The Philips panel was great for the price in its day. Still today it can still be called to have a great picture .. even in my store after a year of being on all day long. This panel uses fujitsu glass and fujitsu as its main oem. Although not a fujitsu lacking their scaler they are just one main manufacture for glass for PDP's. Sadly Philips has not updated this panel for so long it is being left behind. A dinosaur now, there are just better panels on the market... but still not the same price.
The Pioneer panel on the other hand was not a company that produce anything new for years... now finally we have their new panels with Deep Encased Cells that increase phosphor area by 40% or more and prevent light leakage from neighboring cells, compared to the low rows of cells used in other PDP's. Luminous efficiency is much higher than before which means the screen is much brighter... How much brighter? Well just say there is not a panel on the market today that is brighter then the new Pioneer PDP models. Also the speakers can go on the bottom or the side... woohoo!
Keep in mind, you will always get recommendations from someone to buy something. Joe says Panasonic, Bob says Samsung, blah blah.... A Pioneer is one of the few companies that produce their complete panel and now hold a crown in their new design. Contrast ratio means very little folks... Buy a TV for that you may as well buy a AMP for power. There is no math behind Contrast ratio... Any company can rate their panel at 3000.1 if they figure out how. Big numbers means big sales. The fact that no other panel on the market has the CMD rating that a Pioneer has of 1100 makes this panel hold a crown.
The only other panel I would recommend would be a Fujitsu. Almost perfectly calibrated out of the box, using the Advanced video movement this PDP produces one of the best pictures and longest lasting plasmas on the market. An inventor of plasma panels and the 2nd brightest in the world you would not go wrong with either one. Great sub to a pioneer if you do not want the stupid box. I have been selling AV components for years and personally own a 30WS ED Fujitsu for normal TV and DVD's in my bedroom... while any customer that has purchased a Fujitsu from me has had not one single complaint. Keep in mind about reviews online. Fujitsu will not sell online so you will not see many reviews good about the panel. Emmy award winning panel.. online reviews are crap do personal research.
Cya- Kevin