Pioneer PDP-4270HD

The Future Looks Bright

I recently had the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with Pioneer’s seventh generation plasma television. Residing at the bottom of Pioneer’s reputable line of plasma TVs, the PDP-4270HD is their smallest and least expensive set. But don’t take this to mean that it’s a cheapo model. This is a Pioneer, a top plasma manufacturer. By no means is this short on features, build quality, or performance. It boasts the absolute lastest in Plasma display technology and manufacturing.

Features

The PDP-4270 sports a laundry list of great features and inputs, giving it extraordinary flexibility.

The list of inputs is fairly exhaustive:

* 2 HDMI with Audio Support
* 3 Component
* 4 Composite
* 2 S-Video
* Antenna A & B
* USB (Mass Storage Class) for connecting a digital camera
* PC Input

I'm sure there are people who own that much gear, but wow! That's a lot of inputs! Conveniently, about a third of them are located on the side of the unit for easy accessiblity. Outputs include analog & optical digital audio for output to your Dolby Digital Receiver. It even has a Subwoofer output so you don't even need a HT receiver to get the full audio spectrum.

It sports two tuners - one NTSC (analog) and one ATSC (digital off-the-air). There's also a cable card slot for those who have that service available to them.

Another interesting feature of this seventh generation plasma is a 1080P input, although it is not a 1080P capable display. It accepts a 1080P signal and downscales it to 720P. The idea here is that while the screen does not fully support 1080P, you will get some enhanced picture quality from 1080P sources. So when it comes time to upgrade to that next generation DVD player you will see some of the benefit of that 1080P output. At the same time, you're not paying the premium price tag of a 1080P display. It's also been argued that it can be difficult to even see the difference between 1080i and 1080p, but that's another discussion.
Viewing Impressions
To get started, I made some basic adjustments to set per AudioReview.com's resident HDTV guru, Edtyct. My sources were a Denon DVD-2200 DVD Player and my Comcast High Definition cable box. I connected them both to the television using component video cables.

With high-definition sources, the Pioneer was just plain gorgeous, and difficult to fault. The televisions only limitation was the signal feeding it. The better the signal, the more incredible the picture. With good high definition material, the picture seems to be nearly flawless.

With HD movies such as "Walk the Line", the picture was sharp, colors were rich and full, but at the same time, there was a a very pleasing subtlety to the overall presentation. It was real and filmlike, and in a way, calming. It didn't have that over the top brightness and vivid color that you might associate with a high definition plasma.
Moving on to sports was an entirely different, but still very pleasing experience. I watched a lot of football, both NFL and NCAA in the short two weeks I had with the unit. Color and detail were simply outstanding. A friend watching with me commented: "This looks better than real life!" and that seemed to sum up the Pioneer's performance.

With lower resolution sources like conventional DVD and standard definition TV, however, the Pioneer was mixed bag. It revealed the limits of the DVD format, something I hadn’t experienced on my smaller 30” Sony CRT HDTV. With the smaller screen of the 30” Sony, I was always quite happy and impressed with the performance of my Denon DVD-2200 DVD player, even compared with high definition movies available to me via my Comcast cable service. I had been very happy with this player, and I was excited to try it out with the Pioneer. Unfortunately, the results were not great. The Pioneer revealed in stark detail the limitations of the DVD format. Compared to HD, the picture was flat, dull and lifeless, even with a remastered “Superbit” and other good quality DVDs. Even my best-looking DVDs were exposed. I had previously believed that I was satisfied with today’s standard definition DVDs. The Pioneer left me thirsting for an HD disc player.

Performance with standard definition television was much better than my Sony CRT. A common - and valid - knock on high defintion televisions is that they are often terrible with standard def programming. HDTVs have trouble upscaling the very limited video data of standard definition programs to their higher resolution displays. The HDTV has to extrapolate and essentially “invent” data to fill the greatly increased screen resolution. The results are often less than stellar.

With all this in mind, I was expecting standard-def programming content to really stink, but I was in fact pleasantly surprised. It still wasn’t as good as a good standard definition analog set, but it looked quite good.

Issues

The Pioneer's performance was difficult to fault, especially with HD content, but I had a few issues.

Poorly laid out remote. The remote is extremely long, and the buttons are very awkwardly placed. For example, the volume and channel buttons were at the very bottom of the remote, meaning that you couldn’t hold the remote and change the volume and channel with the same hand. The great length of the remote would inevitably fall out of your hand. In addition, other key buttons were in odd places, and you had hold the remote in one hand, scan it for the button you were looking for, and press it with the other button. It seemed as though absolutely zero effort went into the ergonomics. I tend to use Comcast's 3-in1 remote for most vieiwing, so this isn't a huge issue. Just a bit frustrating considering the sophistication and cost of the unit.

Confusing Aspect ratio options. I found the different setting for setting the aspect ratio somewhat confusing. With my DVD player, the Pioneer seemed to default to a setting which stretched the screen vertically. The different options on the remote were somewhat confusing as well, with terms like “standard wide” “standard cinema” and “user wide”. I could never really tell which one was the unaltered signal, and no matter what setting I chose, it always seemed that I was watching a distorted picture of some kind.

Loud buzz. My biggest complaint about the set was a loud buzz emanating from the set almost all the time. The longer the set was on the, the worse it got. Trying to watch late at night at low volume was nearly impossible as the buzz from the set would over power the volume. This was the most damning flaw, and the only one that make me hesitant to purchase the set. True, my room is probably too small for the set and i was likely sitting too close.
Summing Up

In my limited time with this plasma, it was easy to see that it is an exquisite set and a very worthy centerpiece to a serious home theater system. Performance with high definition content is nothing short of astounding, and standard definition doesn't disappoint. It seemed to fall short with conventional DVD's, but my two year old DVD player (ancient by today's technology standards) and the limited resolution of the DVD itself must bear some of this blame. In terms of overall features and usability, it's a fully featured set that leaves little to complain about. The only issue that would cause me to hesitate from purchasing is a constant buzz, which was a bit overwhelming in my small room. All in all, it's a fantastic performer, and portends a very exciting future for high definition television.

Pioneer PDP-508XD

With so many different TVs doing much the same thing, it can be difficult to separate the best from the rest. But Pioneer's 50-inch plasma work of art is undeniably that - the best looking and most technologically advanced television with the best picture ever produced. But hold your horses, because it won't come cheap! (Compare Prices)

The current trend in television technology and sales shows LCD TVs are far more popular than plasma, with most manufacturers opting to concentrate on the former whilst still producing a limited run in larger screen sizes of the latter. Not so Pioneer, which has opted to concentrate solely on its plasma line-up with simply amazing results. As the HD specialist website hdtvorg.co.uk comments, “Over the years Pioneer have built a reputation as one of the finest producers of Plasma TVs in the world.”

The 50-inch PDP-508XD is the middle screen size - alongside 42 and 60-inch models - and represents the company's eighth generation of plasma technology that brings with it a total redesign of the technology from the roots up.

Design-wise the 508XD wears Pioneer's trademark and extremely cool glossy piano-black surround, uncluttered with logos and control keys, keeping to the current trend for minimalist chic. But its true beauty is only evident once you plug it in, turn it on and breeze through the simple set-up menus. The picture you are presented with is utterly and completely beguiling in its quality and vibrancy.

Branded as Project KURO (Japanese for black), Pioneer's new TV range has been created with all new technology to solve plasma television's biggest sticking point - accurately reproducing blacks without losing contrast, brightness and colour reproduction elsewhere onscreen. And it does just that, creating black levels 80% deeper than in previous models, resulting in an astonishing contrast ratio of 16,000:1.

What this translates into is a picture that is virtually flawless when hooked up to a good High-Definition source like a Blu-ray DVD player, and not far off when fed standard definition images like regular analogue and digital programmes. Not content with that though, Pioneer has endowed the 508XD with its usual processing technologies for picture enhancement as well as the all-new HD Digital Film Direct. This essentially means that with this TV alone you will be watching exactly what the director intended you to see, as it plays source material at the 24-frames-per-second it was filmed at as opposed to the sped up 25-frames-per-second that most PAL and DVDs are played - so footage is smoother and dialogue is exactly at the pitch at which it was recorded.

Well connected
The 508XD comes with a full array of connections, including three HDMI inputs for connecting all your HD peripherals, three SCARTS, component video, S-Video, PC input, digital audio out, USB 2.0 and common interface slot. Such connectivity only increases the diversity of the Pioneer as a display for every conceivable viewing purpose, making it a truly versatile and comprehensive screen. There's also a digital TV tuner incorporated featuring Electronic Programme Guide.

Home cinema
When it comes to bypassing a trip to the cinema in favour of watching films at home, you're going to need some serious kit. The 508XD mixes the aesthetics needed to make it a viable everyday television with the image quality of a high-end installation. Its bountiful connection options mean you can hook up pretty much any next-generation or current AV peripheral to it, and that means you have access to 50 inches of pure visual perfection - the ultimate home cinema screen.

Pioneer PDP-507XD

You’ve got to admire Pioneer’s stubbornness. For while every other traditional plasma supporter in town – even die-hards like Panasonic and Fujitsu – now produces LCD screens as well, Pioneer is sticking doggedly to its 100 per cent plasma guns. Only last week on a visit to Pioneer in Japan the powers that be reiterated the fact that they simply don’t see LCD as a true home cinema option, and have no roadmap for introduce LCD somewhere down the line.



Of course, such purity of vision would fall rather flat if Pioneer didn’t have the products to back its fine words up. But thankfully every previous Pioneer plasma we’ve reviewed has convinced us of the plasma cause with ease. Still, with other plasma and, dare we say it, LCD screens coming on leaps and bounds over recent months, we can’t help but wonder if Pioneer’s latest plasma generation can remain ahead of the pack.

At the top of the new range (until a 63in model arrives early next year) sits the PDP-507XD: a 50in model boasting all of Pioneer’s tried and trusted plasma innovations, plus a few new tricks thrown in for good measure.

These tricks kick off with an improved take on Pioneer’s trusty Intelligent DRE processing system, which is claimed to enhance sharpness, brightness and contrast levels. Then there’s a brand new set of Intelligent Colour algorithms, aimed at delivering more subtle and therefore realistic colour shading; an improved version of Pioneer’s revolutionary Direct Colour Filter panel design, which does away with the ‘secondary offset image’ visible on standard plasma TVs if you watch them from the side; and improvements to the screen’s phosphors reckoned to make the 507XD’s colour spectrum around nine per cent wider than that of its predecessors.

It’s worth reminding you that these improvements come on top of two key Pioneer innovations we’ve seen before. First there’s the Deep Waffle Rib design of the plasma chamber array, which increases the height of the plasma chamber ‘walls’ so there’s less light and colour contamination between neighbouring pixels. Second there’s Pioneer’s patented Crystal Emissive Layer, which improves the efficiency of each cell’s discharge cycle to deliver radical contrast and brightness improvements.

Getting the 507XD set up is pretty much as simple or complex as you want it to be. Technophobes can just select an appropriate video preset and that’s it. But for the more adventurous of you a lengthy set of onscreen menu options gives you control of almost every element of the set’s pictures. And if you really want to push the boat out, the screen even carries the facility to have its images calibrated to perfectly suit your viewing environment by a professional Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) representative.

The home for all this high-falutin’ stuff is a deeply attractive one. Its use of a gloss black bezel is hardly original, perhaps, but the approach is so minimal and the build quality so impressive that it really stands out from the crowd.



Connectivity is extremely impressive, too, including as it does twin HDMIs, component video jacks, a D-Sub PC port, a subwoofer line out, three Scarts, and two jacks there to support a built-in digital (Freeview) tuner: a Common Interface slot for adding subscription TV cards, and a digital audio output for piping potential Freeview Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks to an AV receiver.

The only slight disappointment at this stage is the inability of the HDMIs to accept 1080p signals at 50 or 60Hz. This means they won’t take pictures from a 1080p upscaling DVD player. However, unlike most rival TVs, the 507XD’s HDMIs take 1080p/24 – the purest form of 1080p output delivered from one or two upcoming high-end Blu-ray players. Including Pioneer’s, of course!

We had our doubts as we started testing the 507XD about whether Pioneer’s 7th generation of plasma TVs could really improve over the might of gen six. But the 507XD is clearly better than anything Pioneer has done before.

Particularly jaw-dropping is the advance Pioneer has made with colour reproduction. For instance, famously tricky scenes for colour, such as Robert Downey Jr’s walk around a Hollywood party complete with fish-tanks and ‘artistic dancers’ in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (shame the film is so awful – ed.), the range and naturalism of the 507XD’s palette is quite dazzling, delivering subtleties of tone and blend simply not witnessed before on a flat TV.

Furthermore, as quality time spent in the company of the Xbox 360’s Viva Pinata proves, this new-found colour finesse comes on top of the same excellent vibrancy and fulsome saturations introduced with Pioneer’s 6th-gen screens.

The 507XD also improves over its 506XDE predecessor with its black levels. Dark movie scenes suggest a touch more sheer black level depth, and a fairly significant increase in greyscale subtlety. This latter point makes the picture more believable generally, and richer in scale and shadow detail.



When we saw Pioneer’s 6th-gen screens, we thought they were practically devoid of video noise. Turns out we were wrong, for while they might still compare favourably in the noise department with the pictures from just about every rival’s 50in plasma screens, they look almost rough compared with the utterly pristine, rock solid images delivered by the 507XD.

This arguably marks the end of the improvements that the 507XD delivers over Pioneer’s 6th-gen screens. But let’s not forget that as well as being significant in themselves, they also join the myriad strengths – such as outstanding sharpness and fine detailing, wide viewing angles, and well-scaled standard definition sources – that made the gen-six screens pretty much state of the art when they appeared earlier this year.

Moving on to the 507XD’s audio, the optional speakers Pioneer makes for the screen are pretty much as outstanding as its pictures. The purity, dynamism and frequency range they produce, even during a raucous action scene like the fight with the T-Rexes in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, wouldn’t sound out of place on a separates system.

Verdict

With LCD doing a frighteningly good job of winning over consumer hearts and minds, Pioneer has arguably never needed a truly outstanding plasma TV more than it needs one right now. Just as well, then, that it has delivered the goods in emphatic fashion with the 507XD: a genuine contender for the title of ‘finest mainstream flat TV ever’, and nothing short of a steal at its current £2,033 (£2,349 with stand and speakers) asking price.

Pioneer PDP-5000EX

We know what you’re thinking: just what makes Pioneer think it can get away with charging a cool £5,370 (and that’s the cheapest price we could find) for a 50in plasma TV, when similar-sized models can now be had elsewhere for barely a third as much? Well, the answer’s actually pretty simple: the 5000EX is the first 50in plasma ever with a genuine 1,920 x 1,080 ‘Full HD’ pixel count. No fancy pixel-‘creating’ processing, no chicanery with shared electrodes and the like (a la Fujitsu/Hitachi’s Alternate Lighting of Surfaces technology) – just 2,073,600 real pixels.



If you’re now puzzled as to why it’s taken so long for plasma to deliver the full HD pixel monty when LCD has been doing it – and on smaller screens at that – for some time now, the answer lies in the sheer physical space demands of the gas chambers that make up a plasma TV’s pictures. It’s just not possible to fit 1,920 x 1,080 traditional plasma chambers onto a screen as ‘small’ as 50in. Which is why Pioneer has had to develop new plasma chambers barely half the size of traditional ones for the 5000EX, incorporating a groundbreaking T-shaped electrode design that Pioneer claims was the only way they could stop the smaller plasma chambers from misfiring.

Now it’s becoming clear how much innovation has gone into making the 5000EX possible, that six grand price arguably starts to make more sense. Having said that, Pioneer seems to realise that a healthy chunk of the 5000EX’s target market is likely to be the professional displays/broadcast market, for it ships minus the built-in speakers and tuner you’d expect of a truly domesticated machine.

To our thinking, though, the lack of these two normally key TV basics isn’t the great hardship it first appears. After all, surely anyone considering forking out nearly £5.4k on a TV will a) be driving it with only the best sources, such as a Sky HD receiver (which makes a tuner unnecessary) and b) be using it with some sort of external audio system (which makes built-in speakers unnecessary).

Aside from the lack of any tuner support, the 5000EX’s connections roster looks seriously healthy. Particularly outstanding is the provision of three digital video inputs, comprising two HDMIs and one DVI-D. And yes, all three of these jacks can take digital HD signals right up to 1080p – including 1080p’s various 24, 50 and 60Hz configurations. In other words, the screen’s compatible with both the 1080p/50/60 signals put out by upscaling DVD players, and the 1080p/24 signals seemingly favoured by Blu-ray/HD-DVD HD players. Sweet.

Connections also include five BNC jacks for either component video or analogue PC connection, and S-Video and composite video terminals for anyone daft enough to use such relatively low rent options. Plus the DVI jack is capable of taking digital PC as well as digital video signals.

Aside from the smaller plasma chambers, the screen has been constructed using pretty much the same techniques used to such grand home cinema effect on Pioneer’s more domesticated plasma TVs. There’s the same Deep Waffle Rib design to reduce light seepage between pixels; the same PureBlack crystal layer between the plasma chambers and the screen to increase the chambers’ rate of discharge and thus improve brightness and contrast; and the same Direct Colour Filter screen system, whereby the traditional thick plasma glass is replaced by a thinner, single layer structure that dispenses with the offset ‘ghost’ image visible while watching normal plasma glass from an angle.

What’s more, facilities are provided for having the screen calibrated to video perfection by the International Screen Federation (ISF), while the screen’s Pure Drive 2 HD image processing is also lifted directly from Pioneer’s home-targetted screens.
Unable to resist any longer, we fired up the 5000EX with a broad selection of 1080-line HD sources – including a Sky HD receiver, a Marantz DV9600 1080p upscaling DVD player and an Xbox 360 set to output 1080i. And it’s fair to say our jaws pretty much hit the floor in astonishment.

HD picture quality is nothing short of stunning in all kinds of ways – though arguably the single greatest impact comes from its phenomenal sharpness and clarity, which rivals the very best available from the LCD world, and outdoes anything previously seen from a 50in plasma. Naturally this helps the 5000EX deliver awesome results with highly detailed Xbox 360 games like Test Drive Unlimited, but arguably its impact is actually greatest with video sources like an HD football match, since we’re just not used to such fodder looking so remarkably pristine.

Obviously the extra clarity and texture in the 5000EX’s picture is partly down to the screen’s extra native pixel count. But it also clearly helps that the screen can map 1,920 x 1,080 sources directly to its own pixels, rather than having to use potentially messy scaling processing to ‘downgrade’ true 1080 sources to fit a lower resolution like 1,366 x 768.

The 5000EX’s high pixel count can also be seen in the outstanding subtlety of its colour blends and shading, as the extra resolution makes it possible to portray much finer gradations.

Other more general strengths familiar from Pioneer’s lower resolution plasmas are thankfully also still in evidence. Black levels, for instance, are among the best the flat TV world has to offer, thanks to their combination of profound depth, and retention of subtle shadow details. In this respect in particular the 5000EX outperforms any LCD TV we’ve seen, and so provides arguably the most telling argument for choosing this screen over all other current full HD flat TV models – so long as you’ve got £5.4k to spare.

Colours are superb too, having sufficient vibrancy to power off the screen, while also retaining tones that look effortlessly realistic and involving. Finally we have to say that while certainly not perfect, standard definition pictures actually hold up noticeably better on the 5000EX than on most 1080-line LCD TVs we’ve seen.

So is there anything wrong with the 5000EX’s pictures? Only that the screen seems unusually susceptible to plasma’s screenburn problems, where prolonged exposure to a really bright image segment such as the Sky News channel logo can lead to a shadow of that image being ‘burned’ permanently into your screen.

Verdict

Provided you’re extra careful to avoid screenburn, especially during the first 100 hours of the screen’s life, and provided you can afford it, you can snap up a PDP-5000EX safe in the knowledge that it delivers simply the finest 50in pictures we’ve yet seen.

Pioneer PDP-508XD

When the wraps finally came off Pioneer's 8th-generation plasma screens, the world gasped. Even though still in prototype form, attendees at the 2007 CES in Las Vegas were stunned at the impenetrable black level and astounding vibrancy of its colours.



The images looked every bit as good as Toshiba's (then upcoming) SED tech. We weren't too surprised, though: we'd already had a sneak preview months before in Pioneer's R&D labs in Tokyo.

But would the power of these prototypes make it to production reality? In a nutshell, the answer is an emphatic 'yes'.
Black magic

Interestingly, the 50-inch PDP 508XD does not use a 1920 x 1080 panel (these are coming later this year). Actual resolution is 1365 x 768, but if ever there was an argument that pixels alone do not make for a great picture, then this set is it.

What really sets this screen apart from ever other plasma we've ever seen is the unyielding solidity of its blacks.

Take, for instance, the opening space battle of Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith recorded in HD from Sky. The space backdrop to the action has never looked more convincingly, cinematically emphatically ebony than it does on the 508XD. Even Panasonic's best efforts can't match it. And there really is no overstating just what a dramatic impact this has on the dynamism of the picture you're watching.

But its not a fake, dull black: the pictures contain endless amounts of tonal and detail subtleties, ensuring that they look like natural, fully-integrated parts of the picture rather than gaping black holes ripped out of it (a phenomenon seen with many rival screens).

Don't imagine that the 508XD's black level is the only thing it's got going for it. Also stunning is the set's colour fidelity. It's a simple TV picture law that without a proper black level, a TV can't produce a truly natural colour palette. So by advancing the black level, it follows that the 508XD's colours should look richer, more dynamic and more believable. And so it proves.

From the lush digitised colours of Forza 2 on the Xbox 360 right down to the slightly subdued, naturalistic tones of EastEnders, the 508XD constantly gets colours looking exactly right. Even the rich reds of the Sky News channel actually look red, making all previous plasma attempts at showing them look, well, orange.

Pioneer claim an outrageous contrast ratio of 16000:1 - our Tech labs real-world test reveals it to be 1300:1 after calibration, which is blisteringly good.

Four elements aid this revolutionary black level: Pioneer's deeply encased 'waffle rib' plasma cell structure reduces the chance of light and colour seepage between neighbouring pixels; Ultra Black Crystal Layer wizardry increases the efficiency of the cells so that they charge and discharge at triple speed; a Direct Colour Filter soaks up ambient reflections from your room, allowing dark scenes to look much more punchy; finally its image processing engine responds differently to dark scenes than it does to bright ones.

You might also gain some extra black level benefit if you take advantage of the 508XD's facility for having its pictures optimised professionally by a qualified Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) engineer.

To reduce horizontal juddering, there's a 'Smooth' mode, but I felt that while it sharpened moving objects, it actually introduced too much stuttering for comfort.

With the Advance mode engaged during 1080/24p viewing, courtesy of Pioneer's BDP-LX70 Blu-ray player, the clarity and smoothness of the motion handling improves significantly.

Even though the screen has a native resolution of 1365 x 768, its HD images contain absolutely stunning amounts of fine detail information. During close-ups of Daniel Craig's face in Casino Royale Blu-ray, I felt strangely reassured to see tiny blemishes in his complexion that I'd never really noticed before.

Only some of this sharpness is down to sheer pixel-precise detail presentation, though. There's no doubt that this TV's extra subtlety with colour, extra clarity from 1080p/24fps handling, and extra contrast all also play a part in bringing even the tiniest image elements to life.

Yes, that's right: the set's three HDMI inputs are all capable of accepting 1080p in its 50Hz, 60Hz and 24fps incarnations. The 24fps compatibility is particularly significant in Pioneer's case, as it makes the screen able to take the 'source direct', 1080/24p feeds from the brand's BDP-LX70 Blu-ray player. What's more, the 508XD has a 72Hz 'Advance' PureCinema refresh mode designed to work with the player's 1080/24p mode.

It would be easy to dismiss Pioneer's hype over these new screens. But the reality is the brand really has reinvented plasma to a substantial degree. The set is darker, more dynamic than any previous Pioneer plasma and delivers a knock-out blow to comparably sized LCDs. It simply demands to be auditioned.

Pioneer PDP-428XD

'Always bet on black', they say. And Pioneer seems to agree with this adage, as it's staking arguably its entire future on a belief that the black level performance of its new TVs is so remarkable that a notoriously tight-fisted UK buying public will be compelled to shell out premium prices to get it.

To find out whether this gamble will pay off for Pioneer, we got our hands on the PDP-428XD: a 42-inch model costing a considerable sum that does not even include a desktop stand or wall bracket. Can this plasma really be so much better than anything else around that it justifies parting with such a sizeable amount of money?

The inevitable starting point has to be with the 428XD's supposedly revolutionary black levels. The screen quotes a contrast ratio of 16000:1 - the highest yet seen on a flat TV. In fact, Pioneer is so confident in the ground-breaking black levels of its new TVs that it's calling them Project KURO (meaning black in Japanese).

Four main innovations are responsible for the 428XD's apparent black level prowess. First, a new Ultra Black Crystal Layer element incorporated into the screen radically boosts the efficiency with which the plasma cells discharge, resulting in quicker response times and swifter white/black transitions.

Pioneer's so-called Deep Waffle Rib pixel structure has an important function too, as it prevents leakages of light and colour from one plasma cell to another.

Then there's the company's Direct Colour Filter, which replaces the usual thick glass front of plasma screens with a material which soaks up ambient reflections, making the panel lighter in the process.

Finally, Pioneer has focused the 428XD's image processing on responding in very specific ways when dealing separately with dark and light scenes.

Black level isn't the 428XD's only claim to fame, though. For starters, it can be professionally calibrated to suit your specific viewing conditions by an Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) engineer. Indeed, this could improve black levels even more.

Also intriguing is the 428XD's handling of the 1080p/24fps format used to master most HD films on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Other screens can handle this format too from high-end Blu-ray players that can output it. But the 428XD unusually carries a 72Hz playback frequency option, which permits 24fps sources to be played with a minimum of messy processing fuss.

Connections, meanwhile, include a salutory three HDMIs, a PC input, and a USB 2 for viewing digital photos via Pioneer's impressive Home Gallery, while other key features include unusually sophisticated MPEG, Mosquito, 3D, and Field noise reduction routines.

Although the 428XD's remote is gorgeous and its onscreen menus are slick, you really need to familiarise yourself fully with the TV's hefty manual if you're going to get the very best results from its countless, but sometimes quite technical, settings.

So are the 428XD's pictures really as revolutionary as Pioneer reckons? Er, yes, actually.

Leading the way, inevitably, is the TV's black level response. Which is, by miles, the finest yet seen on a flat TV. The darkest corners of the darkest scenes in the darkest movies all look absolutely, completely and utterly black. There's no greyness, no blue tones, no greyish dot crawl... just black.

What's more, dark picture areas contain more shadow detailing than the vast majority of the TV's rivals.

These truly revolutionary black levels are enough in themselves to deliver the most believable and cinematic picture we've seen on a flat TV. But they're hardly the end of the 428XD's story.

Colours, too, are a revelation. The dazzling black levels are offset by a wider colour range that result in colour tones both extremely vibrant and more natural than any seen on a plasma TV before. For instance, reds actually look red rather than orange and greens look real rather than slightly radioactive.

The 428XD also excels with its motion handling. The clarity and smoothness with which it shows fast moving objects leaves all LCD rivals for dead. Plus there's no sign of plasma's potential problems with dithering noise over in-motion skin tones, and the set's 72Hz mode reproduces 1080p/24Hz HD transfers with scarcely a trace of judder or 'correction'.

The set's 72Hz handling of 1080p/24Hz output from Pioneer's Blu-ray player also benefits from remarkable cleanliness, as the relatively straightforward 24Hz-into-72Hz conversion throws up negligible processing noise.

Next, even though the 428XD isn't a full HD screen (Pioneer isn't introducing full HD Kuro until September), its pictures are phenomenally sharp.

In fact, with their pristine motion handling, black levels and colours, the 428XD's images arguably look crisper and more detailed than those of many full HD LCDs, especially when there's anything moving in the picture.

Is there anything bad to say about the pictures? Not unless you're obsessed with HD enough to wait and save for the full HD Kuros.

As usual with Pioneer, the quality of the 428XD's speakers is seriously impressive and at times approaches the high standards for which its dedicated audio products are so highly regarded.

With even Panasonic now breaking the £1,000 barrier with its latest 42-inch plasmas, the 428XD undoubtedly looks expensive at £1,800. But then shouldn't you expect to pay a premium price for a product that genuinely breaks new performance ground?