The set's contrast is truly spectacular. Dark scenes enjoy a mesmerising black-level response, without a trace of the greyness that, to some degree or other, afflicts so many flat TVs. Perhaps more surprising is the startling intensity of colours that the TX-P58V10 is able to portray alongside its inky blacks. It seems to us that the TX-P58V10's colours have a generally more natural and less green-tinged appearance than those of Panasonic's flagship Z1 TVs.
The combination of the TX-P58V10's top-spec Vreal Pro 4 video processing and 1080p resolution ensure that high-definition pictures look mesmerisingly detailed and sharp, without tipping over into looking gritty and noisy. Indeed, we'd argue that you haven't really seen just what Blu-ray is capable of unless you've seen it running on a TV as large and accomplished as this.
The TX-P58V10's outstanding sharpness with HD material does rather emphasise the slightly soft look to standard-definition pictures, though. Standard-definition colour tones occasionally look slightly overcooked too. They look very overcooked if you're daft enough to use the set's insane 'dynamic' picture preset. But there's surprisingly little video noise with standard-definition sources considering that the TV has to remap them to a 1080p pixel count and show them on a massive screen.
A final and really important strength of the TX-P58V10 is its motion-handling capability. The Intelligent Frame Creation processing does a terrific job of blitzing the stuttering and blur that can otherwise affect objects passing across plasma and LCD screens. Even camera pans looks smooth and clear, in stark contrast to the judder witnessed on Panasonic's entry-level plasma sets.
Aside from the rather soft standard-definition images, the only other picture problem is a slightly yellowish tinge to bright whites. But you grow accustomed to this over time.
Conclusion
Pioneer's similarly priced, 60-inch Kuro PDP-LX6090 is marginally better than the Panasonic Viera TX-P58V10. But, with the PDP-LX6090 already hard to find in stores and set to disappear completely at any moment, the TX-P58V10 is a hugely worthy heir to the mega-screen throne.
Edited by Charles Kloet
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips