PRODUCT REVIEW: MARCH 2009
Pioneer Elite Pro-111FD 50-Inch Plasma HDTV
The Elite PRO-111FD is the latest in a series of KURO plasma TVs that feature amazingly low black levels. But you pay a price for that in performance.
Ever since Pioneer announced its KURO line of “ultra black” plasmas two years ago, we’ve seen new levels of plasma TV performance reached, and then surpasses. Ironically, Pioneer’s first 50-inch commercial plasma monitors (PDP-501), that started shipping in the late 1990s, had the industry’s worst black levels.
A decade later, that’s been completely reversed. Now, KURO plasmas have a level of black that is so low it falls below the range of accuracy of most color analyzers, making realistic contrast measurements all but impossible.
But there is a catch to having such low levels of black. And “great blacks” aren’t everything when it comes to overall image quality. They’re just part of the equation, another of which is wide dynamic range and consistent gamma performance. How does the PRO-111FD measure up in those areas? Read on and find out…
Figure 1. Pioneer’s Elite PRO-111FD plasma TV. Guess what?
The black levels don’t go much higher
after you turn it on.
OUT OF THE BOX
By now, the silhouette of KURO plasmas is easily recognized. Unlike their competitors, Pioneer’s design has more angular corners and a high-gloss bezel that really contrasts with the front glass face. The glass surface (to me) always appears to have more of a matte finish than a high-gloss reflective finish, when compared to other plasma HDTVs.
There’s nothing happening on the front panel, aside from a tiny power indicator lamp in the lower left corner of the frame. As shipped, the PRO-111FD came with two accessory speakers, which attach vertically to the left and right sides of the frame with locking brackets. You can adjust their height so the tops of the speakers are flush with the top of the TV. A gloss-finish plastic base came installed on the review unit and has a small footprint.
Rear panel connections are surprisingly few, given the price tag ($4,500) and the upscale home theater viewer this product is aimed at. Not surprisingly, analog video inputs are rapidly vanishing from new HDTVs, and Pioneer gives you one analog component (YPbPr) jack field and a corresponding stereo audio input to go with it.
What’s mystifying to me is this: While there’s only one analog component input, there are still two composite video inputs, plus a single S-video jack. (Realistically — who is going to need two composite inputs on a 1080p plasma TV?) In addition to analog RCA audio inputs, you’ll find a loop-through stereo analog audio output (again, who will use this?), plus a discrete subwoofer connection.
Figure 2a. Pioneer provides only one analog component video input,
but you get two composite
video inputs. Why???
Figure 2b. There are three HDMI 1.3 inputs provided for your AV components.
I’ll bet you find
a need for one more…
The digital input lineup is a bit more sensible with three HDMI 1.3 inputs. But that’s one short, from my perspective. A TV this expensive should have at least four HDMI connections, as it’s not difficult to come up with four such sources — think two set-top boxes, a Blu-ray player, and a game console, for example. There’s also a 15-pin analog PC connection, which supports just five formats – VGA, SVGA, XGA, 1360x768 (WXGA), and 1280x1024 (SXGA), all at a 60Hz refresh rate.
Pioneer has also provided a 100BaseT Ethernet connection on the rear panel, so the PRO-111FD can be connected to a remote PC, notebook, media server, or other DLNA-compatible device through your home network. DLNA, which stands for Digital Living Network Alliance, is just a proprietary name for ad hoc (peer-to-peer) networks.
Using this connection and the on-screen menus, you can access JPEG photos, music, and videos on another PC, and stream them through your network to watch in real time on the PRO-111FD. And no, the LAN connection is not wireless, nor will it work with a simple wireless adapter. If you’re like me and your cable modem and network router are located in the basement or a similar out-of-the-way place, running long Cat 5 cables from your TV isn’t practical. Pick up a wireless bridge to make the connection.
There’s also a single RF jack (F-connector) for use with antennas or direct to cable TV systems. The PRO-111FD has a built-in NTSC/ATSC/QAM tuner, and will pull in any signal in these formats that’s not protected by conditional access encryption. You have to choose whether you have a cable or antenna connection before scanning for channels.
Figure 3. This remote control was designed for someone with
great eyesight and tiny fingers.
Guess that leaves me out!
REMOTE AND MENUS
The supplied remote is a bit “busy.” It has way too many same-sized buttons, many of which will get little use. While the channel and volume controls are adequate in both location and size, the Menu, Tools, and Exit buttons are super-tiny and easily confused in a darkened room.
Ditto the Screen Size (aspect ratio), AV Selection (picture preset mode), Display, and TV/DTV buttons, all of which are mixed right in with the seven AV input selectors. I can tell you that it is very easy to get those mixed up, even with the lights on. And the AV input buttons are numbered #1 through #7, with no clue if you are toggling between HDMI, component, composite, or PC sources.
As usual, Pioneer provides a wide range of image adjustments, many of which are automatically engaged as you toggle through the eight different factory image presets. Those are Optimum, Performance, Pure, Movie, Game, Sports, Standard, and ISF Day/Night modes.
Optimum is an interesting preset. It provides a graphical display of contrast, brightness, color saturation, sharpness, color temperature, and gamma settings, all in a separate OSD that uses bar graphs. Sound adjustments are also shown graphically. Pioneer’s accessory color sensor (included) can be added to the mix by connecting through the rear panel DIN jack, making automatic settings possible based on changes in ambient lighting.
As for the other presets, you’ll be most likely to use Pure or Movie modes. These should result in the best gamma performance, most accurate color temperature, and the least amount of image “enhancements” There are plenty of those and you’ll want to shut most of them off for everyday viewing.
In addition to basic image tweaks, you can also fiddle with a bunch of more refined adjustments. The aspect ratio is usually set automatically for any video sources connected through the HDMI inputs, but you can override them and choose between Full, Zoom (enlarges letterboxed video), Cinema, Wide (progressive stretch), and 4:3 modes for standard definition video sources.
For HD inputs, you can choose from Full (16:9 squeeze), Dot by Dot (1080i and 1080p sources only), Zoom, Cinema, Wide 1 (progressive stretch) and Wide 2 (linear stretch). Even though none of these choices is specifically listed as anamorphic for widescreen DVDs, you’ll find Full mode does the trick. With PC sources, you can choose between 4:3 and 16:9 linear stretch modes.
Pioneer also provides automatic size masking for standard definition content on an HD raster. This circuit detects black bars to either side of a 4:3 image and inserts gray bars accordingly when displayed on the PRO-111FD. This ensures consistent aging of phosphors whether you are watching HD or SD programs.
Things get more interesting in the Pro Adjust menu. Here’s where you can select Pure Cinema mode, which does the thinking for you — if the source is a 24p Blu-ray disc, Pure Cinema will either “smooth” 24-frame playback to minimize judder, or triple the refresh rate to 72Hz in Advance mode. The advantage of 72Hz playback is no judder and brighter images, while Smooth mode isn’t quite as bright.
Intelligent mode makes subtle changes to optimize brightness and color saturation, but the manual doesn’t say what those changes are based on, so I’d leave this setting off. In the Picture Detail menu, you’ll find three settings for DRE (Dynamic Range Enhancement), plus off. As this control can screw up gamma response, I’d leave it off as well.
There are other settings for Black Level boost (leave it off) and automatic contrast level (again, a gamma-buster, so be careful), three levels of detail enhancement (I set it to minimal enhancement, or Level 1), and three different Gamma curves. Unfortunately, Pioneer doesn’t provide correlate those three settings to any standard gammas. You’ll have to figure that out by trial and error.
The Color Temperature menu provides five presets plus a Manual setting. Here’s where you’ll make adjustments to red, green, and blue contrast and brightness to achieve specific grayscale values. You’ll also find settings for Color Transient Improvement (off or on) and Color Space settings (1 for extended color gamuts and 2 for normal spaces, like BT.709).
For those who really want to fine-tune color, there are color hue adjustments for red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and magenta. These allow you to get each color point as close as possible to the ideal x,y coordinates found on standard NTSC or BT.709 color spaces. Since you can’t alter saturation and luminance values, you won’t get a perfect match — but you’ll get darned close.
Additional adjustments include three levels of 3D analog noise reduction (use to suit your taste, although you will see fine image detail become soft with higher levels), field-by-field noise reduction in three levels, macroblock (digital) noise reduction (softens the image) and mosquito noise (digital) noise reduction (has the same effect.)
ON THE TEST BENCH
That’s a lot of adjustments. Do they make a difference? Absolutely, although you may go a little crazy trying to figure out which settings will give you the best overall image quality.
One big problem with KURO plasmas is that they aren’t anywhere as bright as conventional models of plasma TVs. That’s because part of the KURO “secret sauce” lies in the front glass filtering, which attenuates image brightness significantly in the vertical viewing axis. You can verify this for yourself — very close to the KURO screen at eye level, then stand up and you’ll see a notable darkening of the image.
Overall image brightness is reduced as well. What that means is that you’ll be hard-pressed to get a small area brightness reading over 100 nits (29 foot-Lamberts) in ANY picture mode after calibration. From my experience, that’s about as low as you want to go for normal viewing under indirect daylight conditions.
In my tests, only three modes produced brightness readings over 100 nits, using a small area full white window — Sport, Optimum, and (oddly enough) ISF Night. The other preset modes produced readings ranging from 58 nits to 98 nits. That’s sufficient for darkened rooms or rooms with low, indirect ambient lighting.
Figure 4. You’d expect a linear gamma curve in ISF mode, and not what I measured here.
I should also state here that it took me numerous tries to come up with a clean, deep gamma curve on the PRO-111FD. That’s because many of those image “bells and whistles” adjustments kick in automatically with different image presets. For example, the ISF-Night preset mode produced an S-curve gamma of 1.83 that crushed whites and came out of black too quickly. Pure mode was much better with a 2.3 gamma curve, although still not steep enough for movies.
Suffice it to say that I have lots and lots of unusable gamma curve plots on file now! For my best efforts, I measured peak brightness at 103.8 nits in Optimum mode after calibration. Movie mode came in at 78 nits, while Pure logged in at 80.5 nits. With a bit more tugging, I was finally able to produce a 2.4 gamma in Performance mode (Figure 4) with a peak brightness reading around 70 nits, or 20 ft-L.
Figure 5. Doesn’t matter what image preset you use — color temperature tracking is t-i-g-h-t.
Contrast measurements were unreliable, given the extremely low black level measurements. Let’s say that average and peak contrast both ranged above 50,000:1, and leave it at that! White point uniformity was excellent, shifting a maximum of 250 Kelvin across a full white screen.
As you might expect, the PRO-111FD tracks a beautiful grayscale at any calibrated color temperature. The maximum shift in any image-preset mode was less than 150 Kelvin, as seen in Figure 5. Consistent grayscale tracking has always been a signature of Pioneer plasma TVs, KURO or not. You can swing the temperature lower or higher — doesn’t matter, it will stay on course better than a homing pigeon.
Figure 6 shows the PRO-111FD’s plotted color gamut before calibration, compared to the ITU BT.709 standard HDTV gamut. The TV tracks BT.709 pretty closely, but I was able to get it even closer using the color management controls, as seen in Figure 7. The biggest problem was a bit of undersaturation in the green channel, which covers all of BT.709 but could use a bit more “oomph” to deal with wider color gamuts, like the P3 digital cinema space.
Figure 6. Here’s the PRO-111FD’s measured color gamut before calibration —
close, but not quite there.
Figure 7. After calibration, all six of the primary and secondary color coordinates are very closely aligned to the BT.709 (HDTV) standard color space.
THE KURO OBSESSION
Pioneer has obsessed with black levels to the extent that it’s easy to forget what other qualities make up a good display. Here’s where I’m going to buck the KURO trend and say that super-low black levels are not a good thing, if it means I’m giving up brightness at the other end — thereby sacrificing dynamic range.
Let’s be realistic here. Even a 1st-rate 35mm release print doesn’t have deep blacks, only very low grays. What makes you think black levels are really low is the high contrast ratios and wide dynamic range that’s characteristic of motion picture film stocks. I’m writing this the morning after seeing Watchmen: The IMAX Experience and even the cinematic black from the twin-barreled Christie 2K projectors wasn’t as deep as the level of black I watched on the PRO-111FD.
Yet, I saw tremendous dynamic range and much brighter whites in the IMAX projection (which uses 3-chip DLP technology), and the experience was more satisfying. And that’s my big knock on KURO: This obsession with low black levels has sacrificed too much visual dynamic range to suit my tastes. Add in the temperamental gamma curve performance and you wind up with images that aren’t as brilliant as they should be.
I can pull out a current-model Panasonic or Samsung 50-inch plasma and measure blacks in the range of .05 to .15 nits after calibration, and my small-area peak whites for best gamma will be in the range of 120 to 130 nits. That means contrast ratios exceeding 1200:1 without sacrificing brightness — but still achieving blacks as good as any DLP projector and better than a 35mm release print.
IMAGE QUALITY
Having gotten that rant out of my system, let me say that in a controlled viewing environment with extremely low ambient light, I was amazed at the subtleties and nuanced shading seen in The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, my current favorite test disk for blacks and low grays. This movie also has lots of subtle pastel color shades, in particular, the Joker’s purple jacket and makeup, and the flesh tones seen under fluorescent lighting.
I fed the signal from an LG BD300 Blu-ray player at 1080i resolution and let the Pioneer clean it up — a job well done. Absolutely no judder was seen, thanks to the PRO-111FD’s film processing mode. (The BD3000 does not process 1080p cleanly). This is not a movie with screaming color saturation, as most scenes are filmed in shadows, or with unflattering light. Yet, flesh tones held up beautifully, as did subtle detail. The IMAX chase sequence under Gotham City was particularly engrossing and something that would not be pleasant at all to watch on an LCD TV — even one with 120 Hz processing.
My second test disk, and a great “crunch test’ for dynamic range, is the BBC’s Planet Earth program on Blu-ray. Select the chapter on Ice Worlds and marvel at how many shades of “white” and off-white you can spot in the same scene. They should all stand distinct from each other — if not, your TV is crushing them, probably due to an S-curve gamma response. Icebergs, snow, polar bears, ptarmigans, penguins — there’s lots of “white” to show here (and deep shadows, too) that would task just about any display.
The PRO-111FD sailed through both tests without breathing hard. And why not? Plasma technology is well suited to critical image evaluation, with saturated, accurate colors, stable grayscale tracking, low blacks, and wide dynamic range. The only problem here is insufficient dynamic range to sizzle your eyes as the icebergs and snow-capped mountains come into view.
The final test was more for fun. As you may have seen in my coverage of the 10th Super Bowl HDTV Party, the PRO-111FD was positioned strategically in the main theater, behind the Mitsubishi HC6000 projector and near the Panasonic TH-42PF11UK plasma monitor. It had a small but dedicated audience most of the evening and got a unanimous “thumbs up” from everyone who spent more than a few seconds watching the Steelers and Cardinals slug it out in 1080i HD.
CONCLUSIONS
Make no mistake, the PRO-111FD is an impressive achievement in display technology. It’s good enough to be used as a professional evaluation-grade monitor — that’s how stable and accurate its images are. And yes, Pioneer’s black levels are super-deep…perhaps too deep, as image brightness wasn’t as high as I’d like to see it. As a result, dynamic range suffers. Your best bet, if you want to buy one anyway, is to watch it under dimmed lighting as much as possible. That way, you’ll enjoy the subtleties of this plasma TV much more clearly.
Power consumption: In an eight-hour test operating in Standard mode, the PRO-111FD
consumed a total of 2.01 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or an average of 200.4
watts.
