Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX508D - DigitalVersus

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Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX508D

Specifications
Screen size	50 inches (127 cm)
Resolution	Plasma - 1920 x 1080 points
HD compatibility (1080i/720p)	Oui / Oui et 1080p
HD Ready certification	Oui, et HD Ready 1080p
Brightness	Nc
Contrast ratio	20000:1
Viewing angles (H+V)	Pas de contrainte d'angle
Response time	Nc
Sound level	2 x 17 W
Connectivity	3 HDMI, 3 Peritel, S-Video, Composite, VGA, audio optique, subwoofer
Dimensions (LxHxW)	123,2 x 72,2 x 12 cm
Weight	38,3 Kg

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[ Vincent Lheur | Updated: 2008-01-23 - Test date: 2008-01-18 ]

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20000:1! This is the contrast ratio announced by Pioneer for its latest plasma TV line, the Kuro. Will promises be kept and were other characteristics sacrificed? This is what we wanted to know in testing the Kuro PDP-LX508D, 50 inch Full HD plasma.

Pioneer doesn’t like to lend out its TVs and even less so its high end models. It was therefore in the manufacturer’s showroom that we went to carry out our tests. After an hour of being stuck in traffic, we entered a room where there was a demonstration of a Blu-ray movie. Rendering was simply amazing and suggested great things to come in tests…

Getting down to business!

As usual, we started tests with a few measurements using our sensor and a new software program (Colorfacts 7.0). With presettings, first results were good but not exceptional. Like almost all manufacturers, Pioneer’s Standard mode has a slight blue dominance which artificially reinforces the vividness of images. The gamma curve rises quickly and tends to make the lightest shades disappear.

We then moved into Cinema mode and restarted our test suite. This time results are almost perfect :

Color temperature was stable and close to 6500 K on most grays. Only the darkest shades of gray had more blue but this is a difference that cannot be detected by the naked eye.

The gamma curve displays a coefficient of 2, an almost ideal reslt.

Like on all plasma TVs, the brightness of white varies depending on the shade and the fact that a single small white point is brighter than an entire white image. We thus measured a single white point at 145 cd/m² for black at a new record of 0.04 cd/m²! No LCD TV comes even close to this level of black while this gives us a contrast of around 3600:1.

In practice

The above mentioned high quality in contrast carried over into the movie test. Darker shades were very well rendered and give the image a quality we hadn’t seen up to this point. Colors were also excellent. Presettings were more on the lighter side and they can even be adjusted for those who like more vivid colors.

Fluidity is almost perfect in movies and there are only cuts in encoding which are therefore due to the source and not the TV. Furthermore, home cinema fans will like the 1080p/24Hz compatibility.

If we take HD and SD separately, we can see that DVD images (SD) lack a little sharpness. It’s always possible to compensate for this by increasing sharpness settings; however, be careful not to push this too far or you will get the opposite effect. By the way, there are numerous adjustments available meaning we can do almost anything we want with the image.

In HD, there’s not much else to say except it’s perfect! Great sharpness, fluidity, and contrast.

So is the Kuro PDP-LX508D the ultimate TV? Almost. We did find a few small defects. Besides those inherent to plasma technology (see box), incompatibility of the digital tuner with HD is a bit strange on a model in this category and at this price.

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Pluses	Minuses
Excellent image quality	No HD digital tuner and only a standard digital one
Very deep black and a good contrasted image	SD sources slightly lack sharpness (compensate for by adapting settings)
3 HDMI and 3 SCART
Very complete menus
Extremely fluid image

Up until now, this is the nicest image we’ve seen on a TV. Deep blacks, nice colors and a fluid image – only the finest quality.

Plasmas: advantages and downsides

The often criticized plasma has some disadvantages that suggest it may not be a technology of the future. It is however ahead of LCDs in several areas, and in the end, each technology has its positives and negatives:

- Viewing angles: the advantage goes to the plasma which doesn’t have any problems in this area. The image is perfect from any angle. Only the best LCDs have a stable image at 150° (the often claimed 170° is rarely attained from the sides and never in the vertical plane).

- Sharpness: here the advantage is to LCDs whose square pixels produce an increased sensation of precision; however, this difference diminishes as plasma screens move into real Full HD (1920 x 1080 points).

- Gaming and PC use : advantage to the LCD which doesn’t have the plasma’s artifact problems. In fact, a fixed image should not be displayed too long on the latter or it can partially remain for a few minutes, hours or even days. This persistence varies depending on the TV’s settings, the generation, and the amount of time the fixed image is displayed. The latest generation of plasmas suffers considerably less from this phenomenon and has functions that remedy the display of channel logos. However, they still aren’t too recommended for use with game consoles and PCs.

- Depth of black: advantage to the plasma which attains black levels close to absolute 0 cd/m². Only a few LCDs go under 0.25 cd/m² and even more rarely under 0.1 cd/m².