Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 review

Performance
It's fair to say that the picture quality on the LX5090 blew us away. The Pioneer might cost a big lump of cash, but you'd have to have a pretty bad case of rabies not to love this TV from the very minute you set it up.

Freeview picture quality was nothing short of amazing. We generally expect a total mess on 50-inch TVs because Freeview is really targeted at smaller, mainly CRT TVs where an interlaced, highly compressed picture is no problem. On the 5090, Freeview looked sharp and detailed, even when we sat quite close, and all but the most hideous of channels were perfectly watchable. Some channels suffered from over-compression, such as More 4, which looks soft and blocky much of the time, but that's not the fault of the TV.

Freesat from a high-definition Grundig set-top box looked great on BBC HD and ITV's occasional high-definition offerings. The GB victory in wheelchair basketball over Brazil was especially brilliant, and not just because of the score -- the 1080i picture was beautifully deinterlaced, leaving the TV with a wonderfully detailed picture. There was a hint of jagged lines around some on-screen text, but nothing major and certainly not enough to ruin the experience of seeing BBC programmes in HD.

Next we fired up a Toshiba HD-EP35 HD DVD player. Sure, the format might be redundant now, but one of the best HD movies for picture quality is Transformers, and we simply had to see it on the LX5090. We weren't disappointed either, as there was so much detail in the picture that at certain points it felt like a Decepticon might exit the movie via the screen and join us on the sofa.

Blu-ray looked just as good. Our much-used Casino Royale disc got yet another outing, and we were thrilled to see that the quality was as high as ever, with loads of moody grain in the opening scene, which is in stark contrast with the bright and bold animated title sequence.

As we mentioned earlier, we opted for the single, under-screen speaker unit. This performed well in all of our tests, although we would hope that anyone spending well over £2,000 on a TV would be using an external speaker system. That said, when you want to watch EastEnders or you're in bed and a thumping subwoofer isn't realistic, they do a fine job. Vocal audibility is good, and there's even a respectable amount of bass to accompany your action movies.

Conclusion
Like its bigger brother the LX6090, the 50-inch Pioneer has so much to offer. It's substantially cheaper than the 60-incher, though we'll avoid describing it as cheap. The thing is, this TV is about as good as home entertainment gets without spending many thousands of pounds more on projection, which doesn't suit many living rooms.

So if you want one of the best TVs on the market, the LX5090 is for you. We still feel that the Panasonic plasma range offers very impressive performance for less money. So if you're looking for a strong rival, check out the Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ85 or, for added Freesat, the Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ81.

Edited by Marian Smith