Panasonic TH-42PD25U/P review: Panasonic TH-42PD25U/P

Panasonic TH-42PD25U/P: EDTV champ
Note: The TH-42PD25U/P is virtually identical to its predecessor, the TH-42PA20U. The only difference is the addition of a CableCard slot, a built-in HDTV tuner, and an HDMI port (instead of a DVI jack). This review has been modified from the TH-42PA20U review to reflect those changes.

When you turn off the lights to watch a movie, you expect its letterbox bars and its other black areas to look, well, black. Sadly, you'll be disappointed by the majority of plasma and other nontube TVs, including bleeding-edge DLP, LCD, and LCOS designs. Among those technologies, only a few plasmas can rival traditional tubes in delivering realistic blacks and shadows. A prime example is Panasonic's least-expensive consumer 42-inch model, the TH-42PD25U/P. This EDTV plasma may not deliver as much detail as its high-resolution cousin, the TH-42PX25U/P, but it also costs a good deal less. It includes an HDTV tuner and a CableCard slot, for set-top-box-free high-def tuning, and it looks swanky enough for any wall. If those extra features seem superfluous and you want a cleaner, more industrial look, Panasonic offers the stripped-down TH-42PWD6UY for a few bucks less. No matter which of the two you choose, you'll receive a nearly tube-quality picture in a slim, swanky package.

Editor's note: We have changed the rating in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Click here to find out more.

The TH-42PD25U/P comes dressed in fashionable silver, with a pair of speakers to either side of the glass. The thin, black screen border and the subtle logo look quite classy, although personally we prefer the minimalist style of the "industrial" models.

At 3.9 inches deep, the TH-42PD25U/P will fit nicely on the wall in the optional bracket. For more conventional installations, Panasonic includes a swivel stand and also offers a pedestal stand complete with shelves for your A/V gear.

The set comes with a beefy remote that can command other components. It has a big, well-placed cursor control and illuminated buttons. We found it easy to use, but smaller-handed people will have to stretch.

If, like us, you prefer the speaker-free, black look, investigate this set's industrial cousin, the TH-42PWD6UY version, also known as the TH-42PW6. This model has simpler cosmetics, a lower price, a skimpier input selection, and a different menu configuration. Image quality should be identical.

The TH-42PD25U/P includes a CableCard slot--making the set digital cable ready--and a built-in HDTV tuner. These features enable you to view digital cable and over-the-air HDTV without a separate set-top box. As with all CableCard-equipped HDTVs, you'll need to order pay-per-view movies via phone, and you won't be able to use the cable company's video-on-demand or electronic program guide (EPG) functions.

This is an EDTV plasma with 852x480 resolution, which means that it can display 1080i and 720p HDTV material but not in full detail (more info). Like all plasmas, the TH-42PD25U/P scales computer, HDTV, VHS, cable, and all other incoming video to fit the available pixels. Panasonic also sells a higher-resolution version, the TH-42PX25U/P.

The TH-42PD25U/P has all the bells and whistles you'd expect in a high-end set. The picture-in-picture feature offers side-by-side display of two sources, and a pair of standard NTSC tuners joins the HDTV tuner mentioned above. On the audio side, the 16 watts of onboard power won't rattle your windows but is convenient if you don't want to fire up your full system. Rounding out your sound options are a simulated-surround circuit and the ability to even out sudden volume increases.

You'll also find a decent array of features that affect performance, including 2:3 pull-down; four picture modes; three color-temperature presets; and four selectable aspect-ratio modes, which fit non-wide-screen material to the display. In 4:3 mode, you can adjust the color of the letterbox bars from black to gray, and the Just mode keeps the image's center somewhat normal-looking while still filling the screen. With 480p material, you don't get the Just option, and with HD material you can't change aspect ratios at all.

The jack pack, which is bottom-mounted for wall-mounting ease, brings to bear an impressive connectivity selection. An HDMI hookup enables digital transmission from DVD players and HDTV receivers and is backward-compatible with DVI gear. The two A/V inputs have S-Video, as does their front-panel duplicate, which hides next to VGA computer input beneath a flip-down door. Rounding out the ins are two for wideband component video and two for RF antenna and cable signals. You also get a monitor A/V output.

The TH-42PD25U/P produces some of the best pictures we've ever seen on a plasma display. Unlike many sets of its kind, this Panasonic can produce a deep, inky black and render subtle shadow detail. The panel's exemplary performance on darker scenes was nearly equal to that of tube-based TVs.

At the Warm color temperature, the TH-42PD25U/P's precalibration grayscale measured 8,000K at the high end and 7,600K at the low end. After a struggle, we were able to wrestle the respective numbers to 6,700K and 6,550K, which are much closer to the 6,500K ideal. And the grayscale's consistency at different light levels resulted in smoother, more-accurate color in all material.

We fed the TV our standard gamut of test scenes, and our only complaint was with the color decoder's tendency to accentuate red and suppress green. But then we discovered the HD color matrix, which greatly improved accuracy to give us rich, well-saturated colors on a par with the best we've seen from a plasma. However, the HD matrix works with only the component-video input.

Since the panel's native resolution exactly matches that of DVD, we weren't surprised that DVD material had plenty of detail. The TH-42PD25U/P flawlessly detected 2:3 pull-down cadence in Star Trek: Insurrection, with rock-solid lines during camera pans. Between our DVD player's interlaced and progressive-scan modes, the latter produced an ever so slightly sharper picture.

To test the TH-42PD25U/P with a variety of material, we checked out some sequences from Digital Video Essentials on DVD. The second montage's opening shot, a time-lapse view of day passing into night and back again over a mountain range, immediately impressed us. Unlike with the Samsung SPN4235, for example, the darkness of the evening shadows was rich and true, and we could make out the sagebrush in the twilight. In one scene from The Professional, we inspected Leon's overcoat. It came out black instead of deep gray, and there was a full range of darker colors among the folds of wool. Gradations between different light levels also looked clean, with only minor banding and false contours.

Despite its relatively low resolution, the TH-42PD25U/P also did a remarkably good job with HDTV. We watched some baseball highlights from the past year on ESPN HD, and colors were a bit richer than with DVD, although the grass wasn't resolved quite as sharply as we would have liked. Again, darker parts of the picture looked terrific.