I am following this Kuro "Hail to the King", "Best panel ever"....BS since quite a while and I am thinking to myself - what a bunch of semi- or kindergarten or want to be grownups...
Bashing every Plasma or LCD just to justify their spending to get 1080p or only 720p for that matter - what a joke...LoL
Seems you people spend every night watching sin city or a black dog hunts a black cat at midnight to indulge in totally black?!!
Fact is - while a Kuro is a nice panel its far from the holy grail. Comparable to more or less any other panel its dim (no even as bright as a 2 year old 9th gen panasonic), it cannot produce any white (try to see a nature movie with snow in it, the best you can ever get is blue or gray for that matter..) The 6010 is even dimmer and SD doesn't even look as good as a 7th gen 480p panasonic - I know a cheap crappy brand but I still love it.
Kuro is also unsharp. Put it beside a samsung 5084 and you will notice that in a second, no matter if you put a 5080 or a 5010. Some people call this better processing - LoL, you don't see noise etc. because its just to blurry to see it.
Or bring your better half to a store - she will tell you which set has nicer colors or looks sharper...I bet 99 % of the time it WONT be a pioneer!
So whats all the hype with the big following crowd? Whats all the bashing and trying to discourage any other panel owner to sell his to buy a pioneer? Do you all own stocks in Pioneer?
It might be wise for Pioneer to slowly get out of the plasma market, thats probably why they joined with Sharp to produce far cheaper and more reliable LCDs and to make a little more money to keep them alive....a few years more and there will be no plasma anyway.
If you want a good plasma now worth the money without all the buzzing buy a samsung 5084 (or the coming panasonics) - you will get a sharper display with nice popping colors, no buzz and double the warranty for half the price and compared to a 5080 double the resolution. And while its not as black as a kuro its much brighter and far better suited for normal watching in case you ignite one candle in your super dark room to see all black - yes there actually is also image information on the other end of the scale but it seems that has been forgotten by the kuro fan boys...I wonder why?
Funny to watch the Kuro commercial on all the other displays. While Kuro is the blackest it cuts off more image information than any other set - the floating man with the sword is actually standing on a floor, no he cannot fly but on Kuro he can, because that information where he is standing is just cut off (or black). On the cheap half price samsung or panasonic beside he is standing on a grey floor, at least more true but not as spectacular.
Some people call this "great shadow detail" but thats just another hype - even my 7th gen. panasonic has more shadow detail than a kuro. Great contrast but missing information - many people have fallen for this. Looks soo spectacular. Pioneer cleverly adjusted the cut off point very high , other reviewers have noticed that, but they have been shutdown by the crowd and the best panel ever reviewers.
Try to see an animated movie like chicken little on a kuro and sony XBR beside it or samsung 71 series - it will look sooo boring and washed out and very dull and VERY unsharp!
Not that the LCDs are better (actually for that kind of cartoonish movies they are) but hey its just a perspective what to watch.
Oh I forgot, the kuro will look much better at home while all others will look much worst at home than in the store! Or if that doesn't help get it ISF calibrated!
Imagine spending a fortune to get the cheapest 1080p plasma ever sold by pioneer (still has an msrp of 5K!) to spend another fortune to have it professionally calibrated (otherwise its not usable...LoL).
BUT the best ever discussion is the 720p versus 1080p debate to justify the super expensive pio 5080 - its like defending a V6 mustang against a shelby cobra, sure both can legally only drive 70 on the highway...so they are equal...everything else is equal right?!....LoL.
1080p has twice the resolution and it makes no difference if you don't want to see it by sitting far enough from the set (remember the cheapest ever pio 1080P costs almost twice as much as the competition so keep bashing the other sets...).
Actually I am sitting far enough from my 480p set so I don't even need 720p for that matter, why the hell did they ever develop HDTV when you just need to move far enough....
People seem to forget that its not just resolution there is also a perception of depth (3D) and scaling. To scale to 720P (after upscaling from 480 to 1080 watching SD dvds) is just not very practical and surely produces more artifacts than just leaving it at 1080....so the much better scaler in a pio 5080 is really necessary - after all it has also sooo much more work to do because there is nothing native 720p other than a few tv programs but no hd/dvd or blu ray.
Of course since I don't own a Kuro and therefore have none at home and not ISF calibrated anyway I don't know what I am talking about? I have seen them MANY times in different stores in different states, also Elite sets which were calibrated etc. They LOOK nice and in many cases spectacular with the right program material - but not always. I have seen other spectacular looking sets for almost half the price.....and I still like my ancient age panasonic 7th gen. professional display - there is NO BUZZ even a few inches away and I bet it will still work fine after the kuro fan boys have thrown their sets away because they could not stand the noise or the other problems or the sets just broke - hey after all a kuro is NOT and NEVER will be as reliable as a panasonic - keep bashing!
So you Kuro fan boys keep watching sin city all night and turn up the volume louder than the buzzing - but don't ignite a candle....