At $1267, you won't do much better than Panasonic's TH-42PZ700U hi-def plasma display

With Halloween finally behind us, the sound of sleigh bells can be faintly heard in the distance and many of you are probably preparing to drop some coin on gadgets this year. Some for yourself (given the sales that will be taking place). Some of those gadgets will be for friends and family. This blog is mostly about business technology. But what business technologist isn't also buying technology for personal use? So, as the holidays draw closer, and as I encounter stuff worth writing about, you may see me cranking out a blog or two here and there.

The first gadget (although it's hardly a gadget) that I've been meaning to write about is Panasonic's TH-42PZ700U flat plasma display. A lot of reviews that you see here on ZDNet and elsewhere are done with gear that's sent to us for testing by the manufacturer. But, in this case, I'm backing up what I'm saying with cold hard dollars. Instead of getting a test unit in, I bought one and had it shipped to me from Florida.

What led me to this decision? For some time now, I've wanted to get a flat panel display for our bedroom. We have a family room in our house where a fair amount of TV and DVDs get viewed. But we've gone four years without any sort of video or TV watching capability in the bedroom. We don't have a home theater room (the sort of room where you dim the lights to watch a movie) and so, we've always imagined the master bedroom as our makeshift home theater. In contrast (literally) to the family room where TV gets watched at any time of the day, about the only time we'll be watching anything in the master bedroom will be at night (when it's dark outside).

So, for starters, given the dimly lit situation that most of the viewing will be done in, I knew I wanted plasma. Going back to what we learned at CES about plasma vs. LCD (see the video we did), it was clear that LCD is really for situations where you need a lot of brightness to guarantee good visibility in well-lighted situations (either lots of artificial light or sunlight). If we were to get a flat panel for our family room, it would most definitely be an LCD. But along with that performance that LCD gives you in well-lighted situations, you also lose out on contrast, particularly when it comes to the color black. If you've ever seen how the color black on a notebook's LCD could be a lot blacker, you know what I'm talking about. With plasma displays, you don't necessarily get the brightness that you'd get with an LCD, but the blacks are really black and the resulting contrast is awesome. It's exactly what you want for a home theater situation.

<sidebar>What I just said about LCDs vs. plasma is a rule of thumb. Bear in mind that one of the competitive data points between manufacturers of flat panels is minimizing the compromises on either technology. In other words, working hard to make sure that plasma looks great in well-lighted situations, or, on the flip-side, working hard to make sure that LCDs give you great blacks and contrast.</sidebar>

Another rule of thumb on plasma vs. LCD has to do with diagonal display size. Generally speaking, your biggest LCDs will be 47 diagonal inches. As you can see from the aforelinked video, some manufacturers are looking to change this (so that LCD can compete with plasma where greater-than-47-inches is in demand) which is why I say it's a rule of thumb. While some consumers buy in the 47" range and up, most applications in that range are commercial (lobbies, airports, etc.) -- where the brightness of LCD may be required.

Meanwhile, the rule of thumb for plasma is 42 inches and up. For the most part, there's only 5" of overlap between the two (where they compete against each other). Not surprisingly, the 42" to 47" range is where a lot of flat panels get sold to consumers. This forces buyers to consider the differences between the two technologies, the features of the products, and price.

I'll be honest here. I was hardly on my way to getting my homework done on a plasma display when my close friend Graham asked me what I knew about flat panels. I pointed him to the video and talked him through a few points. As a scientist by trade, Graham is very thorough about most things he does and he left no stone unturned in his search for the flat panel that offered the best bang for the buck. When he settled on Panasonic's 42" 1080p (hi-def) plasma display for his family room (where TV gets watched during the day), I have to admit that I questioned his choice (shouldn't it be LCD?). But when he told me how much he got it for from Electronique Plus ($1267 plus shipping), I had to admit that the deal seemed like an awfully good one.

Panasonic has another 42" plasma display: the TH-42PX77U that Electronique Plus sells for $1007. But, at a native display format of 720p running at a resolution of 1024x768 with no PC inputs (see ZDNet's review and complete specs), it's really a second class citizen compared to the TH-42PZ700U which runs at full HD (1080p) with a resolution of 1920x1080, with a VGA input. In fact, the TH-42PZ700U appears designed to take just about any possible input you can imagine (see image below) -- it has two HDMI inputs (and an output for digital, hi-def digital audio), two complements of component input (for hi-def as well), two complements of composite and s-video input (standard definition), and a standard RG-59 coaxial input for cable boxes, a VHF/UHF antenna, or any other device (eg: a VCR) that offers coaxial connections.

One extremely cool feature: it has an SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) slot. Between that and SDHC-card browsing software that's built-into the display, you can insert SD or SDHC cards directly into the display and browse any still images that you have on them.

While connection versatility is a plus, it, in the end, does not make a great plasma TV. Ultimately, picture quality at some given price is what you're after. Going back to ZDNet's review, David Katzmaier wrote:

Produces a deep shade of black with excellent shadow detail; clean image with little noise or false contouring; solid, standard-def picture quality....For those who can spare no expense, the Panasonic TH-42PZ700U plasma offers the best picture quality in its size class.

Then, for no particular reason, the November issue of Consumer Reports showed up in my mailbox. This was about four weeks ago. I'm not a subscriber. Never got a copy before and haven't gotten one since. There, sitting at the very top of it's ratings for plasma displays was the TH-50PZ700U (the 50-inch big brother to the 42-incher I was looking at). Same everything but the size. In fairness, CR also rated the 42 inch models and picked Panasonic's TH-42PX77U as their #1 pick there. But they apparently didn't evaluate the TH-42PZ700U in the round-up.

Indeed, the list price of this bad boy is $2497 which is quite steep, but still a get-what-you pay for price. But at Electronique Plus' price of $1267, the equation changes a bit. I did some competitive pricing and looked for comparable offerings from local retailers (eg: Circuit City, Best Buy) and found that even after taking shipping into consideration, Electronique's price was a better deal than Best Buy's. For example, Best Buy has the same product for $1999. Circuit City has a slightly lesser cousin for $1499 less 10 percent (a special holiday promotion if you pick it up at the store -- a total of $1349). That's actually a better deal than Electronique Plus' total with shipping and insurance of $263 (a price I negotiated): $1530 . But then again, you should see the size of the box this display comes in.

Not only wouldn't I have been able to put it in my SUV (a GMC Yukon, yes, I know... I'm looking into hybrids now), the display with package is heavy (more than 100 pounds) and awkward because of the box's size. To have it delivered to my house with the guarantee that any damage it suffered on the way meant I could refuse delivery was well worth the additional expense.

As a side note, I paid $199 for the four-year on site warranty. These big displays don't exactly have the best track record (compared to how your run of the mill TV lasts 20 years) and the very last thing I wanted was to have to figure out how to ship or bring this display to some service center.