The good: Produces a deep shade of black with excellent shadow detail; clean image with little noise or false contouring; solid, standard-def picture quality.
The bad: Expensive; too small to exhibit benefits of 1080p; slightly inaccurate color temperature; primary color of green skewed toward yellow.
The bottom line: For those who can spare no expense, the Panasonic TH-42PZ700U plasma offers the best picture quality in its size class.