Photo gallery: Panasonic Viera TX-37LZ800MThe TX-37LZ800M is Panasonic's latest flagship flat panel and its first LCD 37-incher. Like all the Japanese company's 2008 HDTVs, this comes with a new facelift quite unlike any of its past offerings, plus a couple of customary refinements including an updated Viera video engine.
A new facelift that adds subtle elegance to this flagship LCD HDTV.
Design
While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this Viera exudes a simple yet elegant charm. It could be the bezel's sweeping arched bottom or the subtle mouth-like grille that adorns its gun-metal and glossy black front; regardless it's definitely a lot less boxy than its past offerings, although we miss the series' signature diamond pedestal stand. This has been replaced by a down-to-earth "T" equivalent which retains its swivel ability via a hidden base plate. For those wall-mounting this light 23kg unit, an optional bracket is available.
When it comes to ease of use, Panasonic has it right this time by clustering all the on-board controls and side A/V inputs on the right. These include an HDMI port and an SDHC card slot exclusive for its higher-end models. Like the LX700M, the latter is housed underneath a flip cover and neatly tucked away from prying eyes when not in use.
The same old ergonomic, though slightly cumbersome remote from the 2007 panels.
It was déjà vu when it came to the bundled remote controller, right down to the flap that conceals the auxiliary keys found on the 2007 model, and the multifunction VCR/DVD/HTIB playback controls locked purely to Panasonic products. It does offer a good deal of tactile feedback, responsiveness and ergonomics, but while the dual TV and A/V input keys are nice touches, they're still not quite up to the mark due to their cumbersome toggling.
The on-screen menu will mainly appeal to first-time panel owners, as there are very little extras to tune beyond the fundamental configurations such as sharpness and contrast. Four picture presets are available, including an Eco mode, which attempts to optimise the screen based on your current room lighting. To be fair, we've come across advanced options such as noise reduction and film frame rate processing within the well-structured menu, but nothing substantial to offset the backlight control and manual colour management omissions.
Features
On numbers alone, the TX-37LZ800M may not look as impressive as the latest Samsung and LG sets. At 10,000:1 dynamic contrast, it has some catching up to do with the Korean offerings. That said, thanks to its future-proofed full-HD resolution and wide 178-degree viewing angle it manages to make up the ground. More importantly, this Viera is based on a glossy In-Plane Switching-Alpha LCD panel — an enhanced flavour of IPS technology favoured by enthusiasts for its strong colour vibrancy even from off-centre seating positions.
Panasonic also has a new bag of visual tricks including an updated V-real Pro 3 engine in addition to the 100Hz Motion Picture Pro function that debuted last year. The latter interpolates video-based content for smoother motion, and has been upgraded this time with Panasonic's Motion Focus technology to sharpen text. Also present is 24p film processing, and you can expect richer hues from x.v.Colour-compatible sources.
The Viera's HDMI inputs have been upgraded with 1080p24 signal-handling capability.
Following the higher-end Viera tradition, the TX-37LZ800M is fitted with an SDHC slot to facilitate JPEG playback. This differs from the usual USB implementation, trading the loading speed in exchange for storage format flexibility. For the record, the reader does work with MMC cards, and regular as well as miniature SD iterations through adapters. The system, activated by auto media detection and user confirmation, displays preview thumbnails in a 4x3 grid. As for its slideshow option, you have a choice to loop the presentation or to tailor an individual shot's time interval.
For purists, Panasonic's latest adoption of film-centric 1080p24 signal handling is a belated, but welcome, addition to its HDMI 1.3 inputs. What irks us, however, is that the dual component inputs are artificially limited to 1080i — likewise, the VGA port is limited to 1,366x768, hardly optimised for the native 1,920x1,080 panel.
Performance
Our initial impressions were positive as far as TV signals were concerned, characterised by clean receptions void of visible artefacts and noise grains. The only imperfection here was the TV's above-average sharpness, the result more than respectable for a full-HD set, but still a notch behind the impressive Bravia X. Things improved further when it came to Avia test patterns, with colour decoding almost spot-on, while the tricky greyscale tracking test proved a walk in the park with convincing blacks.
Next we fired up our DVD copies of Blade II and Ghost In The Shell: Innocence. The dark ninja warehouse assault clip in the former was tackled expertly with plenty of shadow details to boot, while the anime's convenience store shoot-out scene, churned out clean and crisp upscaled visuals — a little too over-sharpened for our liking, but not to the extent of inducing jaggies. Switching over to standard-def HQV benchmarks, there was even more evidence of jaggie suppression, though we detected a mild softening effect with noise reduction engaged.
Pairing the Viera with a PlayStation 3 playing native 1080p Blu-rays set the on-screen pictures into overdrive mode. Disney's Cars, for example, was brilliant, uplifted by bright-yet-saturated colours and razor-sharp clarity. It was at this point that we first discovered the Viera's 24p-processing bug — while it does help minimise juddering, it does so at the expense of occasional "haloing" distortions. While we tried other films and hardware players, nothing fixed the issue, proving the problem to be entirely with the TV. Fortunately, there's an option to disable this function via the menu, so it all boils down to a choice of which is the lesser evil: judder or halo.
It wasn't rosy for the usually critical HD-HQV, either. Despite a strong showing in the Video Resolution Loss test, the panel was flickering during our Film Resolution Loss test, indicating possible difficulties in rendering full 1080i details. This was hardly the case when we tried our hands on the Xbox 360's Need For Speed: ProStreet through the 1080i component-video. The racing game showed up in surprisingly strong fidelity and fluid action (24p does not affect 50/60 frame content), pretty much on par with Ridge Racer 7 delivered on an HDMI-and-PS3 combo.
Its on-board JPEG playback is blazingly fast and bordering on studio print quality.
On the PC front, without a pixel-to-pixel 1080p resolution support the interpolated and blown-up fonts were far too soft, and light circular colour banding was present. For redemption, the TX-37LZ800M did fight back with its excellent native JPEG playback performance, clocking a fast three seconds to display each 8-megapixel photo. What we witnessed on-screen was bordering on studio print quality, presented in their original aspect ratio and rendered in rich vibrant colours, sans any strong signs of offending jaggies.
Audio was also a strong point for the set. Mid-bass had a good presence, matched by articulated vocal and lively treble. The speakers could comfortably reach reference level at half power, while stereo imaging was decent at best.
The Panasonic Viera TX-37LZ800M rocks with its outstanding colours and competent sounds. Priced at AU$2,399, it's reasonably good value for money among the full-HD-capable 37-inchers. It's just a shame its 24p Film processing is broken and is laden with handicapped PC support.
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