Panasonic TH42PX80 Conclusion

Pros

• Excellent black level (though not as deep as the Pioneer Kuros)
• Revealing shadow detail delineation (but can be too bright, see Cons)
  
• Fluid motion handling with minimum blurring
  
• Displays 1080p/24 video signal without telecine judder
• Clean picture with minimal digital noise at baseline
• Good video mode deinterlacing with effective jaggies reduction
• Can achieve zero overscan with [Picture Overscan] "Off"
  
• Solid connectivity with 3 x HDMI inputs, SD card slot, etc.
• Wide viewing angle with no drop-off in contrast/ colour up to 150° (but can exhibit the odd "double image"; see Cons)
• Perfect screen uniformity
• Inexpensive price

Cons

• Native resolution only 1024 x 768 (not true HD)
• Does not deinterlace film-based material properly (failed 3:2/ 2:2 cadence tests)
• Exhibits posterisation particularly with poor source
• No white balance control in user menu for greyscale calibration
• Inaccurate green primary colour that is deviated towards blue
  
• No gamma control in user menu to restore overall gamma near 2.22, causing shadow detail to look a touch too bright
  
• Settings cannot be saved independently per input (although can be saved separately for each picture mode)
• Subtle black level fluctuation when screen is black/ near-black (more obvious in test patterns than real-life material)
• Multilayered plasma glass causes "ghost image" of specific material (e.g. white text on a black background) to be repeated behind the original image, which is noticeable from certain off-axis angles/ distances
  
• Does not accept 1080p video signal over component/ VGA
  
• The usual plasma bugbears of glass reflection (though this is attenuated somewhat by the anti-reflection filter), phosphor trail, plasma buzz (that is related to screen brightness) and image retention/ screenburn

Conclusion

Although newly equipped with native 24fps playback without telecine judder and marginally better blacks, the Panasonic TH42PX80 represents an evolutionary rather than revolutionary improvement over the outgoing PX70 series. It still trails behind the reference-level Pioneer Kuros in terms of black level, colour and video processing, but the gap is closing, which is all the more amazing when you consider that the Panasonic TH42PX80 is – at this time of writing – around £500 cheaper than a similarly-specced Pioneer PDP-4280XD...