Technology Monitor

We tried calibrating the Custom mode, which does allow tweaks to the Pro adjust menu, but while we were able to improve the grayscale compared to THX, other areas of picture quality--namely gamma, color decoding and primary/secondary color accuracy--were significantly worse. In the past, such as on the V10 last year, our adjustments in Custom yielded very good gamma results, but not this time around.

THX was still better overall than Custom, so we used it, with some tiny tweaks, for our evaluation. We checked out the Blu-ray of Invictus, with the comparison lineup below, for our main image quality tests.

Black level: Our nearly new TC-PG20/25 sample performed extremely well in this area, with the kind of deep, inky blacks we've come to expect from the company's plasma TVs. It lagged behind the Pioneer and the LG LE8500 in this area, but outperformed the others, including the slightly-aged V10 from last year. The differences were most visible in dark scenes, such as the shot down the road outside Mandela's house at the 40 minute mark. The black of a leather jacket, the night sky, the shadows under the trees and the letterbox bars appeared just a bit inkier than on the V10 and both of the Samsungs, and a good deal deeper than the LG PK750 plasma. In brighter scenes the differences between the various displays' black levels narrowed significantly, as usual, although they were still visible in the letterbox bars.

We measured a black level of 0.001 footlamberts (ftl) for the Pioneer and LG LH8500, 0.007 on the G20/25, 0.016 for the V10 (at about 1,200 hours), 0.018 for the Samsung B650, and 0.024 for the LG PK750. We ran the G20/25 for about 100 hours after we received it and that measurement didn't shift. If behavior from the 2009 models is any indication, we don't expect any change for at least a few hundred hours (typical TV use is 1,900 hours/year), but if/when we measure one, we'll update this review.

Details in shadows on the G20/25 series appeared a bit less natural than on some of the sets in our lineup. We attribute this issue to the TV's lighter gamma in dark areas, which made the shaded bush alongside Mandela's wall, and the shadowed faces of Pienaar and Nerine in Chapter 15, for example, a bit brighter than on the Pioneer or the LG LE8500. This wasn't a major issue however, and shadows and near-dark areas still looked realistic overall, mainly owing to the G20/25's deep blacks.

Color accuracy: In THX mode the G20/25 performed very well in this area, although due to its less-than-perfect grayscale it still fell a bit short of our reference display and a couple of the others in our lineup (including the V10 and the PK750). We noticed skin tones, like the faces of Pienaar's family in Chapter 9, seemed very slightly paler and shifted toward green, although not nearly to the extent we saw on last year's THX mode, for example. The light blue shirt of Mr. Pienaar and the red couch cushion exhibited a similar slight shift. We'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference without the benefit of a side-by-side a comparison, however.

Primary and secondary color accuracy was excellent, as evinced by the green of the grass and trees around the white players' field in Chapter 1, for example. The TV's deep black levels and solid color decoding contributed to some of the most saturated, punchy colors in our lineup. We also appreciated that black areas stayed a relatively neutral color on the G20/25, as opposed to veering into blue as we saw on the Samsung LCD and the PK750, for example.

Video processing: Panasonic makes a lot of marketing hay out of it 600Hz subfield drive, but as we observed last year, its benefits (much like the antiblurring effects of 120Hz, 240Hz etc LCDs) are exceedingly difficult to discern. When we engaged the Blur reduction setting, our motion resolution test showed that the G20/25 was delivering all 1080 lines of the source. When we turned off the control, the result dipped down to somewhere between 700-800 lines. Although the difference between the two settings was impossible for us to see outside of specialized test patterns, there's no obvious reason not to turn the control on--it introduced no negative effects we could see.

As we noted above the G20/25 series is not blessed with the 96Hz refresh rate found on the step-up VT20/25 models, so as we observed with Panasonic's predecessor plasmas from 2009, the G models cannot properly handle 1080p/24 sources. We confirmed this with our favorite scene for such a test, the flyover of the Intrepid from "I Am Legend," where we observed the characteristic stuttering motion of 2:3 pull-down (as opposed to the correct cadence of film we observed on the V10) when the G20/25 was set to its default 60Hz mode under "24p direct in." Switching to the other option, 48Hz, caused the display to flicker significantly and become essentially unwatchable, especially in brighter scenes.

In our 1080i deinterlacing test, it's worth noting that the G20/G25 only passed in film mode when we chose the "on" position for the 3:2 pull-down control. When the control was set to the default "Auto" position, the TV failed.

Bright lighting: Panasonic has improved its antireflective screen quite a bit compared to 2009, and the difference was clearly visible by comparing the G20/25 to the V10 in a well-lit room. The screen preserved black levels better and further reduced the brightness of reflections, such as the faces of viewers or even lamps caught in the screen. It beat the LG models in both of these areas, although it wasn't as good as the Pioneer. Compared to the Samsungs, the G20/25's screen did a better job reducing reflections, but didn't preserve black levels nearly as well.

Standard-definition: The 2010 G series is one of the worst standard-def performers we've tested recently. It didn't quite resolve all of the horizontal detail of the DVD format, and the shots of the stone bridge and grass appeared a bit soft. Jaggies in moving diagonal lines and a waving American flag were more prevalent on the G20/25 than on the Samsung or LG plasmas. Noise reduction was also less effective; in the Panasonic's strongest setting, we still saw motes and video noise in low-quality shots of skies and sunsets. The TV passed the 2:3 pull-down test in "On" mode, but the default "Auto" was again ineffective.

PC: Via analog VGA the TC-PG20/25 accepted a maximum input signal of 1,366x768, which is disappointing for a 1080p TV. Text in that resolution looked relatively soft, and we missed having an autoadjust function to fill the screen properly, but after some tweaking it looked passable. Via HDMI the TV handled every line of a 1,920x1,080 source with no edge enhancement or softness and excellent overall quality.