Panasonic Professional TH-65VX100 Manufacturer's Information

The manufacturer's information about this product

Panasonic’s Design Brief for the TH-65VX100

Our aims, when designing the TH-65VX100 65” professional plasma display panel, were to achieve the highest possible standard of picture reproduction possible to meet the needs of the high end luxury home cinema customer.

We wanted to create a luxury picture with nothing detracting from the image quality when the lights are out, a superb picture under ambient lighting and for the screen to be an object of beauty when not in use. It is clear from the AV Forums review that we have achieved these goals.

To realise this, we adopted a no compromise approach which can be seen by the criteria we specified to make the TH-65VX100 the best high end home cinema plasma display in it’s class.

• Specially Created Plasma Panel.
• The premium 65” panel used in the TH-65VX100 is specially produced and selected for the lowest black level and video noise and the best colour gamut.
• New Panel Drivers.
• The TH-65VX100 uses a sophisticated and unique panel driver circuit to ensure the highest possible performance from the plasma panel. This driver circuit is not used in any other screen, either from Panasonic or any other manufacturer.
• New Colour Filter
• The new colour filter used on the TH-65VX100 has a number of advantages. It allows the wide colour gamut of the panel to shine through. It has enough anti glare/anti reflective properties to ensure a good performance under ambient lighting but without compromising the performance under “cinema” lighting conditions. Some competitors use a different level of anti glare causing a red or purple cast on the screen.
• Class Leading Signal Processing:
• The TH-65VX100’s video processing has been specially developed by Panasonic because none of the commercially available chipsets meet the high specification criteria we set.
• Signal processing should enable the image to be seen as the director, cinematographer and/or lighting cameraman intended, adding or subtracting as little as possible
• The TH-65VX100 processor uses 18 bits and can achieve 7160 level of gradation. The video processing circuits in the TH-65VX100 have been fine tuned specifically to achieve this. At the time of writing, no scaler or receiver manufacturer is using 18 bit digital processing.
• Modular Slot Input system for flexible connectivity:
• All the high end audio visual equipment the user wishes to connect is catered for through provision of 4 HDMI, 1 component and one PC Input supplied as standard. For extra flexibility, the PC input will take a component or RGB video signal. Each of the two input HDMI boards can be replaced either by a dual link HD-SDI board (for studio use by broadcasters) or a dual link DVI board (for serious computer users).

Panasonic’s Comment on the AV Forums Review.

The TH-65VX100 supplied to AV Forums for review was an exclusive pre-production sample. For the pre-production sample, all specifications and factory settings were not finalised and some settings were not fully optimised for it’s ultimate performance. This plasma display is aimed at the discerning high end home cinema customer and therefore we are confident the production version of the TH-65VX100 is capable of a outperforming any screen in it’s class,

Colour Gamut

The colour gamut of the TH-65VX100 was correctly noted as being wider than the standard ITU Recommendation BT709. As a home cinema product, we were striving for excellence, and finally achieved a colour gamut close to that recommended for Digital Cinema. This is the colour gamut deemed to be closest to that achieved by film and helps to give the TH-65VX100 that elusive “film look”.

Colour Management

In terms of colour management, we have added a colour management system that errs on the side of caution. It works to correct any tendency to inaccurate colour reproduction only in darker areas of the picture. As most calibration and measuring systems do not work reliably when the brightness is low, the effect is difficult or impossible to measure. The fact that the picture is so natural in dark areas shows that the system works

480i and 575/576i support

It is true that there is no support for 480i and 575i through the HDMI inputs. However there are two other inputs, one is component via 3 phono/RCA connectors and the other is either RGB or component via the 15 pin VGA connector. Interlaced standard definition inputs such as 480i and 575i are served by these inputs.