TEST BENCH

Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard

With the Panasonic Cinema mode and default Warm color temperature selected, its grayscale measured slightly toward red, reading as low as - 829 K off the 6, 500-K standard . Calibration brought grayscale tracking to within ± 82 K. The color decoder test revealed a -2.5% error on red, -7.5% green, and 0% blue; color points against the SMPTE HD standard were reasonably accurate for red and blue but somewhat over saturated for green, though all three points seemed to adhere closely to the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) standard.

Overscan, the amount of picture image hidden behind the set's masking, was 0% for the Full aspect mode with the 1:1 pixel setting engaged and 2.5% with it off. The set fully and cleanly resolved 1080i/p, 720p and 480p signals via its HDMI inputs; some noise was visible in the finest portions of both 1080- and 720-line signals via component video. The Panasonic aced all of the Silicon Optix HQV HD and standard DVD tests, though it required its 3:2 pulldown mode to be engaged for the film-resolution loss tests on both discs. Jaggies tests for both discs showed good deinterlacing of 480i and 1080i signals.

The set's noise-reduction circuit did a good job cleaning up video in standard-definition programs without noticeably softening the picture; you can keep the NR menu control set to the medium or high setting most of the time without worrying much about additional loss of detail. However, the internal scaler didn't do much to sharpen SD content that was soft to begin with, and that included much cable programming. On the other hand, good SD looked great: Parts of an excellent DVD transfer of the movie American History X appeared almost high-def-like on the Panasonic's giant screen.