Expect to fit 1 hour 20 minutes of video on a 1GB card at full quality and 21 hours 20 minutes at the worst quality setting. While the quality isn't sufficient for playback on the TV, it's handy for the smaller screens in Panasonic's D-Snap range of multifunctional devices. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the MPEG-4 video playing on a PC. Additionally, as we pointed out earlier, the television will also show photos stored on the memory card.
The TH50PX600 supports inputs up to 1080i. The resolution of the display is 1,366x768 pixels, so 720p material looks great and 1080i footage is scaled to fit. The TV will not display the cutting-edge 1080p format. A Freeview receiver is built in, as is an analogue TV tuner, although we really can't recommend using the latter, as the picture doesn't translate well to a 50-inch display.
The menu system is simple to navigate. Usual controls for picture are available, including brightness, colour, contrast, sharpness and P-NR, which is Panasonic's noise reduction system. The sound menu is similar, offering control over bass, treble and balance. It also allows you to turn the SRS TruSurround XT virtual surround-sound system on and off.
Performance
There is very little that can be said against the picture quality of this set. To see what it could do, we watched a few HD DVD movies on Toshiba's HD-E1 player. Firstly we put blacks to the test with the sci-fi film Serenity. We were stunned by how great the black levels in the space scenes were -- the picture was crisp and colourful and the set showed us details we could never have hoped to see before. Our Happy Gilmore disc also proved that the set can display beautiful rich colours as well -- we don't think grass has never looked so green.
We did experience the odd picture problem. The edges of the Universal logo at the start of The Bourne Identity HD DVD looked a little noisy, for example, and we also spotted a small amount of grain when close up, but this would never bother you unless you sat within a half a metre of the screen.
The quality of video from Denon's DVD-1930 upscaling DVD player was very good indeed, although we could see the odd picture artefact when watching Ronin.
Standard-definition television from Freeview -- via the built-in receiver -- is decent. It's not on a par with hi-def material, but it does a very good job with what is essentially a low-quality source. Our experience with a lunchtime showing of Neighbours was that the picture was watchable, but quite soft.
Sound from the set is excellent. The speakers may look small, but they have hidden depths providing excellent quality sound, with booming bass when the soundtrack required it.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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