal lines extremely well; engaged 2:3 pull-down detection quickly, and evinced a nice sharp picture with no edge enhancement. The Panasonic's noise reduction circuit only had a minor effect when engaged, but even when turned off, the image appeared cleaner than the Vizio when its NR was disengaged.