PDP-42A3HD Remote, Calibration & Benchmark Tests

This isn't the worst remote control I've ever used. I know, I know - you're thinking "oh, now that's high praise!" Well, the good things about this remote are that menu navigation controls are nicely arranged, with easy access to volume and channel buttons. The remote feels comfortable in the hand, though it is somewhat artificially elongated. The problems I had with it are simply that it had an odd feel and weight to it and the majority of buttons (like the elevated keypad) didn't seem to be where they would be expected or most useful. It also had an erroneous sliding cover that merely hid the PIP controls and a few other functions (10 buttons in all). The remote could have been condensed by about 2-inches and the hidden compartment (which was very flimsy and actually came off in my hand) eliminated. In fact, I found myself removing it to make better use of the PIP and SPLIT controls. Still, I've seen worse (Mitsubishi comes to mind) and we do recognize, as always, that universal remote controls will likely win out in the end (so why pay for a more robust, costly remote that you may not use anyway?

Calibrating the Television

We used Datacolor's Colorfacts Professional 6.0 software to measure and help calibrate black and white levels on this plasma television. The new and improved Datacolor system implements a new Spyder Colorimeter which we liked due to its flexibility and placement options. Regarding calibration, we really couldn't do too much more beyond white and black level settings other than adjust the color temperature from the default "High" to the more accurate "Low" setting. The only other options available to us were for Color, Tint and Sharpness which really didn't need to be adjusted beyond their defaults.

Like most plasma displays we've seen, getting a full field of 100IRE is almost impossible due to the nature of a plasma display's power distribution. In real world situations this isn't typically an issue, though I would surmise that some scenes in Ice Age would be dimmer than on a comparable LCD or DLP television.

During the course of our calibration we noticed a ton of banding in the darker areas of the picture - so much so that we really had a difficult time dialing in the black level to what we would deem satisfactory levels. A higher end PureVision plasma from Pioneer implements Advanced Continuous Emission (ACE) IV technology and PureDrive II which is specifically designed to help out in this area. The best measured ANSI contrast we could get form this display was 109:1 - not the greatest for a plasma display and likely due to the high readings we got on the black levels, which never seemed to get as black as we had hoped.

CIE Chart - Color Reproduction & Saturation Potential

The Datacolor ColorFacts CIE Chart is used to display the colors the Pioneer PDP-42A3HD plasma television is able to reproduce. This appears as a white triangle overtop of a darker triangle which represents the gamut of colors in the HDTV-capable range. The full "shark fin" chart is a representation of everything we are capable of seeing with the human eye.

This color gamut triangle on the CIE chart determines how "deep" or "rich" the colors will be from a display. For instance, a Red primary that is too high on the chart will indicate that the display device may only be able to produce an orange-red instead of a deep red. As you can see, the Pioneer produces reduced greens while maintaining an excellent (much better than average) color response in red and blue. If you are going to be soft on a color, I suppose green isn't a bad place to do it as our eyes see green much more easily than the other wavelengths. And with the excellent measurements of red and blue, this is simply a stunning display to view.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Pioneer PDP-42A3HD Benchmark Score: 70 (one of the better performers at this budget)

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