Remote Control, Calibration, Test Results, and Viewing Evaluations

The remote that comes with the current model is exactly the same as the prior year's... no differences here.

Calibrating the Television

Last time, when I calibrated the TH-50PH8DUK, I used the service menus. I got a lot of questions and comments about that as well. Some people seem to think that using the service menus is something that they couldn't do. Well, you certainly could do it, you just probably shouldn't unless you are confident in your ability to not disable the dispkay . If anyone ever wants to get into the service menu of a display, please, please, PLEASE write down the original settings before you make any adjustments. At least you'll be able to reset it if you have to.

So, for all of you that thought, "Sure, Tom can calibrate it because he uses the service menus and has all this fancy equipment." Well, yes, I do have some fancy(ish) equipment (it even comes in a little shiny metal case which I think is cool and my wife thinks I'm a dork because I think it is cool) but navigating the service menus is not a prerequisite. To prove it, I calibrated the set using only the Advanced Settings menu (which is accessible to all). See, the beauty of using the service menu is that you leave all the rest of the menus alone so that fine adjustments can still be made to the user's taste. By using the Advanced Settings menu, you take a lot of that fine tuning away.

I used the Sencore Color Pro 5000 (CP5000) to calibrate the display. As you can see, once again the unit ran cool. A lack of red and to a lesser extent green and an overabundance of blue. Basically, after a bit of fiddling, I got it pretty close to dead on by pegging the W/B High R (which stands for White Balance for High (Gain) Red, or just Red Gain) up to max, bottoming out the W/B High B ( Blue Gain) and bumping down the W/B Low B ( Blue Bias) a bit. Your results will vary based on source. If you were to look at the changes, you'd think I was insane (I did). I fully expected for everyone to look strawberry after I was done. But once I stuck in a DVD and hit play, I saw that while the changes were drastic on the menu, they were fairly tame on the screen.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Panasonic TH-50PH8UK Benchmark Score: 38

Comments of HQV Testing

These results are very consistent with the TH-50PHD8UK. This is the kind of unit that you absolutely must use with good source. The higher quality the better. Think digital cable and a decent upconverting DVD player.

Viewing Evaluation

I wish I could have evaluated both models side by side... and not just because it would be insanely cool to use the second screen as the PiP display! It would have been interesting to see how much different the two displays looked side by side. Unfortunately, no matter how strong a case I made, all I got were a bunch of placating smiles and pats on the head. Oh, well. I tried.

Author's Note: The pictures of the display below do not do the display justice. Aside from the obvious problems of taking a picture of an image on a direct-view pixel-based screen, our in-house digital cameras leave a bit to be desired.

Love Actually

Sure, it's a chick flick. But as chick flicks go, this one was pretty good. My wife, in a rare moment, wanted to watch a movie with me. This was a good choice. Funny, lighthearted, not too much crying... plus it's got that British sense of humor that I like so much. Being mostly a movie of relationships, Love Actually was great for evaluating the TH-50PH9UK's ability to render flesh tones and some detailed panoramic shots of London. Like its predecessor, this display showed a remarkable ability at rendering fine details. With the plethora of people in the cast, the Panasonic display continued to impress with convincingly colored people.

Sin City

This is not a movie for everyone... but with its heavily stylized cinematography and abundance of darks, it makes for some good review material. I didn't notice any macroblocking or banding in the darks. What really stood out was the way the colors (the few there were) really popped. When Goldie comes on screen for the first time, her dress and hair were absolutely gorgeous. It got to the point where I looked forward to the next slash of color knowing how impressed I'd be by the TH-50PH9UK's ability to render vibrant colors.