TH-50PF9UK: Calibration and Bench Testing

Even though this is a 1080p display, I was surprised and the similarities in the calibration to the 720p sets I’ve tested. Once again, blue was way too high and to a lesser degree, red. I’ve often been asked to give my calibration settings but honestly, that would be a bit misleading. I’ve calibrated both the inputs (component and DVI) on multiple sources and for every source it is a bit different. Suffice it to say that you most likely need to knock blue down a significant amount (on some inputs, I bottomed it out) and red about half as much. Even then, I couldn’t get the set dialed in perfectly. I used the Sencore ColorPro 5000 to calibrate the display but used the free program HCFR Colorimeter (which Jeff Lawson recently pointed out to us on our forums) along with the Spyder II meter from the datacolor SpyderTV PRO kit to generate the below graphs. If anything it pointed out that the two colorimeters were still tracking pretty closely together.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Panasonic TH-50PH9UK Benchmark Score: 68

*Testing using 480i via component video inputs

Comments on HQV Testing

These results of the testing was much better than with the other Panasonic displays I’ve tested. Noise is still a problem but moiré seems to be a thing of the past. These Panasonic plasmas are a “no bones about it” make. They are not meant to do the heavy duty deinterterlacing and scaling you’d expect of a consumer display – and they seem to pass all the important tests. While the included deinterlacers and scalers will do and acceptable job now, the picture will only be helped by a good source. The upside is that you aren’t paying for all those high end features so you can spring for a better upconverting DVD player.