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By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
Aug 22, 2008

Panasonic’s crown jewel among its 2008 plasma TVs, the Viera PY850-series is brimming with the latest technologies the consumer A/V industry has to offer. Aside from a future-proofed full-HD panel, it’s theoretically superior than the Pioneer LX Kuro with a promising 30,000:1 native contrast. That’s not even taking into consideration its motion-enhancement function, a galore of HDMI inputs and other mouth-watering addons. Is this handsome S$6,999 (US$4,683.80) Panasonic a potential "Kuro" killer? Here's our report for your reading pleasure.

Design

The TH-50PY850's styling is a departure from last year's boxy outlines. It's now based on a refreshing-yet-subtle horizontal arch design used throughout its 2008 flat panels. Draped in gun-metal, the angled arch is also cleverly used to conceal the onboard stereo speakers and is further accentuated with a mirror finish in the center. For the final touch, Panasonic has gone borderless through its "sheet of glass" framing. Like the LG PG60, this basically eliminates the thick panel frame of lesser models, giving both TVs a seamlessly flat front that stands out from their peers.

To maintain its clutter-free facade, Panasonic has housed all the onboard controls, auxiliary A/V inputs and an SDHC card slot behind a flip-down cover. The spread of ports covers just about everything necessary, too, from headphones to standard composite-A/V and 1080p-ready HDMI. On the back, there're four cooling fans for ventilation. These run silently and are pretty effective in keeping our review unit cool despite running non-stop for two weeks. Rounding it up are a T-shaped swivel stand which can be traded for a wall bracket and two cable ties for wire management.

The same old 2007 remote controller is making a comeback, right down to the overall layout and button selection. On one hand, you'll probably appreciate its ergonomic ribbed bottom, large keys and multifunctional Panasonic VCR/DVD controls. But on the other, we're not particularly impressed by its cumbersome A/V input toggle button and selection list combination. That said, you do have an option to label individual inputs or to skip it altogether by programming the menu to hasten the switching progress. This is in addition to the dedicated TV and SDHC card shortcuts.

It seems like things didn't change much for its software menu, either. Nested within the submenus is a relatively modest array of configurations to fiddle around with. While most of the essentials are present, advanced variants are limited to just noise reduction, proprietary color and motion enhancements. Default picture mode-wise, there're four choices available, including "Eco" which automatically optimizes picture quality based on the room's ambient lighting. Each of these settings can be independently assigned to any of the video inputs and further customized to your personal likings.

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