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?