Jamie Wilson, of Overture Audio/Video in Delaware, found that Panasonic had cut corners, or made an error, in setting up the TH-50PX25U/P's service-menu options. The cut colors control was inoperative. That made the calibration difficult, but Jamie got the numbers quite close to 6500 kelvins. In fact, the set's color temperature presets were far better than most TVs, causing Jamie to observe that "You could take it out of the box, fix the gray scale, and have a pretty good picture" without ISF calibration. (Note: By "fix the gray scale," Jamie meant setting the white and black levels with the contrast and brightness controls, not a full gray-scale adjustment, which is the essence of an ISF-calibration.—Tech. Ed.)

The TV's user picture-adjustment menus worked well. The large menus fell away, leaving only a thin bar onscreen when adjusting color, contrast, or some other parameter. That way, the menus are unlikely to get in the way of test patterns. The contrast control, however, made adjustments in abnormally large steps, which made it difficult to dial in the correct setting.

The Viera TH-50PX25U/P comes with controls that allow you to shift the picture left, right, up, or down so that it's properly centered—a useful tool that worked well. Resolution, as displayed on test patterns, was excellent. The Snell & Wilcox zone plate on the Digital Video Essentials test DVD looked entirely clean.—JB