Panasonic TH42PX70 not Full HD?

Styles

Styles

Styles

Soldato
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Just reading around, and I'm reading things such as 'Although the PX70 doesn't have the full 1080p capabilities'... wtf does this mean? It says 1080p on everything to do with the TV so what's the difference? Can it take 1080p inputs and ouput them at 1080p?

I assume now it cannot take the 1080p via the Xbox 360 AV cable?
 
Styles said:
Just reading around, and I'm reading things such as 'Although the PX70 doesn't have the full 1080p capabilities'... wtf does this mean? It says 1080p on everything to do with the TV so what's the difference? Can it take 1080p inputs and ouput them at 1080p?

I assume now it cannot take the 1080p via the Xbox 360 AV cable?
Click to expand...

also, the 360 is only 720p or 1080i isn't it?
 
Says on the MS site that the VGA cable will allow 1080p, which somes games can play at. Bioshock for example.

So the 1080p rubbish, not worth worrying about? Sat about 7 feet away from the screen.
 
On your tv definitely not. It will just downsample to 720p which is the native res of your screen. That extra processing can only hurt the picture. 720p on a plasma is excellent. 1080p is for 50"+ screens or projectors.
 
SpeedFreak said:
don't think there are many plasmas that handle 1080p yet.
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Panasonic TH42PZ70B is a 1920x1080p native resolution panel, no scalers required, So is the TH42PZ700.

Panny have the 'smallest' true HD plasma panel for the moment I believe. However once you get to 50 inch, I believe Pioneer also join the native true HD club with their plasma panels.

However, the TH42PX70 is 'just' a 1024x768 panel with a scaler that can handle a 1080p input. Its by no means a bad set though. Very nice picture quality imho. But the PZ's are better :)

PX70 specs direct from Panasonic's UK website...


Screen Size / Screen Aspect
42 inch (106 cm) diagonal

Panel
G10 Progressive HD Plasma Display Panel

Number of Pixels
786,432 (1,024 x 768) pixels

Applicable PC Signals
XGA (SXGA compressed)

Displayable Colours
Max 29 billion equavalent colours for darker part

Contrast Ratio
Max. 10,000:1
 
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Panny TH42PZ700 from panny website
Screen Size / Screen Aspect
42 inches (106 cm) diagonal / 16 : 9 Wide

Panel
G10 Progressive Full-HD Plasma Display Panel

Number of Pixels
2,073,600 (1,920 x 1,080) pixels

Applicable PC Signals
SXGA

Displayable Colours
Max. 68.7 billion equivalent colours for darker part

Contrast Ratio
Max. 5,000:1

Notice this panel has a lower contrast ratio, but it has much better colour graduations. Also the insane resolution for a 42inch plasma! :). But its comes at a high price I believe.

Cant even find the PZ70B on panny's website, but there are many retailers out their claiming it has the 1920x1080 panel... Not sure what to believe. But the PZ700 thats Factual, and available in 42, 50 and 60 inch. There is no 37inch, as Panny cant make the dots any smaller in this generation of panel. Dunno why they dont release a 1280x720 G10 panel for 37inch though.. Would be a very nice TV as well.
 
PS... Styles

Dont worry about it. Im using an 9th Generation Panny TH42PX60, and still loving it. SD reproduction is perfect, with the slight exception of a purple snake once in a blue moon (It's a rare thing to spot even if you are looking for it, but it does pop up sometimes).

Your TV not only has an improved panel (more colours it can display / smoother graduations), they also fixed the purple snake problem, and added 1080p inputs to the scalers.

Its a fab telly, and its all black case well /drool. I'd buy one if I didnt already have the PX60. Was kicking myself when I saw the PZ700 true HD sets advertised, but its the first generation true HD plasma panel... I think I'll wait until the G11 panels. Hopefully by then they will have the contrast back up to 10000:1 again :)

Enjoy your TV, and relax knowing you can watch HD movies right now, and you'll enjoy the detailed picture, yet when watching SD it will still look fab :)
 
the PX70 is just HD Ready but has it has the bonus of being able o accept a pure 1080p signal. you try this on most HD Ready sets and it will flip out.

Of course the TV isnt displaying the 1080p signal in its proper resolution, it has to downscale it to either 720p or 1080i (wether this is better then just setting the HD source to 720p or 1080i is anyones guess, I guess it depends on the source, a Blu-Ray player will output at 1080p, so the TV scaling down might be better then the player, but for a 360, most games are at 720p I think, so you would scaling them up to 1080p then the TV would scale it down again, all very confusing, the less scaling the better is best normally)

1080p plasmas are still pretty thin on the ground at the moment, and unless you can afford the top end ones performance doesnt seem as good as the HD Ready ones.

Give em 6 months and im sure there will be loads of decent 42" Full HD sets around.
 
One area with scaling and on my 2 year old Sony 40" LCD was that it suffered from pretty bad "over-scan" during the scaling.

Chances are that on 480i 480p material (where it would be worse) a lot of tvs may chop a nice chunk off the original signal so the internal electronics can nicely scale the image into the displays resolution. Also remember a 42" sized Plasma are still commonly 1024x768 so in theory you dont even get 720p full defination. However it goes to show that quality picture and resolution are not entirely the factors that ensure picture quality. Look in any good shops demo area/room and you wouldnt say oh that 1366x768 LCD is by far showing off more imagary than that 1024/768 Plasma. Generally it takes a very good display to make advantage of the additional resolution and from a distance commonly this additional sharpness is lost because of the seating position/screen size your average person couldnt tell. Often even with 720p and 1080p material one has to look closely to see improvements with the 1080 source.

I cant say how bad this effects this model of Tv and im sure things have improved since my aging Bravia set but dont get wooshed away with all this 1080 resolution stuff.
Saying that do ensure you have 1080/24 support, it may come in usefull.
 
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kidloco said:
Of course the TV isnt displaying the 1080p signal in its proper resolution, it has to downscale it to either 720p or 1080i (wether this is better then just setting the HD source to 720p or 1080i is anyones guess, I guess it depends on the source,

1080p plasmas are still pretty thin on the ground at the moment, and unless you can afford the top end ones performance doesnt seem as good as the HD Ready ones.

Give em 6 months and im sure there will be loads of decent 42" Full HD sets around.
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IMHO letting a Plasma TV scale is best, as the panels are 768 not 720, so if you feed a plasma a 1080p source, which the player has downscaled to 720, the TV then has to rescale it yet again to 768p which is its internal standard.

Better to just feed the best quality signal possible into the TV, and let the internal scalers do the work. Only exception to this is the VGA port, which you can feed a native 1024x768 signal, and then external scalers can be used efficiently.

Panny's 42inch PZ700's are pretty much the 'only' true 1080p 42inch Plasmas, and although they arnt that expensive, they are still a lot more expensive than the PX range. Lower contrast, but better colour reproduction. I wouldnt say they are poor performing TV's. 50inch true HD plasma's are available from several manufacturers now and are probably pretty similar in quality.

There are already 'loads' of 1080p LCD's, and the 'big' names for Plasma are all releasing their 1080p native screens now... but the number of plasma brands is a lot lower than LCD. I imagine that they will keep their full HD panels for their own brandnames, IE Panny, NEC(Pioneer) etc. I suspect it will be some time before the tier 2 Plasma 'assemblers' will get their hands on the best panels.
 
Anyhow the PX70 doesn't accept 1080P on the VGA only HDMI so unless you are plugging an Elite in just set your xbox to 1024x768 widescreen, you won't be disappointed.
 
so, just to clarify, the difference between 1080p and 720p on your screen will be minimal. Flick between the two and see which you prefer as the screen is doing a bit of wizardry to get the picture scaled it is hard to say which will be better. By inputting a 1080p source, what you see on your screen will not be 1080p, but it may be better than a 720p source. Then again, it may not. ;)
 
Metallifux said:
I would suggest that a scaled 1080p pic would look exactly the same as a 720p pic given the resolution of the TV.
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All depends if the TV's scaler handles 1080 > 768, or 720 > 768 scaling with the least artifiacts.

Difference is probably minimal, but its certainly worth checking and seeing if there is any difference.
 
Metallifux said:
I would suggest that a scaled 1080p pic would look exactly the same as a 720p pic given the resolution of the TV.
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its hard to call but there may well be a difference as corsaik said .

Corasik said:
All depends if the TV's scaler handles 1080 > 768, or 720 > 768 scaling with the least artifiacts.

Difference is probably minimal, but its certainly worth checking and seeing if there is any difference.
Click to expand...

yep. try both
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone.

To be honest I'm not overly worried it just annoyed me at the time, mainly due to me checking out the tv for ages but as I wasn't completely up on the tech I messed up a little. But looking at it now, the picture quality is fantastic, and as this one is on the wall in my bedroom I will be watching from a distance of approx. 7 feet so I presume the difference I would be able to see between 1080 and 720 would be minimal anyway.

The 360 looks great running in 720p, playing Bioshock and the tv itself is gorgeous.
 
Well with a 42inch TV, at 12ft even 576p and 720p are quite close, and 1080p is not really visibly better.

You would need to sit 5.5 ft from the TV to get maximum benifit from a true 1080p 42inch TV. The further away you sit after that, the less detail you can notice anyway. 720p is pretty much perfect for 7ft.

For reference, to get the same viewing angles as a THX cinema (middle seats) you would need to sit 4.7 FT from the TV, at that point true HD is definatly desirable :P. But I wouldnt recommend sitting that close to a TV. Better to get a bigger screen, or a projector and sit further away, to reduce eyestrain.
 
you'll struggle to notice the difference in 1080i and 1080p @ 7ft.

Get the Px70 - you will not be disappointed - had mine for about 4 months now and it's a stonking tv and looks ace when feed with a Hd-dvd signal from my HD-E1!!
 
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