Geoffrey Morrison

What is this heathen? This infidel? This sacrilegious interloper? After years of espousing that plasma was the way to go for big-screen TVs, Panasonic comes out with this, the TC-L42D2, a 42-inch LCD set. Such blasphemy. Oh, wait, it turns out the company has always made LCD TVs. My bad. But in this size? Bowing to market pressure, the company has upsized its LCD line, which now overlaps with what had solely been plasma territory in Panasonicville.

Every year Panasonic’s flagship plasmas up the performance bar another (albeit small) notch, and the bar is now set very high. Plus, the TCP55VT50 has all the bells and beeps you’d expect from a top-of-the-line HDTV in 2012, including 3D (in active guise), smart TV streaming, a Web browser, optional 96-Hz refresh, and even a fancy touchpad remote.

There are few things I loathe more than triteness. Every time I hear a slogan, headline, or witticism that I’ve already heard countless times before, I die a little inside. Change the words around at least and make it your own. How often have you read “trickle-down technology,” “game changer,” or other such things in a product review?

I love big screens. Really big screens. 60 inches? Pshhh. 65? Ha! 70? In a pinch. 80? Okay, wow, now that’s a seriously big TV. A monolith of a height and breadth that brings to mind projection screens of yore. Wait, forget “yore.” It’s closing in on projection screens now.