Panasonic 50in Plasma HDTV

This Panasonic 50in Plasma HDTV, the TH-50PX50U to give it its proper title, is a 1366 x 768 pixel display with support for EDTV and HDTV (1080i and 720p). It has an HDMI interface for connecting high definition equipment such as cable or satellite boxes or HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, and a contrast ratio of 3000:1. It can display up to 8.58 billion colors.

If you want to use this Panasonic plasma HDTV to view cable HDTV but don't want another set-top box, you can use the in-built CableCard slot, providing your cable supplier supports it.

Other features of the TH-50PX50U worth mentioning are the dual NTSC and ATSC (high definition) tuners and the two 8W per channel speakers. There's also a digital optical output which passes Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound to a suitable amplifier or receiver.

The HDMI interface is useful because it is rapidly being adopted as the standard for connecting high definition equipment and while it doesn't offer improved picture quality over DVI, its inclusion in this Panasonic 42in plasma HDTV is welcome because it will help reduce the clutter in your home theater set-up by incorporating video and audio in one cable.

Its worth noting that the TH-50PX50U doesn't have a PC card or SD card slot so there's no way to view digital photos from your digital camera other than by connecting the camera directly using the S-Video input. In addition to S-Video, there are several other analog inputs: two composite video, two component video, and two analog audio.

There is a sleep timer, which is useful if you’re the kind of person who falls asleep in front of the TV, however there is no online TV guide or picture-in-picture facility.

If you decide to go for this Panasonic 42in plasma HDTV, or any other plasma HDTV, check out our guide to plasma burn-in and how to avoid it.