State of the Kuro: where the 9G is being surpassed

Black levels: the Sharp Elite is the daddy @0,0004ft with the Kuro Elite 9,5G @0,0005ft slightly behind. The best Panasonics (ST50-VT50) are @0,0026ft but there's no tint at all to the black levels on mine ST50 which is a first outside of OLED and CRT technology.
Contrast: clearly the Sharp Elite with better MLL and peak whites on an ANSI patern. The Kuro 9,5G is second and Kuro 9G third.
Color decoding: clearly the D8000.
Motion Sharpness: Samsung Plasma's without question. Panasonic is doing their best to come close. The Kuro's are terrible by comparison.
Overall picture: allround the Kuro still is one of the best pictures because it does everything very well whereas the Samsungs are still bad at black level and dynamic range (contrast). The Panasonics are still behind the Kuro 9G and 9,5G in terms of black level and dynamic range but much closer than Samsung while Samsung has better color decoding and better motion.

Technically the LG and Samsung OLED should rank 1 together in every department above once they launch.

I haven't seen the VX300 only the VX200 which was pretty great but by eye you can't really say much. However I'm purely comparing consumer displays as comparing professional displays with consumer displays is useless as the focus is entirely different.

I haven't seen the Samsung 2012 Plasma's or LCD's for that matter so can't make any judgement yet. I'm sure the VE Shoot-out will do a great job there. I also haven't seen the VT50 only the GT50 and ST50.

That depends on the lighting conditions and picture brightness. In a room with bias lighting you won't see any difference between 0,0005ft and 0,0026ft. Both will appear very dark. In a dark room you will notice a difference between 0,0005ft and 0,0026ft. The higher brightness and untinted black levels of the 2012 Panasonic Plasma's make their black levels and dynamic range seem higher than they actually are and because of that the black levels and dynamic range look very close. I think you might only tell the difference in a dark room with the TVs next to each other.

In a completely dark room your eyes will problably be able to tell the difference all the way to something like 0.00001ft on a full 0 IRE patern but with an ANSI patern not so much.

Why do you continue to repeat the word "untinted"? There is no such thing as untinted 1-5% stimuli grayscales.

With the GT50 coming in at 5000:1+ contrast ratio doesn't that put it on par with the 9G KURO's?

Also D-Nice was telling me at some point about dynamic range and real world contrast ratios at 20 or 30% stimulus being far more important than contrast ratio's like ANSI which makes sense. So I would think the 2012 Panasonics with their increased brightness output may be on par with the 9 or 9.5G's for contrast and dynamic range?

In a dark room the KURO is probably still king but in my living room for 90% of material? I just don't know. Maybe ChadB or D-Nice can jump in and provide some more data?

Not even close.


The increased brightness fools the eye into perceiving blacker blacks. Its the same phenomenon you get with backlighting.


If you put a 2012 Panasonic in the dark room right beside a 2nd Gen Kuro (aka 9G Pioneer), you will easily see the difference in black level. You will also see the difference in low lighting depending on where the lighting is in the room compared to the display.

If the question is do the MLL of the 2012 Panasonics equal or surpass the 2nd gen Kuro, the answer would be no.

Why do these TV's keep coming up since you can't buy them, and since they are so great why hasn't anyone copied their electronics and re-introduced them?

Why would it matter what I would choose? I can't spend your money.

Because you the consumer care more about gidgets and widgets than you do for PQ.

I'll answer your question theis way:


I can have any display out there yet I own 5 Kuros with zero plans to replace them with any PDP from Panasonic, Samsung or LG... or any LED LCD currently on the market. Another individual's wallet and/or priorites can and will be different than mine.

Can someone correct me? I didn't make a deep search on this but what I understand is Pio & NEC have invented almost everything to make a better plasma TV than Kuro and licensed them. That's why Panasonic engineer team's hands are tied. Even though they were transferred from Pioneer.

I don't think money and production costs are the issue. Otherwise VX200-300 would be superior to Kuro.

Somebody doesn't seem to be in a very good mood today!

Nice translation

The problem is current Plasma manufacturers have to build their Plasma TV's with different materials and a much lower footprint. Also while I won't deny the Kuro 9,5G specifically is one of the best TVs to date it isn't without flaws. These are always denied or forgotten because of the pedestal the Kuro's are being put on.

^You mean like DSE (though I think minimized on 9.5), PWM noise (dithering), phosphor trails and higher power requirements? Not everyone is bothered by those things (or can even detect them), but they are not always denied or forgotten.


Ouch (truth hurts ).

oh boy, another one of these threads. wait till the locally dimming guys find out about it and hijack the thread.

be careful d-nice, you know how these things usually turn out.

get out now before the sharp and sony fanboys start slamming you.

lol

I do have an European non-elite 9G Kuro and one thing which newer sets tend to best it is static resolution. This is due to the selected dithering method which tend to be more noisy at the brighter end of the grayscale. I am not exactly sure this is the main reason for slight lack of depth but surely cannot think of anything else.

Still fine display, no matter what.

They don't call the Sharp 70" Elite the "Kuro Killer" for nothing.

By next year the Kuro Killers should be the 55" LG OLED or the rumored 80" Elite 4K. There is also the slight possibility of an AppleTv using a Sharp/Foxconn panel, but the specs of the panel are unknown and it could just be a regular high end Sharp LCD with Siri and Apple interface included. If it was cutting edge tech, the price would be over 10K with Apple's insane markup.

This guy again.

In no way shape or form is the sharp a kuro killer. You made that name up by the way. There is no "they."

These threads always turn out this way. Can a mod lock this please?

People tend to forget there were 8G, 9G and 9.5G KURO's. The differences between the 8 and 9s is pretty significant. The 9.5s are even better than the 9's.

My point is some people (myself included) will be upgrading from their KURO's fairly soon, but I've got an 8G. If i had a 9G or 9.5 I'd probably be keeping it.

I'm suprised this thread haven't turned into a flame war resulting in a pad lock on it.

It really doesn't matter if the Kuro is surpassed or not, in this economy, if the price ain't right its not going to fly. The Sharp Elite, LG OLED and Samsung OLED will die on the vine. Did we not already learn this from Pioneer.