Panasonic claims improved 24p plasma playback

The one-pane-of-glass design marks Panasonic's TC-P50V10 and TC-P54V10.

(Credit: Panasonic)

The ability to properly deal with native 1080p/24 content is a big deal to some videophiles, because it guarantees that a display can capture the correct cadence of film. Panasonic tried and failed to implement 24p with its plasmas last year, but, according to the company, it has improved its processing for this year with the V10 series.

The four-model V10 plasma lineup includes the 50-inch TC-P50V10 ($2,299 MSRP) and the 54-inch TC-P54V10 ($2,699), both due in June, as well as the 58-inch TC-P58V10 and the 65-inch TC-P65V10 (both $TBD), due in August.

Panasonic's V10 models feature so-called 24p Cinematic Playback. Update March 13: According to Panasonic, the V10 and Z1 models will refresh at 96Hz, which should eliminate the flicker in 24p mode that we complained about last year in our reviews of the PZ800U and PZ850U models. On the other hand, the G10 and G15 lines of plasmas will refresh at 48Hz, which was the cause of the flicker we saw last year. In any case, we're looking forward to seeing for ourselves.

The other big step-up feature over the company's G10 series is Digital Cinema Color, which was featured on the PZ850U series from last year. It's designed to faithfully reproduce the Digital Cinema color space, which is wider then the Rec 709 color space of the HD standard. We prefer a color space that most closely matches the color of the original content, however, so we're pleased to see Panasonic has also added THX-display certification on the V10 series, which in our experience comes very close to Rec 709.

As you can see from the image above, the 50-inch and the 54-inch members of the series both feature the "one-pane-of-glass" design we liked so much on Panasonic and LG plasmas from last year. The larger models lack that design element, since their increased weight requires more support, according to Panasonic's rep.

The V10 models also incorporate all of the features of the step-down G10 series, including Viera Cast; the power-saving, high contrast, NEO PDP panel; "infinite black;" and the aforementioned 600Hz subfield drive. Check out our G10 series write-up for more details.

Panasonic plasma TVs photos

Panasonic VieraCast screenshots