Pioneer Plasma PDP-LX 608G

When it comes to flat panels, we at Tech2 try and mop up every brand in the market for a review, sooner or later. In the case of Pioneer TVs, we've been following their trail, and unfortunately there has been no real footprint in India, until now. Alpha Radios, New Delhi, claim distributorship, and have generously sent us their high end, largest size plasma screen in stock. It looks magnificent in our labs...

Design and Features
The bezel is black all over, and straight edged like a ruler. The finish is glossy, across the board, all the way to the thick block-like stand. The stand too is flat and rectangular, thus giving the TV a very heavy duty look. Speaking of heavy, this beast will require two healthy men to lug it around. It’s definitely one of the heavier units out there. The right bottom edge, contains a row of tiny round push buttons for power and navigation.

The connections are scattered all over the back, and this model has few of them facing downwards, mainly the 3 HDMI ins. Others like the component in and stereo audio out are positioned on a lower panel facing straight out. There is also a USB input and PC (D-sub) in. As usual the left side panel also contains few connections like headphone out and composite video.

There are spring clip style speaker outs on the back panel; 2 channels for a stereo output directly to two speakers. The total power provided is 34 watts, which is decent enough power for a medium sized room. The plasma panel is an 8th generation Kuro panel and screen size is 60 inches with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. The contrast ratio is 20,000:1. It's got something called Advanced CEL (Crystal Emissive Layer) to reproduce deeper blacks. It has Field Noise Reduction, Block Noise Reduction, Mosquito Noise Reduction as features accessible from the menu.