Panasonic Viera TX-P50VT20B review

For its first 3D TV, Panasonic has decided to do it in style with a top-of-the-range plasma panel. We’ve reviewed the massive 50in Viera TX-P50VT20B, but there’s an even bigger 65in version available should you want even more screen space.

Underneath the sleek exterior sits one of Panasonic’s V series televisions. This has a 600Hz panel and 5,000,000:1 native contrast ratio, plus the Infinite Black Pro filter. In terms of picture quality, it’s absolutely breath-taking.

Blacks are pure and dark, while whites brilliant and white. The key thing is that the massive contrast ratio means that you get detail in all parts of an image. Testing with 2D footage, we were incredibly impressed. A night-time fly through of Tokyo managed to bring out the full detail of the lit windows and neon signs against the dark sky.

Playing Casino Royale, we were immediately struck by the impressive visuals of the opening black-and-white scene, which retained its full detail. The Parkour sequence is also incredibly impressive, with the set picking up the subtle dust cloud in front of Bond, and managing to produce the full colour range in realistic detail.

We set our set to THX mode, which turns off some of the processing and restricts the set to a colour more that’s more in-keeping with the colours produced by film makers. However, if you want to play with the image, there are plenty of options to do so (once you’ve turned on the advanced menus). You can adjust the colour and gamma manually to get the right image, while the vibrant colour mode helps create punchier colours if you want them.

There are two smoothing modes that can be applied: 24p Smooth Frame, for 24fps footage, and Intelligent Frame Creation for all other sources. Purists won’t like either, but the effect is subtle and doesn’t make films look like cartoons, as with some over-blown versions on other manufacturers’ sets.

Switching to 3D mode is just as impressive. For this you’ll need to put on a pair of the active shutter glasses (two are provided in the box, and both have plastic protective cases) and turn them on. The glasses have two nose rests in the box, which can be placed in two positions for comfort. The lenses sit quite far forwards, which is good for people who already wear glasses, but they do let light in from the side.

You’ll also need to provide a 3D input, as there’s no option to convert 2D footage to 3D; we don’t see this as a problem, as this kind of conversion never works that well and who wants to watch everything on TV in 3D anyway?

We tested using the 3D Blu-ray versions of Ice Age 3 and Coraline and a Panasonic DMP-BDT3000 3D player. The effect is very good and, most importantly, looks solid. With its lightning-fast panel, the Viera TX-P50VT20B doesn’t suffer from crosstalk (where the image for one eye interferes with the image for the other eye), making the 3D effect more realistic.

Movement is very, very smooth and there’s no jerkiness at all. If you want even smoother footage, there’s an option for 3D frame creation, which creates extra frames to make motion look more fluid. There’s also a Edge Smoother option, which is designed to remove jagged lines created by the 3D process.

In 3D mode there’s no THX viewing option available and you’re limited to other settings, such as the similar True Cinema mode. This isn’t so much of a problem, as you’ll want one set of image settings for 2D footage and one set of settings for 3D. This is because the 3D mode and the active-shutter glasses, make the image a lot darker and not as saturated. As such, you may want to boost image brightness and colour settings to partially negate this. That said, you don’t notice the darker picture so much if you’re sitting in a darkened room.

However, one thing you will have to consider carefully is the TV’s placement. We recommend that you put it somewhere so that a window’s not in your field of vision when you’re watching. This is because the active shutter glasses make the light coming through a window look like it’s flickering, which is very distracting – this is a problem with all active shutter glasses.

In all other respects, this is a top-quality TV. There are both Freeview HD and Freesat HD tuners, the latter of which gives you access to iPlayer via either the Ethernet port or bundled 802.11n wireless adaptor. Quality from either tuner is fantastic from HD channels, while SD channels are neatly upscaled with many artefacts removed, while detail is kept. Again, we’re not massive fans of the EPG, as there’s no preview window and, instead, adverts are displayed.

Audio is provided by three 10W speakers. They’re loud and clear, but you’ll want an external sound system for the full range of audio provided by Blu-ray movies.

Four HDMI inputs make sure that you can connect all of the devices you want, and one has an audio return channel, so you can pump audio into your AV receiver. There’s the usual range of other inputs for connecting analogue equipment.

The built-in DLNA client means you can also stream content from a media server, such as a Windows 7 PC. We found that all of our sample videos played flawlessly, bar an unsupported WMV HD file. We found it easy to browse our photo collection and play music, too.

A similar set of playback options exist if you insert a memory card into the SDXC slot or connect a USB hard disk. Connecting a hard disk has the secondary advantage that you can use it to record TV programmes (you can’t switch tuners while doing so) and pause live television. It’s not quite as flexible as a PVR, but they’re nice features to have.

As with all of Panasonic’s latest TVs, the TX-P50VT20B has Viera Cast built-in. This online media portal doesn’t have that much on it, with YouTube, Picasa Web Albums and Skype (you’ll need the optional webcam) the standout features.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the Viera TX-P50VT20B is an expensive television, but then again it does absolutely everything and is a massive set. It’s also similarly-priced to other 3D sets. However, from the demonstrations we’ve seen of LCD 3D TVs, the TX-P50VT20B produces a better 3D image and higher-quality 2D images, making it the best TV you can buy. If you want 3D now, this is the one to buy; if you don’t care and just want high quality, the TX-P42G20B has very similar 2D image quality and costs around £840.