Panasonic plasma TV streams YouTube, accesses Picasa photos
Company's flagship plasma TV can stream YouTube videos and access digital photos stored on the Picasa photo service, among other IPTV-related features.
We detailed Panasonic's full plasma lineup earlier this year, but having just returned from a press event devoted to the flagship TH-PZ850U series, it feels incumbent to reiterate some of the cool new features of these expensive sets.
The coolest? A demo at the event proved that the 850Us can stream YouTube videos, right on the TV screen with no PC required. The TV's "Viera Cast" interface allows you to search YouTube by keyword, sort videos by popularity, or access your own list of favorite videos, for example. During the demo we were treated to a video of a laughing baby, the (no-surprise) current champ of the popularity list. According to Panasonic, the entire catalog of YouTube videos is available on the TV, although it may take a day or two for a new one on the site to appear on Viera Cast. The TV can also access Picasa, Google's photo sharing site, so you can view digital photos stored at your (or someone else's) Picasa account directly on the big screen.
The 850U series will also ship with a stock ticker widget that will allow you to track favorite stocks, courtesy of Bloomberg, as well as local and national weather information provided by The Weather Channel. The only other Internet-connected HDTV we've reviewed is
I asked whether the Panasonic 850U was compatible with NetFlix's Watch Now service for example, which
I also asked whether the 850U models, which connect to the Internet via an Ethernet jack, can work with a wireless network, and was told that while there's no "official" wireless solution available from the company, a number of third-party adapters will work.
Other features of the 850U series include an expanded color gamut over the 800U series. According to the company, the Digital Cinema Color Re-Mastering technology can reproduce the same color points used in digital cinema, which are wider than those used in the HDTV standard (aka Rec 709). When we asked the company why its flagship models didn't receive the same THX Display Certification found on the step-down TH-PZ800U series, we were told that rigorous adherence to the HDTV color standard was a prerequisite for THX. We're certain that's not the whole story--THX certification also costs money, and the 850U series is expensive enough already.
The 46-inch