THX, internet content grace Panasonic plasmas

Last year, CNET US awarded an Editors' Choice to the Panasonic TH-50PZ800U plasma. It earned a good portion of its praise by virtue of excellent colour accuracy, which we lay at the feet of THX Display Certification. For 2009, Panasonic has included THX in two series of plasma TVs, of which the most-affordable will be the G10s.

The company's G10 series of plasmas comes in four screen sizes. The 42-inch TC-P42G10, the 46-inch TC-P46G10, and the 50-inch TC-P50G10 will ship in March, while the 54-inch TC-54G10, a new screen size for the company, will ship in May. As expected, prices were not announced.

THX Display Certification consists of a series of hurdles the TVs must clear to earn the all-important THX logo. While we're generally pretty sceptical of a certification program that refuses to divulge the height of those hurdles — aside from vaguely mentioning that they include certain minimum specifications for contrast ratio, colour gamut based on the HDTV standard, uniformity, viewing angle, gamma, and still picture resolution — in our tests of the PZ800 and other THX plasmas from LG delivered improved colour accuracy, at least.

The G10 series is Panasonic's least expensive set to offer THX Display Certification.
(Credit: Panasonic)

Panasonic's answer to other TV makers' internet connectivity is called VieraCast, and new for 2009 the company is adding the capability to view content from Amazon Video on Demand. We'd like to see Netflix streaming added too, a la LG, but that's not in the cards so far.

New for 2009, VieraCast gets Amazon Video on Demand. (Credit: Panasonic)

The G10 series also incorporates all of the picture quality enhancements as the less-expensive S1 series. Its NEO PDP panel, in addition to using half the power of previous panels, offers improved contrast ratio that should contribute to deeper black levels. There's also 1080p resolution, for what it's worth.

Like all Panasonic plasmas, the G10s have "infinite black", which means the sets essentially shut off during entirely dark scenes. The company, in an obvious effort to compete against "Hz"-happy LCD makers, is touting a "600Hz sub-field drive". Here's our effort to staunch consumer confusion: ignore this feature. It basically means plasmas have very good motion resolution, but as usual, it's very difficult to discern the difference for most people. The company is using the same anti-reflective filter as last year for all of its plasmas.

The step-up V10 line includes the same features of the G10 models plus Digital Cinema Color and compatibility with 24p sources.