Both Steve and I have had the opportunity to get an initial hands-on look at the Plasma and LED LCD screens. In terms of picture quality I don't want to make any definitive comments at this stage, but they do look promising and the GT30 and VT30 were displaying some serious black levels. It was impossible to check for the 50Hz issue or floating blacks as each screen on display was a hand built pre-production unit. This obviously didn't give us the chance to test or check for the issues.
Those types of issues will be explored in more detail when we get production samples to review. But what we have seen so far is encouraging and we have been impressed.
The last thing to mention is the calibration controls which take a serious step up in terms of what is offered. The first is a full 3D Colour management system which is long overdue. Second is the fact that the menus are correctly placed for calibration, i.e. they don't cover the measurement area of the screen. But the big final improvement is that fact that using CalMAN 4.2 and an Ethernet connection we have full one press calibration control with 10 point Greyscale and gamma correction. Dealers are being trained and sold the kit to do these calibrations by Panasonic who really are taking the whole calibration thing very seriously! Well done and we will be fully road testing these features when we get the review sets.
