Panasonic Plasmas good for grading?

[Jim Hoffman]

I know people have mentioned that the Panasonic 50" TH-50PF10UK model was very nice and that some are using them for grading, but what about some of their consumer models?

Does anyone have anything to say about the TH-50PZ800U or 850???

Any thoughts?

Doesn't have to be a Panasonic it just seems like they are reviewed really well. We're looking for a price per punch monitor that will get us in the ball park. I will leave the real grading to the pros.

Thanks

[Stuart English]

Panasonic "pro" plasmas really nailed the grey scale linearity problem, which is why they are the best of the large flat panel displays for color performance.

[Andrew Martin]

That's good to know, my Philips Plasma just blew up the other week, literally, so im looking for a replacement.

Andrew.

[David Collard]

The 800 and 850 are interesting. They both represent an ideal HDMI input monitor if the color space is coming from your computer correctly. The 800 has THX, which probably works only in that mode for movies. The 850 has a studio ref. functionality which specifies Rec.709 I was on the fence but would lean towards the 850 because of the studio spec mode. Good luck.

[Jim Hoffman]

Thanks -

The Pro versions look appealing but one needs to but the additional input cards at $1500 a pop - just trying to decide if the extra money is worth it.

Do you think the grey scale correction is in the 800 or 850 as well?

[NateWeaver]

I bought a TH-42PZ80U just because it looked like it had the best black levels in the store, and it was 1080p plasma.

Now that I've had it a few months, I can tell you that just casually going through the settings it's pretty dang close to accurate, far as I can tell. I'd be surprised if it couldn't be made 95% accurate.

As a client monitor, or a "second opinion/real life" display, I'd say it's excellent.

[GlennChan]

As I understand it, plasmas will vary the luminance of the image due to limitations in their power supply. What happens if you have stuff like white text fading on a black background, strobe lights, etc.?

2- I saw some of the Panasonic professional plasmas at NAB. The yellow rainbows bug me (looks kind of like DLP rainbows). Blacks looked ok (but hard to judge on a tradeshow floor so I don't know about em). The source material had some issues... this got better by the end of the show.

Was told that they aren't designed for standard colorimetry.


We're looking for a price per punch monitor that will get us in the ball park. I will leave the real grading to the pros.
What about the 24" JVC DT? B&H shows it's about $3.5k with HD-SDI in. The mid-end monitors aren't really significantly better than the JVC. You can get marginally better viewing angle; I don't know about the de-interlacer; higher-end panels at 10-bit (don't know what the JVC is). Blacks on the JVC are the best you can get for that size (1000:1 contrast ratio) except for the eCinema DPX. Some of the more expensive monitors actually have lower contrast ratios (e.g. the Sony BVM-L).

Of all the monitors I saw at NAB, I was impressed by the JVC and it looks promising for a cost-effective reference monitor.

- Some information on issues with plasmas:
http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/223/4195