Fudoh wrote:As stated below, for the last 5+ years all 720p plasmas from all manufacturers were anamorphic 1024x768.
XGA has always been the standard on plasma panels in the 40/42" class. HDReady in the 50" class meant 1366x768 though and this has been a standard for many, many years. Only after Panasonic ditched HDReady completely a few years ago (in favor of Full HD on all plasma sizes), Samsung somehow felt the need to check into this resolution for 50+ inch sets as well. Obviously customers didn't care. Don't know about LG.
I saw the Samsung sometime last year and it's 240p ability aside, I doubt that you'd see worse from a Panasonic XGA set. Plasma was (and is) great if you're looking for that specific look - not too sharp (like a 1080p LCD with a XRGB) and especially on mediocre 480p signals (Cube and Wii and original XBox in parts) mid resolution plasmas are great. But on good 480p signals (DC, PS2), the resolution isn't enough to get all the detail clearly displayed. A 1-pixel checkerboard pattern on a 480p signal just looks blurred on a XGA panel, especially on an anamorphic one.
With other things, like superior black levels or motion resolution on plasma sets, there's little to discuss of course.
Fudoh wrote:
I saw the Samsung sometime last year and it's 240p ability aside, I doubt that you'd see worse from a Panasonic XGA set. Plasma was (and is) great if you're looking for that specific look - not too sharp (like a 1080p LCD with a XRGB) and especially on mediocre 480p signals (Cube and Wii and original XBox in parts) mid resolution plasmas are great. But on good 480p signals (DC, PS2), the resolution isn't enough to get all the detail clearly displayed. A 1-pixel checkerboard pattern on a 480p signal just looks blurred on a XGA panel, especially on an anamorphic one.
With other things, like superior black levels or motion resolution on plasma sets, there's little to discuss of course.
First off guys, sorry to derail this thread-- we're off on a tangent but the initial point was how spectacular GC (and Wii) 480p looks on this set. It seems almost no one knows about this. We can move this to a different thread if required.
Fudoh, I can assure you, all anamorphic XGA (LG, Sammy, Panny) sets are not created equal-- as I stated earlier-- the last XGA Panasonic plasma panel ever produced, the 2013 TC-P50X60, is not even in the same ballpark as this set. I had one for about 6 months, and I bought it after my first F4500 Samsung because I found a deal too good to pass up and I had always heard that Panasonic plasmas "were the best". Well suffice to say, despite being equal in size and price to the F4500, the PQ of the Panasonic overall, and more importantly (for me, because I bought specifically for general gaming), 480p looked nowhere near as good as it did on the Samsung, no matter what tweaks I made to the Panasonic. I later read in several reviews that the image quality of the Panasonic X60 series was a serious disappointment, especially when compared to their higher tier sets. All XGA sets are not created equal.
As for 1-pixel display patterns vs. 480p argument-- let me say this-- I have little doubt that a 1080p set would be able to replicate a 1 pixel 480p display pattern with more accuracy than a 1024x768 anamorphic panel-- after all, the horizontal resolution of full HD is an even 3x multiple of 640, and, if only 960 vertical pixels were employed, it would be an exact multiple of 480 for the vertical.
However--as someone who can appreciate trying to get the most natural PQ out of retro-consoles by using image processors, etc. I would be willing to bet serious money that if you were to see ANY of the PS2 generation of systems at either 480p or 480i on this set,on its own, side by side with ANY 1080p set (plasma, LCD, or even OLED), with any external processor of your choice, you would choose this set hands down, every single time. The image is that impressive. You see, when I first made this purchase, I agonized over whether to get it, or the 1080p version, the PN51F5300. A few months later, despite being THRILLED with every aspect of this set, I was in the market for a flat panel for my living room and decided to spend an extra $100 to get the F5300 (BFXZA model) over this one. When I first brought the F5300 home, I did not yet have my new entertainment center for my living room and thus had to place the set in the bedroom with my F4500-- I immediately began putting it through the paces, testing it with all my game systems, side by side with the F4500 (hence the picture above I posted showing FZero on 3 sets in the same shot).
Despite being a great set, comparable to a Panasonic S60 (and the BFXZA revision is even better, by some accounts), 480p and 480i game output on it did not even compare to what the F4500 produced. Despite, or perhaps in spite, of the increased resolution, the images looked very sharp, harsh, and perhaps even more importantly, UNNATURAL compared to the F4500. The best way I can put it is comparing it to one of the scaler reviews on your site, where you found you preferred setting the processor to output 720p vs. 1080p on a 1080p panel because the 720p setting looked much more pleasing and natural.
Have you ever experienced what a GC, Wii, Xbox, or DC, in progressive scan or VGA mode, looks like on a native 480p HD-Ready CRT? It looks WORLDS better than what you see when you connect these systems to a 1080p set, regardless of whether it is LCD or plasma. Well, to sum this up for you-- the image the 51" F4500 puts out when fed a 480p (and even 480i) signal looks extraordinarily similar to how it looks on a 480p native CRT. Theres no getting around that fact, and I guess you'd just have to see it to believe it. Its probably a combination of the internal scaler, the resolution, the color reproduction, and the contrast that do it.
Initially, I had some strange issues with 480i on this set (ghosting/trailing), but I discovered it was due to an option called "Digital Clean View"-- once I disabled it, I found this set has probably the best 480i de-interlacing I have ever seen, it looks remarkably close to 480p.
As for 240p, once again I found on my 1080p F5300, it looked sharp, harsh, and un-natural-- while on the F4500 it looks remarkably CRT-like. Without the addition of any external processors/scalers, I find the look completely satisfying. In order to better it, a 1080p set would absolutely HAVE to be paired with a Framemeister adding scanlines. But again, I find the F4500s native 240p to look so good that spending any money on additional processors would not be worth it. On 1080p sets, its an absolute necessity.
Its about all I can say about this-- the set is the worlds best kept secret for retro-gamers. RGB is a must, of course, when connecting the systems to it, but yeah. I HIGHLY recommend you get your hands on one to see. Im using a simple Ebay SCART to Component/YUV converter to get my retro systems to it. Very cheap and simple, thats it.
