Sit back and enjoy stunning HD images with this Panasonic Viera TX-P42V10B 42” plasma television. It features a built-in freesat tuner so you can enjoy HD channels from the BBC and ITV without the need for an external box.
Thanks to the Veira Cast feature, connect this telly to your home network and you’ll be able to enjoy internet content from sources such as Eurosport and YouTube. And let’s not forget that the TX-P42V10B is also DNLA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible. This enables you to access your photos, music and movies from your PC across your home network from a compatible device. For instance, you could play your friends the latest MP3 track you’ve just downloaded, even though your computer is upstairs in the spare bedroom.
Its state-of-the-art technology gives amazing picture quality, with the 600Hz Intelligent Frame Creation giving fantastic resolution even during fast moving scenes – something football fans and film buffs will both appreciate.
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Sound is enhanced with its in-built V-Real surround sound technology (with bass extension), while the 24p Real Cinema settings offers enhanced judder-free playback, giving a smooth ‘film’ look. The 3 HDMI sockets allow you to hook-up your Blu-ray player, PVRs and games consoles with ease.
The TX-P42V10B is also capable of playing footage straight from your camcorder in high-definition mode and you can view a slideshow of your photos - just remove the SD memory card from your digital still camera, and slip it in the slot.
Panasonic 42″ TX-P42V10B Key Features
- Receives freesat (free digital satellite broadcasts)
- 600Hz Sub-field Drive Intelligent Frame Creation Pro
- Infinite Black with over 2,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast (Native 40,000:1)
- Smart Networking with VIERA Link
- VIERA Image Viewer (AVCHD/JPEG)
- V-Audio Surround
- Narrow Bezel Design
- 42in (106cm) diagonal
- 16:9 widescreen
- HD Ready
- 2,073,600 (1,920 x 1,080) pixels
- 40,000:1 native; 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio
- Freesat built-in
- Freeview built-in
- 3 HDMI Inputs
- 2 Scart
- Remote Control
- 20W speaker output (RMS)
- Dimension w/o stand (W x H x D) TBC
- Dimension with stand (W x H x D) TBC
- Weight 25kg (w/o stand), 28kg (with stand)
Panasonic's widget TV platform is VieraCast, in line with its range of Viera LCD and plasma screens. The TX-PV42V10 is a classy-looking 42in plasma using Panasonic's NeoPDP panel – a new technology that reduces the thickness, weight and energy consumption of the panel but retains brightness.
Besides an Ethernet port for networking, the TV has four HDMI ports (one side mounted), SD card reader for multimedia files, digital audio output and tuners for analogue, Freeview and Freesat. The remote control is tidy, as is the onscreen menu.
The media server function accesses content from computers sharing your network, but only digital photos or videos in MPEG2 and DivX-based formats will work That means no audio formats or myriad of other video types. Direct playback of AVC-HD is possible from SD card as well as DivX.
Watching images
VieraCast has a good menu of widgets. The main options are YouTube, EuroSport and Google's Picasa photo hosting site. Videos can be expanded to full-screen, albeit in low quality so far.
Several menu spaces were vacant at the time of writing but there's potential here because the browsing speed is faster than the Philips or Samsung equivalents. Text entry is via responsive numerical keys on the remote.
Panasonic TVs usually impress from the off, but this took longer. It's one of the few TVs with THX certification and there's a pre-calibrated mode set to meet this set of criteria for optimum picture quality. Oddly, you can't adjust colour temperature in THX mode.
For HD, we achieved good results using a different picture preset, then altering that to switch off overscanning (meaning no scaling from source to screen), setting colour temperature to Cool and delving into 'Other Settings' to deactivate Intelligent Frame Creation processing. IFC analyses motion and inserts extra frames to remove judder; the drawback is that it makes films look artificial and detail can get distorted.
Compared with the superb 1080p Blu-ray playback, 1080i HDTV images look slightly softer than they did on the Samsung LE40B651. Audio quality is also as solid as flatpanel TVs get.
