Panasonic TH-PX25U review: Panasonic TH-PX25U

Intro

Panasonic has consistently made some of the best-performing plasma panels over the years, but the TH-42PX25U/P isn't quite up to past efforts. Don't get us wrong; this is one slick-looking TV with a nice feature package and excellent connectivity. It also has higher resolution than the excellent TH-42PD25U, and its picture trumps that of many other 42-inchers. However, it lacks an important video-processing circuit common to almost all other high-def displays, and its black-level performance isn't top-notch. So unless you watch a preponderance of HDTV, plan to use it as a computer monitor, or are willing to pay extra for its clear cosmetic advantages, the TH-42PX25U/P isn't as good a value as its lower-resolution cousin.

Panasonic also makes an industrial version of this panel with different styling and fewer features, dubbed the TH-42PHD6UY. It should offer identical picture performance.

The TH-42PX25U/P is virtually identical to its predecessor, the TH-42PX20UP. The only difference is the addition of a CableCard slot and a built-in HDTV tuner. This review modifies the review of the TH-42PX20UP to reflect those changes.

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-42PX25U/P is perhaps the most attractive Panasonic plasma ever to grace our lab. Its ultrasleek high-tech design is sure to please even the most discerning interior decorator, let alone your average couch potato. A 3-inch bezel surrounds the screen, and its black color--as opposed to silver--lends additional impact to the picture.

A flip-up door below the center of the screen houses the front-panel inputs and some of the panel's key function buttons. The door also conceals a 15-pin VGA input for computer use, an SD memory card slot for digital picture viewing, and a PC Card slot to accept other types of digital camera media.

Despite the high price of this panel, the remote is virtually identical to those found on standard Panasonic TVs. It's sleek and fairly well laid out and has illuminated keys. The internal menu system is also identical to the one on Panasonic's consumer TV line and is reasonably intuitive in its navigation and use.

The TH-42PX25U/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.

Although billed as an "HDTV plasma display," the TH-42PX25U/P's native resolution of 1,024x768 is not technically high enough to earn it that status. (True HDTV starts at 1,280x720.) However, its resolution is significantly higher than that of less expensive EDTV models with 852x480 pixels, such as the TH-42PD25U/P. Keep in mind that you'll notice increased detail only when watching HDTV or computer sources; standard TV and DVD do not benefit from the TH-42PX25U/P's high native resolution.

Unlike 1,024x1,024 panels that use ALIS technology, such as Sony's KE-42XS910, each of this Panasonic's pixels is a discrete physical unit, which helps improve black-level performance, among other things. The TH-42PX25U/P can display most signals and scale them to fit its pixels, with one notable exception. Its component-video and HDMI ports can't accept a 720p signal, so if you want to use them to pass HD, the external source will have to convert 720p material, such as ABC and ESPN, to 1080i.

The TH-42PX25U/P's feature package is quite comprehensive. Two-tuner picture-in-picture heads the list, and the SD memory card slot for digital picture viewing is also uncommon among plasmas. Unique to Panasonic is the panel's PC Card slot, also located on the front panel. There's an NTSC tuner onboard to connect to an antenna and some cable systems.

A selection of preset color temperatures and four picture modes (such as Cinema and Standard) offer some user control. Unfortunately, Panasonic forgot to include individual picture memories for each input, a feature found on most other high-end TVs. That means you can't set contrast, brightness, and the rest separately for every source. The four available aspect-ratio modes don't work with HDTV sources.

Although you wouldn't know it by looking, the TH-42PX25U/P sports left and right stereo speakers that are artfully concealed in the bezel around the screen. And in case you want to enjoy a semblance of surround sound without all those speakers, a pair of simulated surround modes is onboard.

The connectivity of this plasma is quite comprehensive. The rear panel sports two sets of broadband component-video inputs with stereo audio, two A/V inputs with S-Video, two RF antenna inputs, and one set of A/V outputs with composite video only. The TH-42PX25U/P is one of the few current plasmas with an HDMI digital input, which connects to next-generation DVD players and HDTV tuners. It's backward-compatible with DVI as long as you get an adapter. The front-panel A/V inputs described above also include a 15-pin VGA-style input for computer hookup.

After a thorough calibration for both DVD and HDTV sources (see the geek box for details), we sat back and watched a variety of DVD and HDTV material. Dark scenes are the biggest challenge for plasma, and our new torture test is the Alien DVD, which is mostly dark. The TH-42PX25U/P fared better than most other plasmas we've seen, but not quite as well as the lower-resolution TH-42PD25U/P. The blackness of space was quite dark, but extremely dark areas revealed some false-contouring artifacts and telltale dancing pixels. Bright scenes such as the shuttle launch sequence on the test DVD Digital Video Essentials looked really good using our Denon DVD-2900 running progressive scan.

Frankly, we were shocked to find that the panel lacks the all-important 2:3 pull-down in its video processing, which removes artifacts such as jagged edges and moving lines from film-based material. A progressive-scan DVD player is a must with this plasma, but it won't solve the problem completely. Since lots of shows are still shot on film, folks who watch standard TV from cable, satellite, or off-air antennas are likely to notice those artifacts.

In terms of color reproduction, the TH-42PX25U/P suffered from red push out of the box, meaning that reds were oversaturated and garish in relation to other colors. We were able to fix this problem in calibration, but if you don't get the set professionally calibrated, you may have to turn down the color in the picture menu to achieve a level that, for example, doesn't give white people a pinkish hue. We also noticed that reds appeared a bit orange.

HDTV material looked mostly good, especially with bright material that was shot in HD as opposed to program material that was transferred from film. For example, the Discovery Channel looked spectacular, but 1492: Conquest of Paradise, a film original transferred to HD airing on HDNet, showed some video noise and moving-line artifacts.