Panasonic TH-42PX70

Part of Panasonic’s Viera range, the TH-42PX70 is a 42 inch HD Ready Plasma available with a Cabinet, Pedestal or Wall mounts, and at time of writing can be picked up for around £700 + P&P online. Read more

Pioneer PDP-5080XD

The PDP-5080XD is part of Pioneer’s groundbreaking Kuro range and has been designed with one thing in mind - your viewing pleasure. Kuro means black in Japanese and the quoted 10 years of development that have gone into building these sets has resulted in screens capable of the deepest black levels, stonking contrast and vibrant colours.

HDTVTest have reviewed the Pioneer PDP-5080XD. They write

The pioneer PDP-5080XD is the best flat-panel that I have seen to date, and the only other display on the market right now that I would expect to surpass it is its bigger brother, the 1080p native PDP-LX508D. It calibrates very well, and produces the most natural and film-like image I have seen from any HDTV so far. Aside from some relatively minor issues, the only real down-side is price. While it is much better than other HDTVs out there, it is also quite a bit more expensive. If you are striving for perfection, then the extra money is easily justified, but if that is the case, I would recommend going for the PDP-LX508D if you can afford it and will be sitting within 12ft of the screen. Past 12ft you’re probably not going to see the benefits of a 1080p panel though so the PDP-5080XD would be my display of choice there.

Read more about the Pioneer PDP-5080XD.

LG 60PF95

Its hard to believe that this 60inch behemoth is a TV inspired by a mobile phone, but it is - honest. LG’s once popular ‘chocolate’ mobile in fact, and it comes complete with touch sensitive panels and glowing red buttons which create a futuristic sense of style which is hard to ignore - unless you aren’t using them. Which is the point. LG have tried hard to make the on-board controls as unobtrusive as possible, relying instead on the more significant other qualities to attract your attention, not least of which is the now mandatory 1080p plasma screen. There are 2 HDMI ports and a component video in, both capable of carrying a 1080p source which is good news for XBOX 360 owners since this ensures that the LG 60PF95 is capable of playing full resolution 1080p pictures from multiple sources and not only that can render them at the native 24fps. At £3500 tho it doesn’t come cheap, but it certainly earns the price tag. Colours are rendered vividly with high definition sources, but if you are intending to buy this TV to watch standard definition then maybe you should think again. Its designed with hight definition in mind and that is where it excels.

Buy the LG 60PF95 Amazon or Compare Price on the LG 60PF95

Plasma Vs LCD

Plasma screens are suffering at the moment, being outsold at the till by LCD TVs at a rate of almost 10 to 1. But does the beleaguered king of High Definition TV deserve this sort of treatment? Well we think not. Among the purists out there the plasma screen is this the platform of choice when it comes to high end home cinema setups, offering better picture quality all around especially on the larger screens where it can outperforms even the best ‘Full HD’ LCD screens for comparatively smaller cost.

There is little doubt that at the time of writing LCD technology has improved markedly of recent years, and for an introduction to the HDTV market at an affordable price then LCD is probably the way to go, but bear in mind that LCD is still a poor second choice when thinking in terms of a larger screens and proper home cinema experience. So why is LCD so dominant, you may ask. Well marketing is playing a major role. The Concept of Full HD 1080p TVs is currently a major selling point, but plasma screens that offer this holy grail are sorely lacking. But should this be your only reason for buying a TV? Perhaps not. Just because a screen is capable of showing an image in 1080p resolution with perfect clarity doesn’t always mean it can render this same resolution with moving pictures. In fact rarely, in the case of LCD, is this the case and the moving image on a 1080p LCD screen can still smear enough to lose the benefit of full HD resolution. On the other hand, Plasma screens can show video images much more cleanly without any resolution compromises or motion blurring, so the picture quality will generally look better on a lower resolution plasma than a corresponding full HD LCD screen.

With this in mind, when you consider that the likes of Pioneer, Panasonic and LG are promising a range of 1080p plasmas in the near future then the market could turn against LCDs very quickly. But even now you can not, should not, dismiss the plasma outright, especially if you are looking for a screen larger than 37 inches. Look beyond 1080p and consider the inherent capabilities of Plasmas: the motion handling as mentioned and also the deeper level of black which plasma screens can render. When viewed on LCD screens, very dark films can look washed out and not quite as black as they should be, which diminishes background details significantly. And if you’re worried about so called ‘plasma burn’, then don’t. For the average user this is not a problem. Plasma screen technology has advanced significantly since the horror stories of images being burned into screens 2 or 3 years ago and with a few precautions such as turning the tv off occasionally you should be fine.