Akai PDP4225M plasma review?

Interesting. I suspect that the Akai may actually be using Hitachi glass, and not Samsung, based on its resolution. As far as I know, Hitachi and Fujitsu (who shares Hitachi's factory) are the only companies which make a 1,024 X 1,024 42" plasma. They use a unique technology called ALiS (Alternate Lighting of Surfaces) which is why their resolution is different than everyone elses'.

There was a recent review of the Hitachi 42HDT52 in Sound & Vision which *may* give you some idea of how the Akai will perform. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the Akai was using previous generation technology, so its performance could easily be worse than the Hitachi's--and the Hitachi is already known for having rather poor black levels.

I saw it at Sams yesterday and I thought the pq looked good, but you can never tell inside a club store. I noticed it didn't have a tuner. I looked on the Akai website and all they showed in the 42" size were ED models.

Price at Sam's is remarkably low. I've never seen one with this resolution at this price, and I have to say, the colors were nice as was the contrast. As noted elsewhere, it's really hard to tell how well this thing scales different sources without taking it home, but all in all, seems like a steal. Anyone else have any background info on this. Amazing that AKAI doesn't even list it on their website.

I found

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a link

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for this

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unit

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here

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Here's the link:

http://www.akaiusa.com/products_deta...a%20TV/Monitor

Note the PDP4273M. It is identical to the PDP4225M1. CC will begin selling the
PDP4273M tomorrow for a buck and a half large.

I will order the unit tonight for the list price($2600) and let them price match when I pick it up tomorrow. The ad says "limited quantities. No rainchecks. Minimum 2 per store" and they will probably not have one left by the time I get up Sunday morning. This way I can lock one up before the sale starts.

There are no reviews on these units anywhere. I hate to buy a pig-in-a-poke, but if it sux terribly hard I can always return it. The deal looks too good to pass up for an HD plasma.

Too wise

I've owned this TV for a couple of months and it has pluses and minuses.

On the plus side it looks good, has a great detailed picture and is cheap. The panel is made by Hitachi/Fujitsu.

The biggest drawback is black level and the noise in dark scenes. (although it exhibits no black flicker whatsoever, which is a positive) Bright scenes or bright/dark scenes are fine, but all dark is pretty poor. Certainly not anywhere near Panasonic/Pioneer quality. It also doesn't have as good a processor as the higher end Hitachis (HDT, HDS series), and therefore there can be some banding/clayface occasionally. The grayscale also has a red/green tinge to it at the dark end which also contributes to this phenomena.

Overall HD like football, or anything else fairly bright is as good/better than Panasonic (smoother picture, and absolutely no screen door effect because of all the pixels). High quality DVD transfers like The 5th Element are also incredible. But, if you are watching a dark movie, or a dark program like Ghost Whisperer things can turn ugly pretty fast.

If you haven't seen this in person it is pretty much the same as a Hitachi 42HDM (worse processor and black levels than the HDT, HDS).

Finally, to get a good picture takes some tweaking because of the Gamma choices. The DVI is not HDCP compliant either.

I saw it at CC today next to a same size Panasonic HD. They had some Super Bowl loop playing and it looked great! Could not see a difference between it and the Panasonic. I couldn't believe the price. Very tempting.

Well I have been looking at Plasma/LCD displays for past 3 months. Technology new plants prices are going down so I couldn't see spending 2 or 3 or 4 grand for next years $899 special. My old Toshiba rear projector was on its last legs so I picked up the Akai yesterday at CC. It is a very good price for a reasonable quality display. Yes it is HDTV not EDTV like most of the Akai plasmas. No it isn't a Pioneer or Panasonic. In 3-4 years when you can get a 50/60 inch 1080P display for well under a grand this will go to the kids in the basement. In the mean time I have only minor quibbles. Remote is useless bunch of small identical buttons. I haven't found codes that work yet for Time Warner HD DVR. Audio out is passable for evening news, and the speakers are not relocatable to the sides. As someone mentioned earlier I see no indication that the HDMI plug is HDCP compliant. I have turned down the unit during break in and it still looks very good. If I ever get a break from work I will do a basic tweak and call it good.

I am thinking about getting this Akai plasma from CC as well. One thing I am wondering is about the HDCP complience.

Can anyone explain to me what HDCP complience is, and what the ramifications are of this plasma not being HDCP complient?

Thanks!
Erik

I guess I'm showing my ignorance, but I thought all displays that accepted HDMI were HDCP complaint. If not, then I guess the only way to determine that is to test it with a source that supplies something passing HDCP. And even there, it apparently can be dependent upon the method in which the particular source component passes the signal. So it's possible that a display such as this COULD work with some source components and not others. Short of getting a response directly from AKAI, the only way to know would be to test.

I think it is HDCP compliant, the older model 4225PM with DVI was not.

The manual states, that the HDMI connection is version 1.1. I'm not sure if this helps answer the question or not.

Sorry to sound ignorant, but I am trying to understand what HDCP complience is. Can anyone fill me in on this? I did some searches but could not really pinpoint it?

Thanks,
Erik

I picked up the PDP4273M at CC in Santa Barbara last night.

I hung out there for a good while watching some different HD programming. It was side by side with a panasonic (double the price of the Akai). As someone mentioned earlier, the Akai looks great for pretty much all viewing, but clearly is not as nice for very dark scenes, it's still good, but not great like the panasonic and samsungs that surrounded it. But again, during normal programming, football, discovery channel type stuff, etc.. It looked 90% as good as the other HD plasmas around it, for 50% the price.

I have been in the market for a tv of this size for a while and when this model popped up, i could not believe how good it looked for the price. That and i did the circuit city finance, 0% interest for 24-months..

I have not yet hooked up my HD cable box (am going to do that later today). But it looks pretty darn good using my regular cable box.. An amazing bargain IMO.. I do agree the remote is pretty lame, but hey - i bought it for the price and the picture.

Looking at tons of different sets, i have never seen anything this nice Plasma/LCD for this price or lower... of course there are similar size / priced DLP and Projection stuff, but i really do not like the viewing angle drawbacks.

I will post again once i have it hooked up through my HD Cable box.

What type of connection does your HD cable box have?

Component & HDMI.

Got my Cox HD box hooked up at lunch.. Only had a set of component cables on hand.. (HDMI are in the mail)

only had a few minutes to check it out.. Discovery HD looked stunning, as did the rest of the HD broadcast channels... really nice PQ for a plasma at this price point.. What is amazing is that it looks this good already, and its not even using HDMI yet, and i have not tweaked anything in the TV settings..

I saw what may be a dead pixel, but i couldnt confirm because i was pressed for time, so that would suck - but i do have the 30 day return / exchange policy from CC, so it would not be the end of the world.

Further review to come when i get the HDMI cable.

there aren't too many Akai threads here. Does anyone know about the quality of Akai products? I read a post on another message board that said their products were suspect.

To a degree, I'm sure you need to determine where Akai is sourcing from since they don't actually make the glass and probably don't make most of the other components. Having said that, my early impressions are that it looks quite good at its price point. I'm not having any problems with mine yet...we'll see.

No HDMI cable here yet and was a false alarm on the dead pixel, screen looks perfect..

My set is still looking awesome after about another 6 hours of viewing.. the INHD channels that Cox has really look amazing... Watched american idol in HD last night and the picture was really really good...

Very happy with my purchase so far!

How are the blacks and shadow detail?

I just stopped by CC to check it out on my way home today. They have it side by side with other brand 42" plasma HD TVs. To my untrained eyes, it looks just as good as other brands' with almost half of the price. I bought one. BTW, the blcks and shadow details is just like the others, no better no worse.

Let's not kid ourselves, there is no way the blacks or shadow detail will be as good on a Hitachi panel as a Panasonic or Pioneer. Not even on the high end Hitachi's.

Having said that, I'm watching CSI as I write this, and it looks pretty darn good!

I generally agree with this sentiment. When I was looking at it in the store, it was right next to the panasonic 42". To me, the panasonic had a noticable difference in black level. Having said that, I stared at both for 15 minutes, and happily walked away with the Akai. While not in the same league on blacks, it was otherwise great looking and it's not in the same league in price either...so I felt I got what I paid for. I've watched mine for a week now. SD from DVDs looks marvellous, SD from Dish, looks understandably poor. I don't fault the Akai or it's scaling...but rather the incredibly lousy res coming from Dish SD channels.

Now that we have covered the black level how does everyone feel about watching standard definition on the Akai. I was worried about what the wife would think and was pleasantly surprised. We have Time Warner with the 8300 DVR and the SD looks dare I say good. We are using the fill mode and on the better channels such as HBO2,HBO3, Discovery HGTV look very good, even the lesser channels like HSN regional sports are fine. The only issue we have is one soap opera (talk to my wife) where the colors are very much brighter than expected during dark scenes. Watched the same SD image on both the HD and SD version of the same channel with no difference.
We are starting to wonder weather to watch the Super Bowl on the Akai in the family room or in the basement on the 100 inch projector, The Akai looks that good. Now if I can find a remote code for the TW remote I will be set...

1. What zoom modes does this tv have. In particular does it have a non-linear zoom to stretch 4:3 to 16:9.

2. Does it have independent memory settings for each input.

3. Does it have discrete codes to select input.