While OLED and 4K TVs are getting plenty of press at this year's CES in Las Vegas (and justifiably so), it's a far more unassuming TV that has me excited: Panasonic's latest top of the line plasma, the VT50 series, offers some of the best contrast, color saturation and black levels I've ever seen in a TV at a trade show demo. Although you can see the 55-inch (TC-P55VT50) and 65-inch (TC-P65VT50) sets out on the show floor, the performance is much more impressive in a closed off corner of the Panasonic booth where they compare it to a 2011 Panasonic plasma model in a darkened room.
When the demo started rolling, with pictures practically popping off the velvety black background of the screen I was brought back to the fabled dark room Pioneer KURO demo from a few years back. It's actually not that easy to tell if the VT50 is on or off when it is producing a full black signal, even in a dark room. And when bright images do appear on screen, that deep black goodness stays stable, unlike most LED and LCD TVs where the black levels jump when the set has to reproduce real content. In the same room they are showing a 4K IPS LCD panel that also looks impressive though it measures only 20 inches diagonally, and is intended for specialized applications such as medical imaging, graphic design and other close-up viewing tasks where every last inch of detail is needed
The TC-P55VT50 plasma HDTV is a CES Innovations Awards Honoree and it's easy to see why. The black level improvement can be attributed to an enhanced pre-discharge control that enables the panel to get darker and reach these black levels faster than previous models. The TV's panel, now referred to as the "Infinite Black Pro Panel" consists of a new plasma cell structure and phosphors, with improved luminous efficiency and higher brightness compared to earlier models. Also, the screen itself has an improved filter in front of the panel, designed to absorb more ambient light, with less glare, which allows the picture to retain its pop even in a fairly bright room. The 2,500 Focused Field Drive enhances Panasonic's already exceptional motion performance, and Super Fine Pitch allows the set to produce more gradation in levels of black and gray thereby enhancing shadow details. More details on the technology behind the improvements can be found here on Panasonic's web site.
In addition to enhanced 2D picture performance, the VT50 series offers full HD 3D capability, using active 3D glasses to create a full high definition 3D image with 1080p to each eye. There's on-board 2D to 3D conversion, though personally I wouldn't bother with that: native 3D content only for me, thank you very much. The set's picture improvements also improve detail and brightness and reduce crosstalk in 3D mode.
On the feature side, the VT50 includes Panasonic's streaming app platform, still called VIERA Connect from last year, but now under a wider umbrella of interactive and media sharing features called "SmarTViera" (see how they worked "TV" into that? Clever, right?). The traditional streaming apps, social networking apps and services are all here, including Skype, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon VOD, VUDU and Pandora, among others. New this year is a Myspace app (yes, apparently Myspace does still exist), which allows you to watch TV with your friends and interact with each other even if they're across town or on the other side of the world. Also new this year are the Flixster app which allows the TV to play Ultraviolet digital copies of movies as well as a new Disney interactive book app (for the kids!).
Included here, for the first time on a Panasonic TV, is a full web browser so you can surf the web in addition to surfing TV channels and streaming services. And network/content connectivity is provided via DLNA, integrated Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth. For those with a short attention span, the set offers multi-tasking capability to allow simultaneous use of more than one app at a time.
If you're at CES, definitely check out the demo at the Panasonic TV booth. If not, then keep your eyes peeled for this one. Pricing and exact availability dates are not yet final but we expect to see these models start appearing in stores and online in the spring.
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