Panasonic ZT60 Plasma at CES 2013 - Page 5

My devotion goes to quality products and the best there is. That was Pioneer...now every is a wannabe KURO. And still can't beat a tech that's 5 years old lol. Goes to shows how far pioneer could be if they stayed in the biz. Everything today is crap..made with crap...I've never seen so many pictures of line bleed and comments about burn in since the first plasmas came out back in the day than the complaints I've seen on the 50 series pannys...picture lacks punch and wow factor.

I've been shopping in Magnolia stores for ten years. The standard Magnolia area of the BB stores in the San Francisco Bay Area seem to alway have their best display facing out into the bright florescent lit big room.

When there were stand alone Magnolia Audio-Video stores here, I spent a lot of time in two of them -- Santa Clara and Palo Alto. They both had very fancy lighting that tended to point directly at most of the displays on view. I was a good customer of the manager of one of them. He had come from the original company before they were bought by BB, and he went on to manage the original store. He would turn off the overhead lights in one section of the store for me because of the bad reflections. At that point, BB controlled all aspects of their Magnolia chain. Of course they succeeded in wiping it out eventually. It's too bad because some of them were great stores.

Okay bro. Cool story.

I've never been a fan of that display position either. One poorly placed TV out of 20 isn't bad. The rest of them though, including the one he was viewing, can typically be viewed with minimal light pollution. .

In standard Magnolia departments I've always seen 10 to 12 displays with most of them in pairs -- top and bottom. Anyway, we're off topic. Cheers.

If you were anybody but yourself reading this, you would realize how ridiculously ignorant you come across. You do realize that 5+ years ago selling super-expensive displays was difficult because there was not nearly the amount of programming for it right ? (very little HD cable programming and BluRay vs HDDVD still wasn't all the way settled). So people were more interested in buying a tv from wal-mart for 1/10 th the price of a Kuro. You also realize that without the cheap LCD's and plasma's it would have taken a lot longer for bluray to really become the standard. Pioneer also bankrupted their display business by putting out that quality. The most ignorant part is that you seem to have no clue that it would be illegal for other manufacturers to make a tv like Pioneer did back then, given the environmental laws that don't permit them to use things like mercury or other highly toxic materials or to consume the massive amounts of electricity required to power the Kuro's (comparatively speaking). Maybe for your niece's sake you might consider the planet the next time you are watching your Kuro and take second to consider all the things that had to happen in order for you to be able to have that, and that in her interest a new way had to be found.

For all of the Panasonic ZT60 skeptics, I submit this: "Panasonic has officially launched its “Beyond The Reference” ZT60 plasma for the UK and European markets this afternoon. In a bold move that is designed to lay a lingering ghost to rest, the Japanese manufacturer actually demoed the much-anticipated plasma TV side-by-side against a now-discontinued Pioneer Kuro KRP-600A which is widely considered by many video enthusiasts to be the best flat-screen television of all time (until now)."

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/panasonic-tx-p60zt60-201302112658.htm

Marketing hype is so lame. I, for one, have no interest in "beyond the reference". I want the reference! I've had enough of trying to tame "expanded" color gamuts and the like. If it is "beyond", you have to pull it back to "reference" to get a reference picture, whatever "it" may be. If it is not "beyond", well, then it really is just marketing hype. All in all, it's a very useless phrase.

We are all reasonably intelligent people here right.

That 600A's brightness (is) up at +7 +8 or even as high as +9.

The filter on the Kuro is that good, that at brightness at +4/+5 the black background on the image would appear still to be black. Even with overhead lights and a brightness level that high.

The thing that absolutely astonished me though... Was although the Kuro has so obviously been deliberately gimped (makes business sense if course it does)

But what astonished me was even with that "trick if the light"... The ZT imho still failed to look that dark:rofl:

The well respected calibrator on here imho was absolutely correct with regard to what to genuinely expect from the ZT.

Do you mean to tell me that you wouldn't want a blacker than blacker than black black level.

Yes... I'd take absolute black, like CRT projector black. But that's part of "reference", not beyond reference. Just so long as it doesn't crush shadow detail, which is also part of "reference". See how I'm thinking? And, BTW... I get it that you're trying to give this a light side and I appreciate it. Even though we all like dark.

You may have slightly missed my point.

Blacker than "blacker than black" would be blacker than "CRT black" or even blacker than "off in a pitch black room".

My point was to go right into the center of the absurd. I used too many blacks to be clear. Cheers.

AVS UK viewed in zt60 in a darkened room next to a 600m and vt50 in which they said the blacks had matched 9th gen Kuro blacks but zt60 had the upper hand in other categories. As far as PQ goes the ZT60 will dethrone the Kuro. In my opinion I think what separates the Kuro is the panel technology. The kuros panel and how it produces the image is just flawless. Yes the vt50 is brighter with better color accuracy but when I put my 6020fd with the same content next to my 55vt50 the Kuro just has a way of making the image more cinematic it has more depth. And we all know the near perfection when it came to hardware. Kuro just won't ever be defeated in that category because of the economy we live in. I think panasonic is doing a awesome job with cheaper hardware but still maintaining excellent PQ. I'm looking for to the ZT60 and really do hope that the Kuro can finally rest.

Absolutely. And I was right there with you, telling you "I appreciate it". I should have used a I guess I didn't realize your entire post was in that spirit. Ah well... vagaries of typed language...

VT50 dethroned the 8th gen Kuro now the ZT60 will dethrone the infamous, glorious, awsomeness, flawless 9th gen panel..... Hopefully lol. I just love the $4k price as well. $4k for a TV that will be far better than the sharp elite. After a year of release it should drop to around $3k. What I don't like is the the UK will get the gt60 in smaller sizes like 42". Why won't they regales these sizes in the U.S.

reference=beyond what a human eye can perceive (reference color: color errors are beyond what human eye can perceive) . beyond reference is nonsense/ Beyond the reference means ZT60 has better pq than king Kuro which is also nonsense.

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/tvs/pioneer-kuro-krp-500a-review-49300333/
^^ king Kuro
Edited by 8mile13 - 2/12/13 at 11:06am

To me, "reference" is how the information was encoded. So to get a "reference" image, the decoding and display equipment needs to adhere to the encoding specs as closely as possible. So I agree from that perspective too, "beyond reference" is nonsense. Most all BD's are encoded with Rec 709 and 2.4 gamma (gamma choice is variable and debatable and can depend on environment). That is what the decoder and display should do as exactly as possible. "Beyond" that is not accurate.

I was editing my post while you wrote yours. btw DNice told me what reference means

Right.

Hi all, very new member to this site.

I use a similar site in the UK, have to say as a owner of the VT50 55".

I am waiting for the price of the 60" in the UK to be confirmed then might place a order for the ZT.

What's wrong with your Kuro that would make you want to buy the Z?

This would seem to contradict that statement.... From the same article, new comment added

"David Mackenzie on 12 February 2013 6:22 pm

FYI, the settings used on the Kuro:
http://t.co/VNE4AZ4E

As you can see, proper setup has been done."

15"?

Absolutely false.

In fact, the Kuro in that room was one of the best set-up displays at the entire event! (It's in a darkened room, unlike the other show-floor TVs).

As you saw, someone posted the picture we grabbed of the settings the Kuro was using. The AR filter on the ZT is better than KRP-600A. As for MLL performance, we'll need to measure one, but they both looked excellent in the dark.

-David M

@locdog33:
Concerning your statement of the Kuro's picture reproduction being "flawless", I have to point out, as much as I value the Kuros, that the "picture noise" they produce annoyed me.
At least in THAT aspect the Panasonic plasmas always had an advantage IMO, the Kuros always looked quite "dithery" in comparison.
Maybe with the ZT60 we can have the best of both worlds...

@erkq:
Do you have a reliable source for your claim that Blu-rays are mastered with a 2.4 gamma?
AFAIK the gamma standard for all "home content" is 2.2 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction).
Gamma 2.4 is (AFAIK) often used for displays or projectors in dark home theaters to make the picture look more "film-like".
Correct me if I'm wrong.

I live in Germany and just preordered my TX-P60ZT60E (a friend of mine is a Panasonic salesman) to replace my TX-P50V10E.
Looking forward to sharing my experiences with you!

Greets
SkyCyberguy

just in from panasonic...

When properly calibrated those still pics should look quite alike. As one can see there are big differences. WEIRD


left:600A right:ZT60

Please see this:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1422082/what-can-we-expect-from-2013-panasonic-plasmas/870#post_22958711