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All the buzz right now seems to be about LCD technology. But to be honest, we're not entirely sure why. After all, while LCD might be all well and good - and affordable - at relatively small screen sizes, if you fancy heading north of 32in, we reckon older plasma technology still has the most to offer in terms of value and performance quality.
To (hopefully!) prove our point, we've gathered together a collection of four 42in plasma TVs, all currently selling for comfortably under £3,000, and tested their worthiness with both today's standard definition and tomorrow's high definition pictures…
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LG 42PX5D
It's always important to make a good first impression in the TV world, and few plasma TVs make a better one than LG's 42PX5D thanks to its truly sumptuous glossy black finish. Yum.
Also catching our eye immediately is the fact that it is fully prepared for the imminent high definition revolution thanks to its HDMI and component video inputs, HD-friendly native resolution of 1024x768, and compatibility with the current key HD picture formats.
Other tricks up this LG's unexpectedly well-stocked sleeve include a built-in digital tuner, complete with full seven-day EPG support; built-in memory card slots for direct playback of digital camera photocards; and LG's XD Engine image processing system. This umbrella name covers a range of separate picture improvements, including boosts for contrast, clarity, colour tones and brightness.
And for the most part, the XD Engine works very well. Colours are unusually vibrant, for instance, and dark areas of the picture look impressively black with little of the greying over that characterises some flat panel TVs. What's more, those common plasma problems with fizzing noise over motion, colour striping and green dot crawl in dark areas are well suppressed.
The TV's detailing is good too, at least during high definition viewing. Things perhaps soften up more than we'd like with standard def, during which colours sometimes look slightly OTT as well. But these are pretty minor woes for such an aggressively priced 42in TV.
The LG's speakers prove almost as good as its pictures, with more bass than is common with flat-panel TVs, a very wide soundstage, and rich, well rounded vocal tones. Our only complaint would be that the sound only really opens up at rather loud volumes.
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Plus points
Looks great, the features count and connectivity is impressive, the price is right, pictures are good - especially with HD
Minus points
Standard definition pics can suffer with slight softness and over-ripe colours
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Panasonic TH-42PV500
Part of Panasonic's much-heralded Viera range, the 42PV500 looks sensational in its crisp, black, glossy suit - especially if you splurge a bit extra on Panasonic's matching floorstanding cabinet.
When it comes to connections, the TV's highlights are HDMI and component inputs for HD material, plus a PC connection. Other features include an SD card slot for direct playback of digital photos; a new colour management system that Panasonic proudly claims delivers up to 8.6 billion colours (we tried verifying this, but lost count at around a billion or so!); the latest version of Panasonic's long-acclaimed Real Black Drive technology for making the picture's dark areas look more convincing; and a built-in Freeview digital TV tuner.
Panasonic has long been at the forefront of plasma quality, and so it's no great shock to find the 42PV500 an imperious step or two ahead of the vast majority of its competition - especially in the way its picture quality holds up across all sources, standard and high definition alike.
Exceptional black levels have always been a strong point of Panasonic's plasma TVs, but the 42PV500 still takes things to a whole new level with dark areas so profound yet layered and deep that they make going to the cinema feel flat by comparison! Good black levels are often accompanied by really rich colours, and so it proves here, but this richness is not achieved at the expense of immaculately natural tones.
The Panasonic's picture is also impressively sharp and detailed, yet suffers scarcely a trace of the sort of graininess sometimes seen on similarly sharp plasma pictures. In fact, video noise of all sorts is practically non-existent.
The only complaint we can fairly level at the 42PV500's pictures is that monotone backgrounds very occasionally have a slightly mesh-like look to them. But this is seldom distracting, and does little to counter the overwhelmingly positive feelings generated by everything else.
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Plus points
Cracking looks, stunning - and unusually source-flexible - picture quality, superb sonics
Minus points
Slight grid-like artefacts occasionally visible over some backgrounds
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Philips 42PF7520D
There's cheap, and then there's Philips' 42PF7520D. In fact, by undercutting even the other eminently affordable screens we've included with here by a cool £400, the 42PF7520D might just be the bargain of the year…
Hopes that this might be the case are sustained by the 42PF7520D's actually quite opulent gloss black and silver aesthetics. Connections let the mask slide a little though, since while they do meet the industry's HD ready criteria, you only get only a single DVI socket with which to attach 1) a digital HD source like an upscaling DVD player or HD DVD player, 2) a PC, or 3) a component video HD source like an Xbox 360. Cue regular visits round the back of the TV to switch connectors over. Ugh.
Things look up with the discovery that as well as a built-in digital TV tuner, the 42PF7520D employs Philips' acclaimed Pixel Plus image processing. Not the latest, HD-optimised version of Pixel Plus, admittedly; but even an aging Pixel Plus should still greatly increase the amount of fine detail the picture contains. And so it does. Shame, then, that other areas of the picture let the side down…
Philips just doesn't appear to have used the latest plasma panel technology for this TV's heart, resulting in old-school plasma problems like dotty noise during camera pans, stripey rather than smooth colour blends, and green dot crawl in dark areas. Colours don't always look completely natural either, and the contrast range seems limited at the black end. What's more, while Pixel Plus definitely makes the picture sharper, it can also emphasise the noise problems mentioned above - as well as making HD pictures grainy.
The 42PF7520D is more accomplished sonically, with only slightly gruff vocals and a slight flatness at low volumes besmirching an otherwise exemplary audio effort.
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Plus points
Aggressive price, nice looks, decent sonics
Minus points
Picture very average, stingy socketry
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Pioneer PDP-436XDE
Although the Pioneer PDP-436XDE is the most expensive TV in this group, it does offer one immediate advantage over the rest - it's got a 43in screen rather than a 42in. But does it have anything else going for it?
It looks the part, certainly, with yet another sumptuous high-gloss black surround accompanied by some seriously swish detachable speakers. It scores over its rivals when it comes to connections too, by providing not one but two future-friendly HDMI sockets for digital high definition sources. This is on top of three scarts, one component video input, a PC jack, and a multimedia card slot for viewing digital pictures.
Other key features include a built-in digital tuner, a new 'Waffle Rib' panel structure designed to reduce light and colour seepage between adjoining pixels, and compatibility with the new 'higher definition' 1080p format that's likely to start appearing in the UK next year - most notably on the PlayStation 3 games console.
In action, the 436XDE excels. In fact, its pictures are quite simply the finest we've ever seen on a flat panel TV. For starters, colours are outstanding, combining scintillating vibrancy with 100 per cent authentic tones. Next, black levels are exceptionally profound, as well as possessing jaw-dropping levels of shadow detailing and colour blend subtlety.
There's no sign of any type of picture noise, either, and fine detail levels are out of this world, especially during high definition viewing. What's more, you can watch the 436XDE from a wide angle without experiencing the 'ghost' edges seen with practically every other plasma in town. In fact, we have nothing negative to say about any aspect of the 436XDE's pictures at all. Depressingly for the competition, its sound also dazzles, delivering levels of power and range that make some hi-fis sound duff.
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Plus points
Fabulous pictures, gorgeous design, superb connectivity, hi-fi standard sound
Minus points
It's the most expensive set featured here; we'd recommend special care with screen burn for the first 100 hours plus
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Despite all having prices that would have been unthinkably cheap only a year ago, three of the four TVs here have the capability to serve you extremely well both now and in the high definition-obsessed future.
The only one that we can't really recommend is Philips' 42PF7520D. This may carry Pixel Plus processing and a digital tuner, but it doesn't have the basic picture quality to compete with the other three models, and is annoyingly stingy with its high definition sockets.
In third place is LG's impressive 42PX5D. This set's pictures might not be as profoundly good as those of the other two sets we've looked at, but you have to look at them in the context of the eye-catching sub-£2k price tag. Put in this value context, the pictures are actually very good, and the set's feature's count outstanding.
It's perhaps not surprising though, that comfortably the best performers here are the two most expensive models. On any other day Panasonic's sensational 42PV500 would surely have romped home as the group test winner with its combination of lovely design, potent sonics and outstanding, unusually flexible pictures.
But it had the misfortune today to come up against something really remarkably - almost revolutionary, we'd say - in the shape of Pioneer's irresistible PDP-436XDE. This set simply doesn't appear to have any apparent Achilles Heel, making it instantly the new benchmark for rivals to aspire to.
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